The presence of Joomla is a deciding factor for most people when choosing a web host provider. The core design team of Joomla was people with a vision. They wanted to create software that does what other pricey software does, but without charging for it. They also made sure it was open source, allowing for adjustments as developers see fit.

In addition, these developers do not get the credit they deserve. They are the people who turned Joomla into what it is today. As soon as they spot a problem that has not been addressed by the software in its current state, they create applications that more than compensate for the issue. The core team of developers could accomplish the same goal themselves but it would take far longer and, by the time one issue has been resolved, three may taken its place. Individual developers, spread across the globe, simply expedite the process to the point so that there are not constant problems.

For those that want to add to the process, it is incredibly simple, assuming that PHP isn’t a foreign language. There are unlimited ways to change, alter, and improve Joomla software, even at its current level of success. A forum and developer community is more than willing to accept another into the ranks of developers who have influence over the course that Joomla takes as it continues to evolve.

Of course, all of this effort would be unnecessary without hosting sites. These companies provide a means by which a web developer can get his or her creation to the internet. This connection, though relatively simple in concept, is crucial in the process of getting a Joomla enhanced site onto the net for public or private access. Moreover, it is only through groups that are willing to host Joomla that these developers can see their ideas reach fruition.

It is these web-hosting sites that allow the use of Joomla and these sites only have permitted this revolution in web design to take place. They are a filter of sorts that could, if it chosen, forbid the hosting of Joomla-enhanced sites. This would lead to the eventual destruction of the software, as its practical use would become insignificant.

CloudAccess.net is the proud host of Joomla’s free trial websites. One can create a 30-day site, at no charge, simply by filling out a form through either Joomla’s site or CloudAccess.net. Their prices for hosting, in general, are not the greatest, but they are about average. It may be this is what keeps CloudAccess.net off many top hosting lists.

HostGator seems to be agreed upon as the best hosting site available. It offers many excellent features such as Joomla site transfers, free of charge. According to the thousands of reviews for the site, HostGator also seems to offer some of the best hosting plans, with prices decreasing incrementally as the overall hosting time goes up. However, what seems to set HostGator apart from its competition is its exceptional customer support. Members of their support team are incredibly knowledgeable, kind, and are able to resolve issues quickly and effectively. Their average response time is under thirty minutes and they are able to fix just about any issue within just a couple hours.

Bluehost is another excellent hosting site. They offer Joomla installations as well as installations for many other popular forms of script. They also allow hosting for just about any language one could possibly want to use in a website. Bluehost offers this and dozens of other features all for one low price, making this company incredibly unique in the web hosting business. Their support also seems to be almost at the level of HostGator, with instant support both online via chat and on the phone. The support members are also knowledgeable about every step of the web hosting process, in terms of both hardware and software.

InMotion Hosting is also another great hosting site. They have had no compatibility issues ever recorded regarding Joomla They offer decent pricing options; not to the extent of HostGator or Bluehost, but still relatively low. Their support team also seems to be very knowledgeable and kind to their customers, which is always a plus.

There are many, many more web hosting sites, but these seem to be some of the best (with the exception of CloudAccess.net), at least according to reviews both on and off their respective sites. All of them offer Joomla hosting, and nearly all of them offer downloads and installations for the software. Even the less popular sites that host Joomla-enhanced websites are bound to do better than others do, simply because so many developers and site owners use Joomla to make their job easier. That is why Joomla hosting is so critical for many companies.

Extensions can enhance the look and feel of Joomla sites. For example, BoxPlus is an extension that allows you to add a pop-up window to your site that shows pictures and videos and other multi-media content. You can add social media to your site by using Facebook “Like” and “Share” button plug-ins. There are extensions in many different categories that allow sites to do new things.

A critical function for a website is the ability to be ranked by the major search engines so that your website will appear in search results with keywords. This is called Search Engine Optimization and, for a time, Joomla had a reputation of not being SEO-friendly.

The beauty of the open source Joomla community is the ability of developers to address these problems. The answer has been the development of many extensions that can enhance the SEO ability of your Joomla site:

1. iJoomla SEO allows you to reduce the time you spend on SEO functions by managing all your meta tags in one convenient place. You can watch keywords on Google and mark important keywords as “sticky.”

1. The SEO pagination extension gives each page a unique title. The plug-in works on pages of archives, sections, and categories.

