I am about to begin building the back end of my site. What has been your experience with/ is your opinion about using a CMS such as Joomla to provide a framework for doing so?
Don't.<p>If you're going to use <i>any</i> CMS for a framework for your site, use Drupal or something of the sort, but not Joomla.<p>I've had experience with Joomla for years (and Mambo before the fork.) It's powerful, but to a fault: it's large, bloated, and has too many features that you don't need.