Joomla is a content management system, or CMS. A CMS is a used to manage work flow collaboratively using several different procedures. These procedures perform several functions that work together to make up the system. They allow contribution and data storage from many people. They control access based on roles. They make report writing easier and they improve communication. The data in such a system can be anything from documents to videos to telephone numbers. The management that occurs is usually industry or topic specific. There is web content management that is far different from digital records management.

Joomla is an open source type of content management system. It is a platform whose function is to publish web content as well as content for intranets. It has many features including RSS feeds, printable page views, blogs, polls, search capabilities and language internationalization. The package itself is made up of several parts. This provides the opportunity for extension modules and integrations. These extensions are sometimes referred to as plug-ins. More complex add-ons are called components. These allow for the development of a cyber community through expanded user features. Installation can be done manually on a PHP supportive system or it can be installed form a package management system or even a turnkey appliance.

The content management system known as Joomla came about in 2005. The name is the English of an Arabic word that means "all together." The development process was truly collaborative. The public was even invited to submit logo ideas and then vote on their favourite from chosen submissions. The product release date was September 16, 2005. It won the Packt Publishing Open Source Content Management System Award in 2006 and again in 2007. A new version, version 1.5, was released in January of 2008 and version 1.5.15 was released in November of 2009.

As can be imagined, there are some criticisms of Joomla. It is an open source and thus free so many for profit system producers have an inherent problem with it. Other criticisms include the necessity for plug-ins or third party extensions for so many of the applications to be fully functional. Also, all pages have their own unique identification number. For a page to work within the framework, at least one menu item must be associated with it. This can be a confusing for novices. However, unlike its predecessors and colleagues in the field, it is a free, secure and relatively bug free content management system.