WordPress and Joomla are probably the most common content management systems for established companies, but Joomla is the preferred type of open-source CMS solutions for larger companies. Joomla is more advanced, but it offers a more professional interface for large businesses. For this reason, Joomla has become the chosen platform for businesses, but the IT manager must find a host that can offer the right platform to support Joomla sites.
Language Support and Host Software
Joomla uses PHP, so a cloud computing company must support the PHP language. PHP is typically used with a Linux setup. The bundled platform is called “LAMP,” which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. These four solutions, together, support Joomla seamlessly. Technically, Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) can support PHP and work with MySQL, but this setup is more difficult to configure and tends to lead to issues with the PHP and IIS configuration.
Uptime and Support Factors
Nothing is worse than having no control of the downtime on a website. A website with poor uptime can lead to lost sales and visitors and even affects the company’s position in the search engines. Search engines want to send traffic to a reliable site, so a site that has difficulty staying functional can lead to a loss in rank and revenue for the company.
Each terms of service and hosting contract lists the uptime for the site. Some hosts offer 100 percent and are the most desirable hosting companies. Others promise 99 percent, which is also a good rate. Some hosts bring down servers without announcing the downtime, which is frustrating for business owners. Look for a host that sends a message to customers when maintenance is planned. In addition to uptime, choose a host that will perform maintenance during the website’s slow time. This is typically after midnight and stops at around 6:00am.
Finally, support is an overlooked issue until the website owner needs the support. A crashed server, corrupted data, or networking issues can cause the site to be unavailable for hours. The host should support 24-hour, 7-days-a-week support.
About the Author: Jennifer Marsh is a software developer, programmer and technology writer and occasionally blogs for Rackspace Hosting.