CMS Comparison: Wordpress Beats Joomla

When it comes to Content Management Systems, the most popular Content Management Systems that come to mind are Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal. In this article we will focus our attention on the first two – Wordpress and Joomla (simply because I haven’t played around with Drupal yet). I did build a couple of websites in Wordpress and Joomla and both are good, solid CMSs. But when it comes to ease of use and practicality, nothing beats Wordpress in my opinion.
The first thing I noticed was that Wordpress is much easier to use, more intuitive, and less fragile. It can be used by someone who has little knowledge of web design or programming. Whereas in Joomla you have to be more technically skilled to set up your menu items, articles, and parameters.

Next, the Joomla editor used for editing your content is pretty buggy – and by that I mean downright bad!! Joomla cuts out snipplets of code it doesn’t like, it won’t allow you to paste special code (php, javascript) or advanced HTML tags without installing an extra plug-in (called “sourcerer”) and Joomla will insert weird code it thinks belongs there when using the editor in normal mode (not HTML view). I have never seen a worse editor with so many problems than the one Joomla uses. Which leads me to another thing – installing plug-ins and extensions.

The biggest difference in my eyes is the process of installing plug-ins and extensions. In Wordpress, all you have to do is upload the extension to the plug-ins folder and activate it via the admin panel. Done. In Joomla it is a lot more complicated. First, you have to set the user rights so that all necessary folders a writable. Then you have to upload your extension to the temp folder, install it via the admin panel, and activate the extension. Sounds simple, in reality though the install process is quite tricky and some extensions don’t work properly afterwards, so you have to do it again and again. A total pain in the butt!

Another advantage of Wordpress is the drag-and-drop capability. Lets say you want to have some widgets in your sidebar. You just go to the widgets tab in Wordpress and drag the widget you want over into the sidebar. You can easily paste custom code or add a calendar, image rotator, movie-clip, whatever you like. You just drag it into its desired location, save, and that’s it. You can even download a plug-in called “ts-cutom-widgets” which lets you assign widgets to different pages. Sweet!

For the advanced web developer, Wordpress’ use of hooks is far more flexible and allows for easier customization of your template. Whenever you want to move things around or add another piece of content, you just create a new hook in wordpress and hook it into place wherever you want. No editing templates directly, no searching and debugging of tags and layers (like it is in Joomla). And if you use the “Thesis Theme” for Wordpress it is even easier to create hooks and customize your website to your liking. Once you get the hang of it, hooks will save you a ton of time!

Last but not least, the aspect that gets overlooked all too often is the fact that Wordpress comes with the best blogging platform in the world – hands down. The Joomla blog capability doesn’t even come close to Wordpress’ standard. Of course, you could install another plug-in in Joomla that lets you import your wordpress blog, or do an iframe or so. But why would you do that if you can have the real deal right from the start.

For me there is no comparison between Wordpress and Joomla. Wordpress beats Joomla by a mile (or two) because it is so much more user-friendly and just as scalable and functional as Joomla. The Wordpress community is growing steadily, more and more useful extensions are being developed each day, and the system is constantly updated by the support staff. What more do you want?

Of course, sometimes you have to use Joomla if, for example, you want to use a Joomla extension as your main site feature that hasn’t been developed yet for Wordpress. But in any other case I would recommend using Wordpress.

So if you like easy, straight-forward web design, and don’t have a good excuse for using Joomla, then you should use Wordpress as your Content Management System. It will save you a lot of time and frustration in the end!

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