Big news coming in from the Joomla community suggests that they are set to announce a new service for Joomla built along the lines of WordPress.com and their associated service for WordPress. A service that will be hosted on Joomla.com, it is set to give users free hosting accounts for life. It seems as if the goal behind this new service launch from Joomla is to make it seemingly easier for the individuals to get started with this development tool without having to break much of a sweat. After all, for the newcomers in the industry, it proves to be quite tedious when they have to take care of such tasks for setting up a website like finding a good hosting service, installing software, configuring the domain name, so and so forth. WordPress.com has gone a long way towards helping individuals get started with the content management tool. In fact, industry estimates suggest that more than half of the websites that run on WordPress are hosted on the WordPress.com website. It seems as if it is the intention of the Joomla community to make Joomla.com an equally helpful service for the new and enthusiastic Joomla developers.
What is Joomla.com going to offer?
Users who sign up for the Joomla.com service from Joomla will be offered a number of options.
- A choice of sub-domain for their business website
- Choose from a minimum of two basic sample data sets: a website for Company brochures and a website in basic blog style
- Choose from a number of pre-installed templates
- A number of pre-installed extensions to choose from such as a simple comment system, or a media gallery
Although the users won't be granted the right of access to the database, they will nevertheless have the option of exporting media and data files. All websites that choose this service for hosting will be granted automatic updates. To put it simply, this new service is extremely similar to what is offered by WordPress.com which happens to be comparatively more locked-down as opposed to the self-hosted version. While there has only been an announcement from Joomla about their new service, it is expected that the developers will be able to make the most of the service only by the end of this year when it officially launches in the market.
Joomla.com or Demo.joomla.org: the hard choice
Individuals who deal and work with this CMS tool will probably be aware of the fact that demo.joomla.org has served as a hosting site for Joomla websites over many years. Normally, the free service is available for a period of thirty days. However, come September and this trial period is set to get extended up to ninety days.
Nevertheless, to think that this demo version of Joomla will serve as a better option over the impending launch of the Joomla.com service seems a little too farfetched. After all, developers and website owners will always want to go with a hosting service that offers free hosting over the lifetime of the website.
Who is taking care of the development process?
The contract for undertaking the development project of Joomla.com has been awarded to Site Ground by the non-profit organisation Open Source Matters (OSM). OSM has been setup primarily with the intention of providing financial, legal and organizational support to the development project. Site Ground, for many years, has been an appreciated and active member of the Joomla community. They have supported the CMS development community at a number of global events and provided hosting services to make it easier for the website owners to get started with their online business platform.
Will the additional commercial services be available?
As far as the additional commercial features of Joomla.com are concerned, there are high expectations among the industry experts that the same will be made available for use. One need not look too far with the WordPress.com website offering a clear picture of what the possible commercial services may be. Additional storage space, themes, and domain names are among some of the things that WordPress sell in order to fuel their commercial venture and sources suggest that Joomla is going to offer the same.
