WordPress vs Joomla - Review
By Rudolf Boogerman |
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This is not a pro-contra review. In this article I try to give you some pointers to make it easy to chose between the two popular content management systems. The basic difference between WordPress and Joomla is that Joomla is a portal- or community type site while WordPress is a blog. Both overlap each other in several areas and can be extended beyond their original purpose thanks to the use of plugins. You can find those plugins almost everywhere on the internet. Both have a large user base with a lively community where tips and tricks are shared. Both are free to use and many hosting providers have them as an option in their web tools section. WP has a large community of volunteer developers, Joomla can count on many commercial add-ons by specialized professionals.
This topic is somewhat outside the scope of Miracle Tutorials, but the reason I thought it was important to publish is that it relates to the tutorials series Creating your own video channel by John, since we need to make a decision on a CMS system to work in that series. So, here it is:
To Joomla or not to Joomla
If you want to create a community or a network with a membership area, newsroom, forums, articles, input from external authors etc… then Joomla is a good choice because it is made to be that way. Creating a navigation structure is easy, once you understand how it works and it doesn’t require knowledge of html. You can set articles to expire after a time, activate dates, authorname, breadcrumbs etc.. Thus, Joomla gives you a lot of power in your hands and that is noticeable in the admin section where there are so many options that you get dizzy the first time you go in. You really should get a good book on Joomla if you want to set it up fast. Otherwise you end up fiddling around and getting nowhere for days. A reasonably good starter is “Beginning Joomla” from Dan Rahmel. It guides you by the hand while customizing the site and setting up the naviagation structure. There are other books, but I cannot recommend them since I didn’t read them.
Adapting the look is simple if you are happy with changing some colors and the logo. Beyond that, you will find that Joomla has a complicated structure and even seasoned web developers have to go through a learning curve before they master the layout system, and that approach is different depending on the layout template you chose.
If you do not want to get involved in the gritty work of stylesheets, you can buy professional layout templates for a reasonable price (between $35-$50) from JoomlaShack, for instance. Or you could ask a developer to do it for you, but make sure they have references of Joomla sites or you might end up paying their learning curve and that is what you want to avoid.
Disadvantages of Joomla
The disadvantage of Joomla, and the producers know that, is the way code is generated. Joomla has to use tables to build its layout and that means that Joomla code is non web standard and the god of search engines, Google, is not happy about non web standard code. Yet, it will list your site anyway. There will be a time when this method is phased out and they work hard on it, but it cannot be done right now. No longer a true issue since Ryan commented and proved below that he created a real table-less template, so it can be done. I just haven’t found a truly table-less commercial template for sale yet. I bought several and they still have a couple of tables. But I presume we will see real table-less templates popping up everywhere soon, and then I will be able to remove this issue as a disadvantage. Thanks again for pointing this out, Ryan.
A remaining problem is that the core system is very complex which demands a lot of resources from the server. If the database is not tweaked for better performance and you add a couple of fancy external plugins, chances are that the site breaks down starting from 50,000 visitors a day or more.
If you are born to be very popular on the net, it is important to keep this in mind, therefore best involve a webdeveloper with experience in high traffic sites to tweak the system.
In short:
Joomla’s strenght is in complexity. Deep level navigation, sections in sections, categories etc… It has fixed pages and posts, posts Great for community sites, you can create a regular site with it but I would regard that as overkill.
To WordPress or not to WordPress
WordPress is basically a very user friendly blog system but it can be used as a regular site which you can update without any knowledge of html (the same goes for Joomla). You can create pages and posts, and with plugins, you can add a lot of functionality included standard in Joomla, except that all code is web standard. And because WordPress is web standard, Google really loves it. So, from a marketing standpoint, WordPress is hard to resist.
The interface is easy to understand, you won’t need a book for it, although buying a “WordPress for Dummies” - book will save you some time if you have no experience with blog management at all. Adapting the look requires some knowledge of CSS, the style sheet language. Like with Joomla, if you select a template close to what you want, adapting the colors, logo etc.. is not that complicated but if you do not want to get involved with CSS, and you would like to re-arrange navigation elements as well, you might consider hiring a web developer. Since WordPress has a logical structure, it is easy for a developer to change things around, place ad banners etc…Again, give preference to a specialized developer used to work with WordPress.
