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When it came time to paint my daughter's nursery to get ready for her arrival, we had two choices: hire a professional painter, or paint it myself. We've used professional painters in the past, and they have always done a good job.

With a small room like a nursery, you would expect a professional painter to be in and out with a nicely-painted wall in a couple of days, assuming they are available right away. We got a quote from a pro, and he said he would do it for $150. That's not a bad price for the service, but it was more than we wanted to spend at the time. Since this was a small, one-off project, I decided to go ahead and try to tackle it myself and save the $150.

I went to the local paint store and bought all of the supplies I needed to get started, and then proceeded to put off the project for a couple of weeks (Maybe months, I don't remember. You'll have to ask my wife about that.) as other, more pressing things got in the way of me actually painting. Once I was finally able to start painting, I had to find spare time in the evenings and on weekends to get the work done, and I never really had the time to get it all done in one or two efforts. From the time that I started painting to the time that I finished, it took about two or three weeks. Overall, the paint job looks pretty good if I do say so myself, but there are some nagging imperfections that, quite frankly, I will never get around to fixing because I just simply don't have the time.

What's the point?

The point of this story is, painting my daughter's nursery is a classic DIY project. The tools and materials are readily available to anyone, and with enough time and effort, you can get some paint on your walls. As I consider the project, though, I know without a doubt that a professional would have done the job better and in a much more timely manner. But hey, I saved $150!

What does this have to do with Joomla?

There is a perception about Joomla that it is a DIY CMS, whereas other CMSes are geared more toward professional developers. Honestly, I can't argue with that perception, and I think it is one of Joomla's biggest strengths. It's what first attracted me to Mambo (Joomla's predecessor) back in 2003. The user interface is easy to use, and with tools like Fantastico, it's easy for beginners to install Joomla on most web hosts. (Side note: We never use Fantastico, but it's a great tool for beginners.)

The reality is, yes, Joomla is a DIY CMS. The tools you need to design and build a website with Joomla are readily available to anyone: Joomla itself, hundreds of high quality templates, thousands of extensions, and loads of documentation, books, tutorials, etc. I truly believe anyone can build a website with Joomla without hiring a professional web developer, and I believe that many can do a decent job of it. That's a huge advantage for Joomla and one of the main reasons that Joomla is one of the top three open source CMSes on the market.

However, as with painting a room in your house, there are trade-offs to doing it yourself versus hiring a professional. When embarking upon a web development project, there are a few things you need to consider: price, quality and timing.

Price

It's cheaper, in terms of dollars spent, to build a site yourself instead of hiring a professional to do it for you. That's just common sense. If price (dollars spent) is your number one consideration, then do it yourself. However, there's more to price than just the dollars you spend to build your website. That's why you need to consider quality and timing.

Quality

A professional web developer (strong emphasis on the word professional) can build a better website than the average person. Professional web developers have spent years studying, training, and learning the ins and outs of web development, so they know it and can do it better than those who have not devoted themselves to becoming a great web developer. If you want a great website that looks and performs the best it can, you should hire a professional developer. If your business depends on the quality of your website, you should hire a professional. The cost of a poorly-conceived, poorly built website far exceeds the money you could save by doing it yourself.

Timing

A professional web develoepr can build a website faster than the average person. Because of our years of training and experience, we can navigate the process of building a website much more efficiently than the average person. If you choose to build a site yourself, you are taking on a project that could take you weeks or months longer than if you would just hire a professional. Not only that, but there are opportunity costs associated with doing it yourslef. The time you spend designing and building your website could be time spent building your business, making contacts, developing your product, you name it. The caveat to this is that some web projects take longer than others, no matter how efficient the developer is. Moving too quickly through a complex project could mean sacrificing quality.

If you are serious about your business or organization, Joomla is a great platform for building your website. If you really want to make your website shine, hiring a professional web developer is the only way to go.