Host Joomla without installing anything
The content manager that can show a page to some people and not to others, and run two languages, without installing a single extension to do it.
Starting at €8.99/month
Introduction
Joomla installed, updated and backed up by us, on a machine in France. A complete content manager, valued for its fine-grained permissions and native multilingual support. A solid alternative to WordPress for structured sites. You install nothing and configure no server: the application is online a few minutes after you order, under your own name.
The plan that suits it is App Confort at €8.99/month incl. VAT — 4 GB of memory. Joomla runs on PHP over MySQL, and every page display involves a little work: working out which access level the visitor belongs to, choosing the modules to show for this menu item, applying the current language. Add the indexing of the built-in search, which revisits changed content, and the scheduled tasks the core now runs itself. The 4 GB give the headroom that keeps all of this invisible to the visitor.
People come here from WordPress, often for a precise reason: they need a restricted part of the site, or a second language, and would rather not entrust it to a plugin. Joomla keeps both in the core. User groups nest, access levels apply to any item — an article, a menu, a module — and multilingual support links a page to its translation with no extra tool. Extensions, for their part, install from the admin, by uploading an archive or giving an address, which keeps the working rhythm simple.
What managed hosting changes
Access levels that apply to everything
You define nested user groups, then access levels you assign to an article, a category, a menu item or a module. A page becomes visible to members and invisible to the public with no extension needed, and the menu itself disappears for those without the right.
Multilingual support in the core
You declare the content languages, associate each article with its translation, and a switcher module appears. The public interface and the admin exist in dozens of languages. This is the feature that often settles the choice of Joomla, because it is native rather than bolted on.
Modules placed page by page
A module — a panel, a form, a list of articles — sits in a template position and is limited to the menu items you choose. The home page, the news section and the members area therefore show different blocks, without duplicating the template.
Custom fields, search and a scheduler
The core lets you add your own fields to articles, contacts and users, ships a built-in indexed search, a task scheduler, consent and personal-data export tools, and two-factor authentication. That is a lot of things for which nothing gets installed.
Why hand it over rather than install it
A site with a members area
Meeting minutes, negotiated rates and internal documents are only visible once signed in, and the rest of the site is public. Two access levels are enough, and no membership plugin was added to get there.
A site in English and French
Every page has its associated translation, the visitor switches with one click, and content that exists in only one language does not appear in the other. All of it is set in the core, which avoids depending on a plugin of uncertain longevity.
A federation with several editors
Each branch publishes in its own category, a coordinator reviews, and nobody can touch anyone else's section. Nested groups describe exactly that hierarchy.
A home page unlike the rest
A large visual and three panels on the home page, a navigation sidebar in the documentation, nothing at all on the legal pages. Assigning modules per menu item settles this without touching template code.
A rebuilt site that must keep its addresses
The core redirect component records the addresses that answer with an error and lets you redirect them one by one. On a redesigned site, that is the tool that stops you losing the ranking you had.
Hosted in France
In our own infrastructure in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, which we operate ourselves. A members area holds names, addresses and sometimes accounting documents: they do not leave the country.
Frequently asked questions
Migration extensions exist: you give them access to the WordPress database or its export, and they recreate the articles, categories, images and authors in Joomla. Two points then deserve attention. Layouts built with a block builder do not survive: the text arrives, the presentation has to be redone. And the addresses change: that is why you should use the core redirect component, which records the errors visitors hit and lets you point each old address at the new one.
From the admin, by uploading an archive or pasting an installation address: no command line, no dependency manager. Updates to extensions and to Joomla itself are announced on the dashboard and applied the same way. The official directory lists several thousand extensions, some of them paid — check the date of the last update before adopting one, it is the best indicator of its longevity.
The ecosystem is markedly smaller than WordPress's: fewer ready-made templates, fewer tutorials, and fewer agencies that practise it, which matters the day you need a contractor. Major version upgrades left a bad memory in earlier generations; recent ones go smoothly, but they require your extensions to be compatible, so a little planning. And the admin is dense: complete rather than immediate, and a few hours of familiarisation should be expected.
App Confort, at €8.99/month incl. VAT. It provides 4 GB of memory where the application asks for 1.5 GB at minimum: the headroom serves the system, not the decor. You can change plan later without reinstalling.
Yes. Joomla is free software: we host it, we do not own it. The site lives in a MySQL database and a folder of files, both exportable, and the core privacy tools additionally let you extract or erase the data of a user who asks.