WordPress vs Joomla
Are you currently wondering what CMS you should use? For me, this is often an easy choice. My personal favorite is clearly WordPressW. The biggest reason is that WordPress is made from a user and admin point of view. So many tasks get plain and simple with WordPress that mostly are cumbersome and nonetrivial in other CMS like JoomlaW or DrupalW.
Let us look at updating to a new version by comparing WordPress with Joomla. WordPress and Joomla release new updates on a regular basis. Some are critical because they fix security problems in earlier versions or fix bugs. I have tried once to update my Joomla install to a new version. Boy was that a mess, half the plugins wouldnt work anymore. Some of the plugins were only supporting the old verions of Joomla. What ended up happening is that I simply stopped updating my Joomla install – which in general is a really bad idea from a security standpoint.
WordPress on the other hand focuses on backwards compatibility. A blessing in my eyes. This alone is a very big reason for me to prefer WordPress over Joomla.
Another feautre I really started to like is that you are able to install plugins and themes right from your backend. This makes it very save and convenient that you are getting a secure and current version. I am not a big fan of downloading plugins and themes from sites I have never seen before. Unless you look through that code there is no way of knowing what that plugin or theme actually does.
The next reason to prefer WordPress vs Joomla is the great support for search engine optimization (SEO). After all there is no point in having a website if nobody is visiting it.
Another reason to prefer WordPress over Joomla is that most of the plugins for WordPress are free which reflects a lot about the entire community and their spirit. On the other hand you have Joomla where so many plugins (Joomla actually calls them components, modules and plugins, but will stick with WordPress naming) are paid.
Ok, now I have showed and outline plenty of reason why I prefer WordPress. Lets look at some aspects where Joomla excells.
Community sites. Joomla has a lot of great plugins to building a community with all the features to have your users connect and interact. Be sure to check out BuddyPress for WordPress. If it satisfies your needs, I suggest you go with a WordPress – BuddyPress combo.
The number of plugins for Joomla is enormous. This is a blessing and a curse at the same time. For any problem you have there are mostly several plugins that solve it and you are left with the decision which one to chose.
The community is very big. Whatever your problem might be, there is somebody in a forum that probably knows the answer.
Summary
Lets summarize the differences of WordPress vs Joomla and outline their strenghts.
WordPress focuses on the user and admin experience and requires very little maintanance. This gets toped by its SEO functionality and wide varity of free plugins.
Joomla on the other hand focuses on community sites with an astonishingly large number of plugins which often come at some small fee. The community is very big and help is not far away.
Fazit
If you are using for a site that focuses on publishing content like a news site or a blog than I highly suggest WordPress. Should your goal be to create a community site with some fancy functionality, than I think Joomla is a great option with all its features.
Share your experience
Have you used WordPress or Joomla? What where your experience/s with it? Which one do you like more and why?
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