It wouldn't be proper to introduce my new web site without saying a few words about Joomla!. As you may know, Joomla! is an open source content management system (CMS) under the GPL license. It uses dynamic PHP and a MySQL database. I wanted to get to know this software after encountering the difficulty of managing several departmental web sites for Kent State. With Joomla!, all editing is done through the web browser and sections/articles can be modified or created by a number of registered users. 
I am very confident static web pages are the way of the past, and I know I will be using a CMS (Joomla! or not) for any enterprise web site that I work on in the future.
I chose Joomla! because of its great development community and endorsement by the IAKM program at Kent State. I was also impressed at its administrator interface and thousands of extensions. Joomla! was my choice over a similar CMS, called Drupal, for its UI alone. I would encourage anyone in web development to give it a try. I must warn you: the learning curve is very steep. I know probably 30% about the software. I can say after launching this web site that it is well worth learning.
Here are some of the resources I used when getting to know Joomla!:
- Joomla! A User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website by Barrie M. North
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Joomla! Visual QuickStart Guide by Marni Derr and Tanya Symes
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The official documentation from Joomla's website at http://docs.joomla.org/
Of course, I installed some wonderful extensions from Joomla's Extensions Directory:
- JoomlaComment: A commenting plugin. I turned this one off, but it seems to work great.
- Simple Image Gallery Plugin: Used for the thumbnail images on my various galleries.
- Editor - JoomlaFCK: My WYSIWYG editor of choice for articles.
- BIGSHOT Google Analytics: Adds Google Analytics code to every article on the site.
- DOCman: A document management plugin that I use to organize downloadable PDFs.
- Jevents Calendar: Calendaring plugin and module for adding upcoming events and a full view calendar.