It is setup very quickly and you can be listed in Google within 2 days. I haven’t seen any other system doing that so far. A normal site takes up to 2 months to get listed in Google, so this is something to take into account. Anybody can learn enough in 2 hours to create content with WordPress right away, including using categories and sub pages.
WordPress can handle tons of visitors. It will not break down easily.
Disadvantages of WordPress:
For instance, adding or removing post dates, need to be changed in design mode and it requires knowledge of WP scripting. The navigational structure is determined by the layout template you chose. Changing that structure again requires knowledge of the WP scripting language and CSS. With Joomla, you do not run into this problem because menus are controlled via the control panel and attributes like dates, author name etc, can be turned on and off per article or for the whole site in one go. In that sense, Joomla is much more a content management system.
Also, changing the order of categories or pages is rather cumbersome in Wordpress. It involves having to go into all of the categories and change the order by hand. The WP developers are working on it to fix it, but when is unpredictable.
In short:
WordPress is simple, you can see it as a blog or as a regular website. It has fixed pages, posts and categories.
Through the use of plugins you can extend its functionality and let it grow as big and complicated as you want. However, not every plugin is easy to understand, so it might be a good idea to have a specialized web developer in case of emergencies.
What do I need for my video channel?
You can add membership functionality in WordPress but Joomla will handle membership much better as it is really made for things like that. So, let’s say, while presuming you do not want to tinker with scripting:
- if you want members to access your videos on a subscription basis and have members in various levels of permission (depending on their subscription level), Joomla is your best bet.
- If you simply want to show your videos on your site, or you only have 1 type of members and you want things to be simple and clean, WordPress will do nicely.
- If you want to show off different types on videos on your home pages from different sections, more or less like a magazine, again Joomla is better equipped for it.
- If you want to create a video journal, WordPress makes life really easy for you.
If this little list doesn’t do you any good, you can always ask me a question by writing in the comment box below. I will answer as soon as humanly possible to give you some advice.
Don’t panic!
The great thing is, that if you discover that you selected the wrong system in retrospect, you are not lost because it is always possible to adapt the system. Both systems are open source, which means they are adaptable in every direction. Sometimes those changes will be costly, others peanuts. It depends on what you need to add or adapt. AND, there is a third way: Use them next to each other!
Have the best of both worlds if you want to. Install one of the systems in a sub folder, match the layout more or less and there you have a super site with all the bells and whistles you can imagine.
Installation difficult?
Given the fact that these are powerful content managment systems, installation is a dream, but don’t be fooled by this expression, if you do not know what a database is or what FTP means, you better rent web space with a provider that has the system of your preference in its package. Dreamhost has both WP and Joomla available for you with the press of a button. As a free member of Miracle Tutorials, you will get a special extra discount of $48 per year in the form of a unique IP address. In order to get this extra, signup with Miracle Tutorials in order to get the promotion code for Dreamhost.
I’m personally so happy with Dreamhost that I have become an affilate and I can assure you that I only do that with companies I have good experiences with. Read more on Dreamhost in Creating your own video channel - Part 1
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This article has 26 comments.
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September 4th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
[...] WordPress vs Joomla - Review [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 10:20 am
This is exactly the type of review that I’ve been working on writing on my site. I had already written a pro-contra version of this, and realized that doing so is unfair to both systems. Rather, a definition of what each system can and cannot do is what will help someone choose which is best for their site.
Very good article. I’ll be telling others about it.
September 5th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Thanks AnotherGuy! I feel honored by your positive comment because I know you are well acquainted with both systems.
Cheers,
Rudolf+++
September 5th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
[...] WordPress vs Joomla - Review [...]
September 5th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I thought the review was VERY good and very accurate (I have developed nearly 300 Joomla websites wholly or in part) until I got to this:
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This is simply not accurate. There are many Joomla sites that meet or exceed that traffic. See: TGDAILYdotCOM for just one example.
September 6th, 2008 at 1:29 am
Nice review! You state that Joomla! is generating tabled output and for that it is not complying with web standards. This might be true for version 1.0, in version 1.5 we have added a template in the default installation that generates output that is complying to those webstandards. In other words; the designer can choose whatever he wants to output.
