The popular open source content management platform, Joomla, has announced the immediate availability of the latest edition: Joomla 1.6. This newest version is designed to offer enhanced site control and a more polished user experience by delivering a broader array of tools to improve website access and management. Joomla 1.6 also offers a more robust organizational structure to drive content control.

The ease of use and extensibility inherent in the Joomla platform has helped to make this content management solution one of the most popular in the market. At more than 22 million downloads, Joomla is one of the most downloaded open source website software tools used for everything from the management of small personal websites to backend management for large enterprise and high traffic sites.

Ryan Ozimek is president of Open Source Matters, the not-for-profit that was created to provide organization, financial and legal support to the Joomla project. Commenting on the latest release, Ozimek noted that with the new features and capabilities available in Joomla 1.6, it is now the most user-friendly and powerful tools for the development of a strong web presence.

Joomla 1.6 offers such features as a hierarchical design to the access control system, one-click extension updates, semantic XHTML layouts, and a new multi-language functionality to extend its capabilities to other markets. Ozimek added that this latest release is the result of tireless feedback and work contributed by thousands of members of the broad Joomla community throughout the past year.

New capabilities added to the Joomla 1.6 content management platform allow developers and implementers to build extensions with granular control and permissions. This enhancement makes it easier to create more advanced and enterprise-focused applications. The Joomla production leadership team believes this latest content management release will help developers to rapidly build the web of the future.