Features Overview
Joomla is much more than a powerful Content Management System. Listed below are some of the features Joomla offers that showcase it's true accessability to the average user.

User Management
Joomla has a registration system that allows users to customize their personal options. Joomla offers nine different user groups that have various types of permissions where you can customize, edit, publish and administrate.

Authentication is an important part of user management and Joomla supports multiple protocols, including LDAP, OpenID, and even Gmail. This allows users to use their existing account information and streamline the registration process.

Media Manager
The Media Manager is an easy tool for managing media files or folders. You can configure the MIME type settings to handle any type of file. The Media Manager is also integrated into the Article Editor tool so that you can grab images or other files at any time.

Language Manager
There is international support for many world languages and UTF-8 encoding. If you need your web site in one language and the administrator panel in another, do not fret because multiple languages are possible.

Banner Management
It's easy to set up banners on your web site using the Banner Manager. You start by creating a client profile and then you can add campaigns, impression numbers, special URLs and as many banners as you may need.

Contact Management
The Contact Manager helps your users find the right person and their corresponding contact information. It also supports multiple contact forms going to specific individuals as well as groups.

Polls
Creating polls with multiple options is a fast and easy way to find out more about your users.

Search
This function helps navigate users to the most popular search items and provides the admin with search statistics.

Web Link Management
This function provides link resources for site users and makes it simple to sort them into categories and even count every click.

Content Management
Joomla's simplified three-tiered system of articles makes organizing your content a snap. You can organize your content any way you want but also have the option of that same information appearing differently to your users. Your users can rate articles, e-mail them to a friend, or automatically save a PDF (with UTF-8 support for all languages). Administrators can archive content for safekeeping, hiding it from site visitors.

Creating content is simple with the WYSIWYG editor, giving even novice users the ability to combine text or images in an attractive way. Once you've created your articles, there are a number of pre-installed modules to show the most popular articles, latest new items, newsflashes, related articles, and more.

Syndication and Newsfeed Management
With Joomla, it's easy to syndicate your site content, allowing your users to subscribe to new content in their favorite RSS reader. It's equally as easy to integrate RSS feeds from other sources and aggregate them all on your site.

Menu Manager
The Menu Manager allows you to create as many menus and menu items as you need. You can structure your menu hierarchy (and nested menu items) completely independent of your content structure. You can put one menu in multiple places, use any style you want, use rollovers, dropdown, flyouts or any other navigation system you can think of. Also automatic breadcrumbs are generated to help navigate your site users.

Template Management
Templates in Joomla are a powerful way to make your site look exactly the way you want. You can use either a single template for the entire site or a separate template for each site section. The level of visual control goes a step further with powerful template overrides, allowing you to customize each part of your pages.

Integrated Help System
Joomla has a built-in help section to assist users with finding what they need. It offers a glossary that explains the terms in plain English, a version checker that makes sure you're using the latest version, a system information tool that helps you troubleshoot and, if all else fails, links to many online resources for additional help and support.

System Features
Speedy page loads are possible with page caching, granular-level module caching, and GZIP page compression.

If your system administrator needs to troubleshoot an issue, debugging mode and error reporting are available.

The FTP Layer allows file operations (like installing extensions) without having to make all the folders and files writable, making your site administrator's life easier and increasing the security of your site.

Administrators quickly and efficiently communicate with users through private messaging or all site users at once via the mass mailing system.

Web Services
With web services, you can use Remote Procedure Calls (via HTTP and XML). You can also integrate XML-RPC services with the Blogger and Joomla APIs.

Powerful Extensions
These are just some of the basic features of Joomla. The real power is in the way you customize Joomla. Visit the Joomla Extensions Directory to see thousands of ways to enhance Joomla to suit your needs.

Note: This list of features is not exhaustive and may be changed without notification.