i've been hearing seminars for it. thought it might be something useful.
anyone know what it is?

its a content management system

What is the hype around this joomla that makes it better that other content management system out there?

I am seeing more and more hosting features which support this.

I use it and love it!

Could you elaborate what do you love about joomla?

Joomla is a content management system (CMS) I beleive its the same thing as Mambo - another content management system

The point of using content management systems is so that non web developers can make updates and changes to their sites without the help of a web designer once created.

Many Sites use CMS - News Sites, Sports Sites, Non profits. Just about any site that constantly needs to be updated.

If you are a web designer - CMS's are good if you have no desire of making updates for clients every time their sites need changes.

Personally - I was thinking of creating a bunch of Mambo / Joomla based sites for a nich. Create a few designs within that nich and then sell them over and over - should be easy money

Joomla has many different plugins to expand it out from being a simple CMS. Most of these plugins are free. shopping carts, community builders, galleries, forums, polls, tests, quizzes, file repositories, membership management, adsense, amazon, paypal, and had a good number of language packs so you can make your non US visitors feel welcome too.

That is just to name a few.

Joomla has, I think, everything wordpress does, plus a bunch more.

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up untill about two years ago i used to develop my sites using html/css/php and mysql and it would take me a good few days to get my site to where i want it - now i dont use anything but joomla

now with joomla, if your hosting supports it, you can install it at the click of a button onto your hosting in less than 20 seconds - and you can have a great looking site up and running in less than 30 minutes - i had a brand new site with full ecommerce facilities in about 45 minutes.

personally it took me a little while to figure out how to customize it to suit my own needs - and i think this is where a lot of people come un-stuck, i even gave up and came back round to it after about 4 months! LOL Im glad i did thats all i can say!

It is extremely flexible with 1000's of extra components and modules that you can simply install - since i would say im at an intermediate to advanced level when it comes to joomla if i cant find a component or customize an existing one i just go ahead and develop one myself, it appears to have very few limits!

Ukescuba,
I'm getting pretty familiar w/joomla myself, and I'm ready to make the jump into making my own modules & components, but I'm having trouble finding good tutorial sources to teach me. Could you share good sites for this

OP,
My only complaint w/joomla is that some of those "great" plug & play components & modules come with absolutely NO documentation, and until you get a good ways up the learning curve, it can be an exercise in frustration trying to install & tweak them. Also, for joomla itself, and the components & modules themselves, you MUST stay on top of the security updates.

www.joomlaautomator.com for further info about Joomla and its power... They rank quite well in the serps and dont get banned!

joomla is quite a robust application and has been developed a lot further since the spin off from mambo. joomla has acquired quite a following compared to mambo. template monster is now offering joomla templates. it is quite easy to customize from a developer's perspective. i stopped building client sites on them because it was not the most user friendly cms from a non-developers perspective...the admin panel was a little overwhelming for my clients so i ended up having to do maintenance and updates for them, which defeated the purpose of using a cms.

StillSmiling if you where like me and basically cut up your own photoshop creations then this is the tutorial for you:
http://www.absalom.biz/tutorials/Mam..._Tutorial.html

its based on mambo but is still relative to joomla also check out http://www.jlleblanc.com/ the guy wrote a book on joomla on writing joomla extension which i found very helpful, he has some pointers on his site too and you can catch him on the joomla forums too! HTH

sageman, i dont really show the backend to my clients, most clients just use front page login to edit content its much simpler

the new 1.5 admin backend appears to be much simpler though