Working with Joomla for BigBlueBargains

A number of sites on the BigBlueNetwork are in desperate need of some tender love, or at the very least, an updated look with fresh content. One such site is BigBlueBargains. The site was previously driven primarily by affiliation with MyCoupons, but most of the links have gone dead. And the site itself looks like something out of the ’90s.

While I’m at it, I’m taking time to revisit the tools to manage the content on this and other sites in the network. Previously I’ve looked at Drupal and even used it for other projects. It’s a great system, but the administrative side is really bare-bones and difficult to decipher.

For BigBlueBargains I’ve been developing an entirely new site with fresh content using the free Joomla content management system (CMS). Joomla is probably the closest competitor to Drupal, but the administrative interface is much easier to use and much more robust.

I need to do some load testing to make sure Joomla will scale to handle the volume of traffic I’m expecting — while co-existing with the other sites on my server. But so far, for someone with limited time to maintain a number of sites, Joomla is looking very promising.

I’m still fleshing out the content, structure and design of the new site, but would love feedback. If you’re interested in taking a sneak peek, leave me a comment and I’ll email the link to you.