1. Simple SEO turns the text from the beginning of a page’s content into the meta description tag in the page’s head.

1. Smart SEO will help overcome compatibility issues and page accessibility for category blog layouts, forum pages and other popular components.

1. SEO Keyword Factory allows you to improve search engine relevance by creating and maintaining keyword-rich URLs.

1. SEO Booster drives traffic back to your site by automatically adding a link back to your original content any time a user cuts and pastes your content. This can improve your site ranking.
2. SEO Keyword Link allows you to define keywords, and then automatically adds hyperlinks to the keywords in all your Joomla content. This should help to improve the SEO on the internal pages of your site.

1. Custom Page Title SEO allows you to change the page title of an article. This can significantly improve your Search Engine Optimization by using keywords related to individual articles.

1. Tag Meta allows you to spend less time on managing meta tags. This extension automates many of the tag title and meta tag processes, making you much more efficient.

These plug-ins, and many others, can be found at the main Joomla site and they will help improve the search optimization ability of your Joomla website. Good search engine optimization can be a time-consuming process and these plug-ins will allow you to increase the success of your site and improve your efficiency.

Through visible source code and free distribution, Joomla is accessible to a large community of users and developers and its open source license has allowed for rapid growth. However, this also means that there is no corporate office providing support for Joomla. So where do you go with a Joomla hosting question?

The vibrant and enthusiastic user and developer community is a great place to start.  There are active discussion forums and community sections here where experts in using the platform and the developers who are creating the plugins share their experiences and answer user questions.

Another resource is the community Web Hosting Chat.  Forums and discussion boards at this site are classified into many specific categories, which should help you target the kind of help you need. There is also a search function that allows you to search for Joomla specific posts.

RDS Online has created a website called Joomla CMS Tutorials, dedicated to helping developers and administrators to become experts in Joomla.  Much of the content on the site is free and available to anyone, but registration is required to access the more advanced topics. New content is added weekly for members. There is a one-time charge of $9.95 for membership.

Your choice of web hosting companies will also affect your ability to get help with your Joomla application. Companies that have been more active in the Joomla community are more likely to have support available for issues that arise when working with Joomla and other hosting platforms. Companies like Rochen and Interactive Online have worked to develop a synergistic relationship with the Joomla platform and this will certainly help when support is needed.

There are wide varieties of web hosting companies that are compatible with Joomla, however, and most can provide some level of support for Joomla users.  In addition, their knowledge is growing with the help of companies such as DemoWolf. DemoWolf is the largest Flash Tutorial provider in the hosting industry, offering 3,200 flash tutorials for hosting companies. DemoWolf has released 84 tutorials for the Joomla Contact Management System. Divided into five series, the DemoWolf tutorials are increasing the support available for Joomla users in the web hosting industry.

There is also professional support available through the Open Source Support Desk. This company will provide support for a fee, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  You can purchase plans for hours of prepaid support in bundles. This company also offers support contracts and security services for users of Joomla and other open source software programs.

The open source nature of the Joomla CMS allows for its perpetual evolution, but it will not leave you without support. Even without a corporate support number, help is available when you need it.

• MTV Networks Quizilla (social networking)
• IHOP (restaurant chain)
• Harvard University (Educational)

This highly reliable, open source platform is free and available to everyone. Joomla works as well in simple, personal websites as it does in the more complicated versions. To install and use Joomla successfully, you must have the following basic requirements:

• A fully operational web server with Apache 1.3 or above or IIS 6.0 or above.
• A database. MySQL is recommended, and 3.23.x or above is the minimum requirement.
• Server-side scripting language PHP (version 4.3.10 or above) with MySQL, XML and Zlib functionality enabled.

Joomla is not a web server and successful use will depend on having a fully functioning and compatible Web server in place. There are many options that are compatible with the Joomla platform and they all have their own strengths and weaknesses.

• Rochen is the web hosting company of choice for the main Joomla site.  They have a complete range of hosting plans. Rochen has a long relationship with Joomla and the result of that history is reliability and good support. Your site will perform well, but you will likely pay more for services with this provider.

• Go Daddy has a reputation for providing good technical support and will provide reliable service at a lower price point. Some users have complained about loading speed, but most Go Daddy Joomla users comment that their experience has been satisfactory. It is important to note that Go Daddy does provider a Joomla install, which can be a helpful tool, but experienced users may get better results installing the most current version of Joomla manually.