Also the comment that Joomla! will break down with 50.000 unique visitors per day is not a proper statement. We know sites that have around 40 million visitors per week, and Joomla! is holding perfectly…of course it needs a pretty massive infrastructure, but that is obvious if you have a high traffic website ;-)
September 8th, 2008 at 8:38 am
Hi all,
First of all, thanks for your comments!
It is true that designers can create tableless templates, I use them myself , but if you go look into the source code of the output, you will see that the Joomla 1.5 core elements are still in tables at this time of writing.
As to performance, I have a little explaining to do here: this article is part of a series on building your own video channel and it is meant for non technical website owners who do not really understand how databases on the internet work. I agree that if you tweak the database of a Joomla installation, it is possible to get 50,000 or more visitors a day, but with a standard install and a couple of fancy external plugins, chances that it breaks down is pretty high. Since both Wilco and Randy make a remark about this issue, and I’m sure they are right from their viewpoint, I have rephrased that section.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
[...] world of Blogs and Content Management systems? Does it all sound a bit daunting and confusing? Then checkout this review by Rudolf Boogerman to help you decide which CMS suits your needs best. Rudolf has done a fantastic [...]
November 20th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I thought you might like to know about the responses we are getting to our new networking sites – one social (No Tall Poppies) and one for financial planning(Smart Poppies).
They have only been put up in the last week or so and we are adding more content to Smart Poppies every couple of days.
They have both been developed on Wordpress (after starting on ireporter as a single site) because Wordpress is very friendly with LinkedIn and that means you can maintain a great network on LI and have your blogs and websites connected with no trouble at all.
The response is growing every day and this is a sample comment:
Hi Lesley,
I was setting up my appointment with my financial planner when I remembered you. In the spirit of keeping the connection alive I thought I’d drop a quick line. How’s the sponsorship of the football (?) club going? You were also putting something together for the 35-55 year olds if I remember rightly. How’s that going?
Hope all is well with you. Just a quick touch base.
Regards,
Keith
Since Keith is in Melbourne, and we are in Perth, it is a great endorsement of the spirit with which the sister sites are being received.
The very best financial planners come with a predefined attribute - that makes them stand out from the crowd. Lesley Dewar is one of those financial planners, as she explains in her post “Put-A-Tiger-In-Your-Financial-Plan”
Times like this, when the markets are in turmoil and customers are seeking reassurance, that you profit the most by being highly visible and having a sound web presence.
Having access to something as simply as Wordpress means that it is very easy for a small business to develop a net presence - that is Google friendly too - if you add some content.
We are not putting up videos (yet) and have been able to link a slide show to Smart Poppies as well, using powerpoint - that was easy too.
Overall, Wordpress - so far - has done everything we need, when we work it in conjunction with LinkedIn; that may not suit everyone.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Thank you for your comment, Lesley. Another thing learned!
Has anyone experience with Joomla and LinkedIn? If so, please let us know.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:31 am
Hi,
Many thanks for the beautiful article. I’m in the process of building a social network using wordpress for its seo friendly structure.
Do you think it will be good idea to build the community site using wordpress and do you know any developers I can contact who can build my site for me?
Regards
Natalie H
December 9th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
[...] WordPress vs Joomla - Review [...]
December 11th, 2008 at 7:18 am
Thank you for this information. :)
January 8th, 2009 at 5:27 am
I think you are confusing a template written in tables with “core output.”
If you select a template written in table-less CSS - then your output will be completely table-less.
crucialclickDOTcom is mine, for example. I wrote the template myself - it’s completely table-less - meaning - the code outputted to the browser (core?) is all without tables.
If the entire website that is visible to a user, including spiders like Google is tableless-div -then what is the issue here?
Also, it’s well known you can get millions of visitors on a joomla site without crashes. That is just flat out incorrect.
I ask that you please update your article to reflect factual information.
January 8th, 2009 at 6:15 am
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for your comment. But you have to realize that I’m discussing out-of-the-box solutions for non technical people, while you see this from your viewpoint as a web developer. I’m sure you agree there is a distinction.
I agree your template is completely table-less and it is the first I encounter, actually. So, you have my compliments and if you develop commercial templates for sale, I’m more then happy to add your url to the Creating your own video channel series, in which I show Joomla and WordPress installation options. And if you know about other commercial templates that are really table-less such as yours, I’d love to hear it.
