Joomla comes default with three basic content development groups, author, editor, and publisher (as well as administrative groups), but how many times do we really used these groups to their full potential? This idea was sparked after reading Pepi Ronalds' great article, The Cure for Content-Delay Syndrome , on alistapart.com . I must admit, as a Joomla developer, I don't spend much time developing content for my personal sites unless its a blog. With blogs you're not really worried too much about the content as their basic purpose is to speak your mind liberally. You may correct your spelling errors and add some keywords to the post, but generally, you're not really focused on the content apart from the idea that you were trying to express in it. When you are dealing with important content, for instance, business content, sales pitches, and general site consistency, you might think about using an editor. Why?

Editors are responsible for the site as a whole. They deal with standardizing the typography across your site. While Joomla is a template system, meaning all content pages are written with the same style format pressed on to every content page, the content items themselves can have inconsistencies because they can be written by many different authors with many different styles of formatting in their content. If you are using third-party components then you almost certainly have some inconsistencies with their style and your site's style. An editor would be the person to detect and correct those mistakes. They are also responsible for what is written and how your audience will react to the authors words. I'll be the first to point out that my site, Joomla Packages, is probably not the best example of carefully crafted words and phrases to promote loving kindness to all the world. I usually write in the heat of the moment and well...read through Joomla Packages, you'll see why someone needs an editor (LOL). I probably say 50% of the things I shouldn't, but it puts a smile on my face, and some how thats worth it to me. An editor could take my crass site literature and meld it into something more palatable for mass global audiences.

One more task of the editor would be to rework your new content to reflect the SEO keyword strategy of the site. Adding keywords in to your content is bothersome because we don't communicate with keywords. They are words we use of course and they may work in a sentence, but they wouldn't normally be there if not for search engines. So we are basically communicating in a strange dialect to appease the foreigner in our conversation, sénior Google. The editor's job is to basically act as your translator.

How valuable is an editor? Well like anything in a capitalistic world, you need to weigh how much time you spend on the task and then decide if you can get them done cheaper by outsourcing it to someone else. An editor can be very valuable, or they can be a waste of your money and efforts. It all depends on the value of your content.

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