• Interactive Online receives high marks from Joomla users and developers for good tech support and fast servers. The company is smaller, but very responsive, and active in the Joomla community. Interactive Online is not a budget provider, but their prices are still considered by most to be reasonable.

• Dreamhost provides a user-friendly environment for Joomla applications. They provide shell access, unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, free domain registration, and a well-designed control panel. This may be a better option for sites with lower web traffic or more simple construction, because companies that offer “unlimited” features may have tend to have more crowded server that affects loading times.

These are just a few companies provide web hosting for Joomla sites and it is important to note that your miles may vary depending on things, such as web traffic and the complexity of your application. There is no one size fits all solution for Joomla hosting. When shopping for a provider, it is important to balance performance advantages with cost to determine the best fit for your specific application.

A subject of much interest on these forums is web hosting for Joomla-created web sites. The good news is that there are many options to choose from, but this could also be considered the bad news. With so many options, how do you narrow down your choices?

1. Not all web-hosting providers are compatible with Joomla and, those that are compatible, may not have the most current version of the software. You will need a server that is equipped with Apache, PHP, and MySQL to run Joomla. If an old version of Joomla is being used, you might not have the stability and reliability of a more current version of the software.

1. Depending on your experience level, you may want to find a provider that offers a one-click installation of Joomla. If you are experienced in FTP and MySQL technologies, this is less important as the software installation will be easily managed.

1. Because Joomla requires a database to function, it is critical that your web hosting solution comes with more than one database. Otherwise, you will very quickly outgrow its capability. You would be disappointed to discover that a blog or other application might prevent you from adding the CMS you require, stopping your project in its tracks.

1. Through advance planning, you may be able to determine whether you will need multiple domains down the road but, in all likelihood, this is a need that could easily evolve. If you are limited to only one domain in your package, you may have to split the administration and billing of your project between multiple hosting companies.

1. The open source nature of Joomla means that there is no corporate support number to call if you have questions, but the substitute is a vibrant and knowledgeable group of users and developers. This community will be able to assist you through a wide variety of challenges, but it would be wise to choose a web-hosting provider that offers knowledgeable support on working with the Joomla platform.

Reliability of a web-hosting provider’s infrastructure is a very important issue, because it will affect the function of your Joomla site. It can be tempting to cut corners, but this is an area where quality matters. Your web-hosting provider must be able to efficiently run your platform; otherwise, you are likely to be disappointed in your site’s performance.

Joomla will work hand-in-hand with your web host provider. You want to be sure you’ve chosen a high quality solution to bring out the best in your site.

Joomla is an open source derivative of Mambo. It resulted from dissatisfaction within a section of Mambo’s development team. These unhappy developers split off from the company and began their work on a free, open version of the software they had been working on before. It seemed as though many individual developers had been hoping for something like this; it received an incredible amount of attention in a very short period. Joomla was, as such, the brainchild of a core team of developers. However, as it grew, it gained a life of its own or, at least, it reflected the wants and needs of the many who began to assist in the development. This is the nature of an open source project; it grows so much more than it originally was, as more and more people come aboard and satisfy their own particular programming desires. It is also a way of acquiring help from excellent programmers without having to pay them a dime for their work – a form of outsourcing, in a way.

Joomla is an award-winning, content management system. It helps website owners and operators control the content on a site. This may seem trivial to those who have never managed a website, or even those who run smaller sites. However, for a large and complex site, software like this is invaluable, especially for groups that are short on skilled, knowledgeable developers.

This may seem great for the less technologically inclined and those with mediocre programming skills, but what is in it for real developers? It is simple. Joomla is open source software. Anyone is free to create as much as they want, using the PHP programming language, for the vast majority of the work, and MySQL for storing data. In general, developers tend to create a multitude of applications and add-ons that improve the core software by patching holes, fixing errors, or simply making things better. Without excellent developers from around the world, Joomla would cease to grow and, eventually, cease to exist.

Joomla has revolutionized much of the web, providing an easier way to maintain and manage the content of one’s website, which can often be a hassle. However, this beneficial software would mean nothing if web hosting companies were not willing to support it. Thus, Joomla hosting is also vital to the continuing success of Joomla software and its plethora of open source creations, courtesy of a global team of developers. Groups, such as Cloud Access and many other well-known and trustworthy web-hosting sites do this hosting. The price for hosting may differ among sites, but what really matters is whether it allows for Joomla software.