Joomla is a CMS (Content Management System) that lets you create websites, blogs, web portals and online applications with a minimal amount of coding. It has a lot in common with WordPress.
We haven’t covered Joomla in any way previously on this blog, so we’re going to start by giving you a taste of the sites that can be made with Joomla. The following 40 themes are all free to use and show you the starting point you could have for your next site if you use Joomla with it.
If you’d like to see more Joomla coverage in the future, just let us know. Or of course, we can stick to good ol’ WordPress!
What do you think of the themes? Any great ones, or will WordPress be your steadfast favorite for the foreseeable future?
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Roseli A. Bakar (3 comments)2 November 09
These Joomla themes are pretty impressive !
Michael Martin (1286 comments)2 November 09
Glad you like them too Roseli
Keith Davis (51 comments)2 November 09
Great sites, but…
I’m just starting on the road with Wordpress, trying to learn another CMS would be too time consuming for me.
Unless you tell me that Joomla will knock spots off Wordpress as a CMS, and it can be learnt in a few hours, but I hope that you won’t say that.
For a blog or CMS website, it’s Wordpress for me.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)2 November 09
I can understand that Keith. It’s definitely best to get your head right around one CMS first before confusing it with another!
And to be honest, I can’t see myself saying Joomla beats WordPress by much any time soon…
Keith Davis (51 comments)2 November 09
Three pieces of good news to celebrate…
1 You aren’t going to tell me that Joomla is much better than Wordpress.
2 I now have a comment on my newbie blog from Pro Blog Design (thanks Michael and please visit again when I have installed a theme).
3 The white areas of your post titles are now clickable.
I can go to bed a happy man.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)2 November 09
Haha, Keith, I’m going to be checking back to your blog for more Sharpe references!!
And lol, it seems that everyone is glad to be rid of my old post titles! I guess they really were a nuisance for people!
charly (2 comments)2 November 09
Oh please no Joomla!! This CMS just sucks…
drop this thing and go with wordpress please!!!
best,
C.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)4 November 09
lol – Don’t worry Charly, I’m still “with” WordPress, I promise!
Joomla Bear (4 comments)3 November 09
Don’t forget our free Joomla Templates.
Polar Bear, Black Bear and Transparent Bliss are all very popular.
Cheers
Big Bear
Robomaster (23 comments)3 November 09
At least for now, wordpress is the future for bloggers. Joomla, put quite bluntly, stinks. Please stick to your excellent content on wordpress and drop any other CMS.
All who are with me say ‘Aye!’
charly (2 comments)3 November 09
Aye!
Michael Martin (1286 comments)4 November 09
Doesn’t look like Joomla has gone down particularly well. I think you’ll be getting your wish; pure WP!
Rachelle (1 comments)3 November 09
None of these themes ’spoke’ to me. I started out using Mambo, then Joomla and moved UP to WordPress.
Michael Martin (1286 comments)4 November 09
Another vote for WordPress? Can’t say I disagree with any of you. Thanks for letting us know that after trying both, you’d definitely go with WP Rachelle!
Joomla Bear (4 comments)3 November 09
It all depends what you want to do.
I do a lot of work with both Joomla and Wordpress – I love WP for its ease of use. Joomla is a little harder to get to grips with initially – but you can go a long way with Joomla if you want to. One of its strengths is user management.
And both CMS’s have their audience, look at Google Trends.
Joomla powers the top 8 American university websites – Harvard, Yale, etc. Joomla also powers Linux.com with 180,000+ unique visitors per day. One of the reasons Linux choose Joomla was for the social networking capabilities Joomla has when combined with various extensions.
But I’m the first to admit Wordpress ROCKS for blogging – we use WP for our blog on our website specializing in Joomla templates, we use Joomla for the rest of the site…
We’re also building an ecommerce website for a client at the moment using Magento. Which also rocks for shopping stuff.
So I belive the best CMS is not each individuals peronal favorite – but rather the CMS that is best for the task at hand.
new jersey personal injury (1 comments)3 November 09
I like the droppler effect, it looks great!
Michael Martin (1286 comments)4 November 09
lol – I think it has a pretty cool name at least
Tiago (1 comments)4 November 09
You have a spelling mistake in this page ( Afterrburner ).
BTW – Nice post.
Fez Jilani (4 comments)4 November 09
No offense but this was a pretty disappointing post. Not that my opinion matters all that much but I’ll give it anyway. Some of the themes listed are not really good at all. I guess Wordpress has more good quality free themes than Joomla, but how about not target a high number like “40″ and remove the shabby looking ones?
Robomaster (23 comments)4 November 09
Well wordpress warriors, it seems we have won the battle!
Keith Davis (51 comments)28 November 09
I like it… “Wordpress Warriors” but maybe we’ve only won a battle, not the war!
Sam (3 comments)23 November 09
Well, as JoomalBear pointed out – it is two different things. If you’re only up to easy-and-go blogging, stick to Wordpress, though you could use Joomla as well. Since it’s capable of so much more and focussing on community stuff, with a load of (free up to paid) extensions of all kinds, it is more likely to suit bigger needs than Wordpress does – as of yet. I have worked with both systems for quite a while now and love both for different reasons, so adding up content here with Joomla-related matters would at least have me as a fan
.
Dzinepress (2 comments)25 November 09
excellent hand picked templates.
Joomla Design Services (1 comments)26 November 09
Nice templates but are they all Joomla 1.5? I’m a little worried about what will happen when Joomla 1.6 rolls off, so some of my sites with Joomla 1.0 templates will remain this way until Joomla 1.6 is out….!
Joe (5 comments)28 November 09
Joomla24 (dot) com has some pretty nice templates but are running out of Joomla 1.5…when is Joomla 1.6 coming out?
Mobile tracker (3 comments)11 December 09
Joomla?
Let me take a look, I have a Joomla site and I want to make it look nicer, thanks.
Bruno (1 comments)11 December 09
Hi Mobile Tracker,
If you need a hand for template customization feel free to PM me, I can turn absolutely anything into Joomla