Building and developing a school website using Joomla is an easy exercise and one which is most enjoyable.  The fun of imagining what's going on with all the old classmates and the enjoyment of being part of the technology which will allow people who may have lost touch with each other over the years to get in contact again is a big part of volunteering to be the person who actually does the work.

Often school administrators do not have the resources to accomplish the work involved in building a school website using old fashioned methods.  The time involved in writing programs, determining format and accessing needed files and records amounted to an insurmountable effort.  Even if some volunteer had the knowledge and skills to do all the desktop publishing, site management and development and data management involved, they might not have the time to do the job right.  This means that often a school web site could appear very amateurish and not representative of the talent needed to have a site the alumni could be proud of. 

Since web site open source publishing is available. the modules that can be selected to plug into the website are professional quality.  They represent millions of hours of work to date in designing and programming module which other people will find helpful.  The great part about using open source is that it's free to use.  This means that schools and individuals don't have to use pinched resources in order to pay for a professional quality site.  Alumni will be happy to visit the site and add to the content. 

Because the modules available to do the various tasks associated with publishing a website are open to the public, you need only download the portions which you need. This means that components of the website can be selected and combined with other desired features in the morning and have parts if not all of the website up and running in the afternoon. 

There's no time wasted in test drives of components; that has already been done.  You simply make your selection, download the module and it's ready to use immediately.

Once the web site is set up and running, if others want to add modules or components to the web site, it's easy to do.  You don't need to worry about conflict between one module and the next.  They are designed individually, but they are also part of a unified whole, thanks to the dream of the Joomla staff.