Thalasar Ventures

Given my experience it’s relatively easy for me to hire programmers and write a specification and instantly have a custom written application with a custom user interface. That experience doesn’t come easily. For people who might be looking to build a community they might lack the experience or budget for a custom application.

There are a number of solutions to this problem. On way for a beginning community builder to get some of that experience is to start with a simple open source content management system and build on top of that package. Take Joomla for example. Joomla is a cutting edge CMS that can be easy customized as blogging platform or a web application framework. Most ISPs offer CPanel installs of Joomla so getting it quickly installed on your website is easy. Once it’s installed you will need to spend some time understanding and hopefully customizing your Joomla installation.
Joomla is a PHP based content management system. It was originally called a Mambo but a code fork and a new branding effort occurred in 2005.Like most modern CMS it has a variety of modules that can do everything from social bookmarking to forums and more. A complete list of extensions can be found at Extensions.joomla.org.
One of the real benefits of an application framework like Joomla is that because it’s open source it’s highly customizable. One place a beginning designer might want to start is customizing is the appearance of their Joomla installation. While you might be tempted to use the default templates, this is a mistake. There’s a reason they are called the default templates. It’s far better to find a ready source of Joomla Templates or better yet find helpful ebook to understanding how to write a Joomla template.
Club TVK offers not only a customized Joomla templates library but also a forum where other members can give your tips and pointers about customizing your installation of Joomla. The great thing about a package like Joomla is that it gives the functionality of CMS that just a few years ago cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. With the help of Club TVK beginning web masters can have sites that look like they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.