Joomla is free, like free beer, like free puppies. Many of Joomla's extensions are free. You can also find a ton of free templates.

That is a wonderful, amazing thing, that you can get software that, ten years ago, would have cost well over $100,o00 -- and it's all for free.

There are plenty of people downloading Joomla and building sites with it. That's pretty much what we do at 4Web, download Joomla and customize it for our clients.

I have been designing and developing websites for 10 years now, but my company, 4Web Inc., has only been around for 2 years. (Prior to that, I ran a freelance company, Focused Consulting LLC.)

Back in 4Web's infancy, my colleagues attended the very first CMS Expo in May 2008.  (I was at Adobe headquarters for an Adobe User Group Manager summit and could not attend.) Back then it was a Joomla conference mostly. The networking was great, though, and my colleagues got to meet a lot of people.

That lead to Bill, Sam, and I being asked to speak in December 2008, when the conference was held in Denver. That was my first Expo, and the networking was really wonderful. It was so great to meet fellow Joomla developers and those interested in Joomla. I had just released my first Lynda.com videos as well, which coincided with the conference, so it was a very exciting time.

Congrats to Kathy and Pam, who have been organizing New Hampshire's first Joomla user group. This will be based in the seacoast area of NH, covering Portsmouth, Durham, Exeter, and other towns in the vicinity.  The first meeting will be held on Feb 11, 2009, from 5-7 PM at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.  More information is on their (temporary) site, http://joomlanh.ning.com.

Jealous? Wish you had a Joomla user group in your town? Why not get one started yourself?  Don't wait for someone else to do it!

Read part 1 here.

Group Website

Your group needs a website. Spring for a URL. They're only $8.95 at GoDaddy.

I am the manager of the Joomla! User Group New England. We had our first meeting in March 2008, and we've grown from a mailing list of 2 (Sam and me) to almost 100 people in our first year.

So, how did we do it? 

The Mechanics