Compass Designs

The second web site in the United Nations organization, www.unric.org,  has been launched using Joomla. In December, the United Nations University Centre was launched. This has been followed in June by the United Nations Regional Information Centre (UNRIC). Along with sites like Porsche and Hyundai, seeing bigger organizations using Joomla underlines its reliablity and flexibility.

Non-Profit Organizations and Joomla 

Some snippets of the press release of the new United Nations Site reads:

(Brussels, United Nations) June 06, 2006 — The United Nations Regional Information Centre (UNRIC) today launched a multi-lingual website to provide official information to all sectors of society, including governments, the media, NGOs, educational institutions and local authorities of Western Europe.

The website, which is powered by the Open Source CMS Joomla!, brings major technological benefits to UNRIC and marks the UN’s first comprehensive multi-lingual venture. The site was officially launched at the UN by the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Mr Shashi Tharoor.

UNRIC’s approach to Joomla! merits attention because of the way the UNRIC technology team had scrutinised and tested. They have benchmarked against other Open Source projects and extremely expensive closed source systems to find that Joomla! is king."

UNRIC’s webmaster Nenad Vasic summarised, indicating Open Source had proved a logical choice. "We chose Joomla! for its flexibility, the ease of use, and the vibrant and knowledgeable community willing to help."

"In addition it is a very stable and secure platform. As an example of its ability to handle complex content, we should mention the translation component for Joomla! CMS called Joom!Fish, which we use extensively to facilitate manual translation of many elements from English into 12 additional languages, including menus and static items. We expect to use Joomla! to be our platform for the foreseeable future."

or further information, please contact:

Nenad Vasic, tel. +32-2-788-8458, e-mail: vasic@unric.org, or Philippe Chabot, tel. +32-2788-8474, e-mail: chabot@unric.org.
www.unric.org

 

Its great to see these sites appearing, in December the United Nations University Centre was launched and in April we launched one of our own client's non-profit the African Conservation Fund. The low entry cost of Joomla makes it ideal for non-profit organizations.

As the 1.5 version is released with more power and flexibility, we will see Joomla making greater gains into the enterprise arena.