Joomla is a very famous free CMS( content management system) today and I’ve always wondered is it really better than WordPress like some people say!
I tried to search online for comparisons and to be honest couldn’t find a satisfying answer till I recently decided to give it a try and see for myself, and below I will try to explain the areas where Joomla surpasses WordPress and where it fails short.
Joomla beats WordPress in the following situations:
- Sites with huge number of articles as it allows sorting , filtering and ordering articles in many ways to get what you’re looking for in seconds, and allows categorizing them into sections and categories to make managing them real easy.
Managing Articles in Joomla - Sites that include many authors that contribute to it’s content and requires a delicate balance between their roles with multiple roles and administrators.
- Very Flexible Menus: You can have any article appear in any menu anywhere on the site and control who sees which items in each menu, so registered users see menus differently from visitors.( this is very powerful in my opinion.)
Although I have to admit that it takes time to get used to using menus in Joomla especially for someone with a WordPress background like me! - Good built-in protection that prevents users and authors from mistakenly hurting the site. In WordPress it’s very easy to ruin everything from the back-end by mistake!
- Built-in messaging center to allow communication between authors, administrators, etc.. without the need to leaving the back-end.
Built-in messaging center - Modules are quite powerful( they are the Joomla equivalent to WordPress widgets). They almost tie in this area.
Of course, if you’re interested you can always learn more about Joomla here.
Whereas for reasons I love and use WordPress, please, refer to my article, Why WordPress.
Well, that’s about all I could find out myself, so please, share with us what you think and any points I might have missed here.
What about the bugs? it’s very easy search google and destroy some joomla powered sites. And the speed, joomla is very slow in front wordpress.
But, by the way, you are comparing a CMS with a BLOG system, they seems to do the same, but they don’t.
In my opinion, joomla is a very powerfull tool, but in non advanced hands it’s a bomb in your server
Joomla has certainly sorted itself out recently- it was a clunky beast when I last worked with it but it seems much slicker and easier to work with. I don’t find it as fast as I’d like, but it’s certainly not something to dismiss.
However with WP3.0, most of these points can be put aside- Custom Post Types have made #1 a lot better (although admittedly not quite to Joomla’s level) and it now has Author archives (2) and Custom menus (3)- when combined with is_user_logged_in().
You’d have to be mess around with a lot of settings to break WordPress completely, imo. Besides messing with the manual settings options, there’s not a lot you can do.
Still got to give props to the Joomla module community, though. It’s got people as dedicated to it as the WordPress plugin makers, that’s for sure.
I used to be a Joomla user, until I was upgrading some plugin (not sure anymore about the correct term, is it a module):
The instructions were as follows:
‘Please write down all settings, deinstall the plugin, install the newer one, and configure like you did before.’
While cleaning up settings from the database when removing such a module is great, writing down settings to upgrade one is plain silly.
That was the moment I switched to WordPress, and never regret the move.
I think is the first post I ever read and a WordPress user tries to defend Joomla. Joomla is indeed better at managing a large number of articles, WordPress has a plugin Page Tree which allows an overview of the pages, but still is not that easy with sorting or finding pages easily when you have over 100 let’s say. I still find WordPress better for most of the websites, including the large ones. Clients love it too!
Yep. And Joomla is soooo much hackable 🙂
There is about 20 vulnerabilities for current release of Joomla and lot of non-convered.
It is not safe platform for publishing, only fool would use it in production!
In this case – WP wins 😉
Ad.1. WP sites with huge number of articles are easy to sort and filter. One of my sites has over 6000 articles and it’s really easy to find all needed information. Good information architecture is key to success.
Ad.2. Install “Role Manager” plugin and you’ll get excellent tool for balancing user’s privileges.
Ad.3. Menus in Joomla are flexible but also not very intuitive. And with a little bit of experience you may create sth like that in WP.
Ad.4. Built-in protection is good but aware users are better. Older versions of Joomla has big flaw – badly closed article could be opened only by original author. So you couldn’t correct mistypes or wrongly linked sites.
Ad.5. With all tools for communication I see inside IM system as useless and as nothing more than database junk. I have site with 40+ authors and this site exists over 5 years. Just imagine how much junk in such PMs could be stored.
Ad.6. Modules has a lot of design flaws, especially when you would like to use them with small variations. Personally I see The Loop as much more powerful tool.
Joomla is also less secure and consumes more server resources. It’s pretty good for beginners to learn managing of CMS powered site but is quite poor as an advanced tool for large sites. At least from my own point of view 😉
Well, I have to admit that I didn’t expect this article to cause all that debate that I can see in the comments above.
Still I am happy with it as it opened my eyes on things I didn’t know earlier about Joomla and especially about it’s security and vulnerability issues.
I guess it would be fair enough to write a second article on this topic after WordPress 3.0 is officially released to see how the battle changes then.
Thanks for every one who commented.
elmalak
I use both Joomla and WordPress regularly and my preference usually depends on the type of site I’m building.
If the site needs some serious social community functionality then you really can’t beat Joomla, integrated with Community Builder and Kunena Forums.
If I’m just building a simple 5 to 10 page site then I’ll usually lean towards WordPress.
The first CMS I ever worked with was Joomla so I know it very well and I know my capabilities with it. As for WordPress, I just started using it about a year ago and I think it’s got a long ways to go before being anywhere near the equivalent of Joomla. Although, the more I play with WordPress the more my love for it grows. Especially with resources like css-tricks.com and digwp.com provided by Chris Coyier. I also prefer working with the WordPress file structure over Joomla’s.
Two completely different content management systems that absolutely must be compared when starting a new project.
Great post and thanks for taking the time to get your hands dirty with Joomla.
It’s good that you explored a lot, but mind to share a bit more? As I’m also a WordPress guy, but I find Joomla a pain, the only thing I like about it is the modules… I can find any module that work the way I want exactly, easily…
WordPress is simple and very powerfull.
You ought to really think about expanding this site into a dominant authority in this field. You obviously have a concrete knowledge of the topics all of us are searching for on this website anyways and you could maybe even make a dollar or three from some advertising. I would explore following recent headlines and increasing the amount of posts you put up and I guarantee you’d start seeing some good traffic soon. Just a thought, good luck regardless!
I still think wordpress rocks, they should include sorting features
Shovan
hi, i’m from Indonesia. Look at joomlaid.org, that’s very large community. but, where’s the WP community in my country?
but, look at from other side. Majority of Joomla Site in my country is development by a “newbie”, very newbie. And that’s Joomla reality. For them, Joomla most easy absolutely.
where’s the WP site?
oh, i’ve found WP site in my country is very highly powerfull with great design. But it’s build by a professional developer. And yes, that’s them job in day.
and that the reality, Joomla is easy for newbie, and WP is really powerful but only for who want to know about WP.
sorry about my english.
thanks.
You know what is the best CMS?
The one that you use everyday, for your website’s.
Thank for visiting my blog.
To me the best CMS is definitely WordPress,no doubt about that.
Give it a try and you won’t regret it.
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