I therefore have adapted that part, thanks for putting that right.
Regarding traffic: I repeat that there is no way that an out-of-the-box installation of Joomla can handle millions of visitors. Most developers tweak their databases for better performance. A non technical person cannot do that without help.
March 13th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Hi Rudolf,
Ryan is right, there is a built in template in Joomla! version 1.5 which is ja_purity, it is perfect for bloggers and completely tableless. If you don’t belive me have a look at the template ja_purity folder and index.php it’s all css. It is available out of the box for non technical people, in Joomla! admin you just go to templates menu and select it.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
I wish you were right, Phantom, but a look at the source code of my test site with the JA_purity template: http://www.videochanneltest.com/
It will reveal that there are still tables in the code, notwithstanding the fact the template itself does not contain tables.
Ryan wrote to me that his table-less template is custom made, which is of course possible if you are a web developer, no doubt about that. As it happens, web developers are not the audience of this site, therefore this information will only confirm that you need to have web developer skills to setup Joomla without tables.
March 13th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
To make it perfectly clear: I have nothing against either system, be it WordPress or Joomla. Both have their own typical advantages. I use them both successfully.
March 18th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
I too am using Dreamhost. I am researching right now in order to start a membership site. This comparison that you offerd has helped. My question to you is if you have ever heard of or can make any recommendations about a Wordpress Plugin called “Wishlist Member”. I just wanted to get this thing right since I have been burned in the past. Thank You.
March 19th, 2009 at 7:22 am
Hi Jeff,
I do not know Wishlist Member, although I tested several membership plugins. All of them have some quirks, alas.
I’m currently working on a full membership site, (the one that I have now is a primitive password protected page).
I’m using “Members Only”, which protects every page, even if you don’t want to. Therefore, I use a work around: I simply have set up a second Wordpress site in a subfolder and in this way you have a totally independent section in your site with its own database and templates. I hope to have it finished next week, but it is rather busy right now, so I can ‘t work on it one go.
In any case, as far as tests go, this works for me. Hope this helps?
April 17th, 2009 at 1:23 am
Hi. Thanks for this article. Can you please expand upon what you mean by using the two side by side? I am planning a complicated site and debating between WordPress and Joomla- will have social forum, ecommerce, paid databases.. would using both make sense?
April 20th, 2009 at 9:22 am
What I mean is that you can have Joomla as your main site and for instance WordPress in a sub folder. If you make sure the layout looks more or less the same, nobody will even notice they entered into another CMS. That way, you can have the advantages of both systems and your options to expand the site are limitless because if a forum doesn’t work properly on WordPress, no problem, you use one for Joomla and the other way around. As with all systems, they have their limitations and by using both, you are not limited in one direction.
Especially in your case, where you want to have a full fledged community site, this is definitely a good idea.
May 17th, 2009 at 10:33 am
I am planing for a site that that could handle 50 k visitors per day and the site could have a large database with 1 million posts, this is my foresight for my site .
Which would be better for me Wordpress or Joomla
May 17th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Hi Ali,
Interesting question! If you are positive that you are going to attract that kind of traffic and you are planning such a large database, the cms doesn’t really matter anymore because you will need a seasoned web developer to tweak the database in any case. Most databases are fine with 4,000-10,000 records or so. Beyond that, things get a bit hairy with the standard settings.
So, what I would do in your case is to talk with a web company or a developer used to maintain big community sites and ask for good references before you decide to work with them.
You may also want to consider a dedicated server, because with shared hosting, your site will get sluggish. To clarify: shared hosting means that you are with thousands of other sites on the same server, while if you have a dedicated server, you actually have a server for yourself, which only contains the sites you own. The result is that performance is much better and you have total control over the software on that server. The downside is that you need somebody who knows how to run a server.
However, if you are on a tight budget, getting there will take time. And if you have to start out on your own without assistance, you might want to begin with Wordpress, because it gets you quickly into Google and as long as you stay below 10,000 posts, nothing dramatic is going to happen. Still, it depends what your requirements are, other then a large database, before you truly can decide whether is will be joomla or WP. If you want a community site, you might want to work with Joomla instead.
I hope this is useful?
June 16th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Thanks for the basic, helpful information. It was just what I was looking for!
June 16th, 2009 at 2:57 pm
Thanks, John :-)