Will Joomla! work for building Internet Marketing Sites?  

According to their site at joomla.org "Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable. "

Well, let's see. So far, we have loaded Joomla, installed some components and modules, adjusted content, and generally tried to understand the functions of all the various doggone buttons you can push in this thing! Read the entire article for some interesting flubs, hacks and info on how YOU can actually make this premier CMS (that's Content Management System) work for you.

I just now figured out how to make a blog with special blog content that I intend to be in the blog! Simply create a section, then a category, then content connected to that category. Previously, the blog section pulled content from all the sections and put it on a page; two columns with 6 blog items pulled from the sections.

Confused?

Well, I was for a while but I'm getting the hang of it now. The "warning" that Joomla is powerful but has a pretty steep learning curve is true. But once you get the hang of it, it is wonderful. The relationship between sections, categories, and content is exteremely important. Then learning how to use the menu system within that context is what makes or breaks the organization of the site.
I did it. And if I did, you can to. (I'm still learning - this IS powerful stuff)

Here are some things we have done so far...

Installed JCE editor
This has more functions than the standard TinyMCE editor. But they both clean up (read: BREAK) html code. Even as I write this I realize I have no fancy functions available since I turned off JCE because it was altering some afiliate links. This means I end up having to turn it on and off depending on what I want to "publish." This is the main pain of using the editors. To throw up some content, JCE is a whiz: use text editing, insert links, anchors, and all kinds of stuff. But if it "cleans up" some of your html, you have to turn it off and use an html editor (eg. frontpage since I'm terrible at html editing), then copy and paste back into Joomla. What a Pain in the!

Installed Open SEF
SEF stands for Search Engine Friendly. As in URLs. So insted of having links that look like index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=13&Itemid=41  you get a link that looks like this:
http://www.zwebber.com/essential-tools/software/   Sweet!
Now when I name a section or category or content item, it automatically makes the url search engine friendly.

Subscribed to Rocket Themes
Thats where we got this nifty template. It has a learning curve of it's own but I think it was worth it. they have some awesome templates. (You know how I feel about it because I hate using the word "awesome.")