1. You can’t recognize a good Joomla! Web site.

Professional Web developers who create CMS solutions using Joomla have no regard for the standard templates that are available and inevitably create sites that are totally unrecognizable as a Joomla! Web site. The origination software can only be determined after digging in the source code. Very original!

2. Get lost in the available extensions.

Good CMS solutions sport a ‘reasonable’ number of extensions. I know of several that can boast dozens. I know some CMS developers who can list them by heart. I even know of commercial CMS options that sport approximately 60 extensions. But Joomla, with total disregard to its user base, has gone totally overboard and currently offers 3,704 extensions. Now that’s just sick! Who can keep track of so many extensions?

3. Joomla! Web sites can fall to bits when they are finished.

It is alleged that Joomla Web sites are so easy to manage and keep up-to-date that virtually anyone with a Web browser and an Internet connection can edit their Web site. In fact, Joomla will tell you that you need no programming or HTML experience to manage your site. Therein lies the problem! Once a Web design company has handed over a finished site to a client, they go crazy and add new text and images and the whole thing ends up looking quite different to what the designer had in mind and, instead, has a really ‘up to date’ feel about it.

Caution: If you want your Web site to stay the way it was when you designed it - don’t use Joomla! and don’t let your client update it.

4. Joomla! is not for the elite.

Elite design companies use specialized tools. They like to use things… the elite use. So forget Joomla - apparently masses of people are now using Joomla. There are hundreds of thousands of registered Joomla developers and a whole heap more of people using Joomla Web sites. Joomla has become very common indeed.

The bottom line: Joomla isn’t for the sophisticated anymore. Stick to your Mac and your iPhone!

5. You can’t deduct Joomla! from your taxes

Yes, for most of you this will be the sticking point. You really can’t get tax returns when you use Joomla. So what’s that all that about then?

Those people at Joomla really went out on a limb when they decided to make Joomla ‘Open Source’. Without going into the small print I can tell you that it’s cost free - you can’t buy it. You won’t have any ‘overhead’ advantages with Joomla. For Pete’s sake - you don’t even get to pirate it!