Comparing WordPress and Joomla
Over the past few weeks, I have been telling people about being able to use WordPress to get their site up and serve as the CMS running behind, and most of them will ask me to compare WordPress and Joomla.
I surfed on and found an superb article comparing WordPress to Joomla. The article in Mamboat emphasises more on the extendability and use of both systems. Eventually, Joomla may outperform WordPress as a CMS, but as a personal publishing platform, WordPress rules! Here’s what the author, Tash said:
… to compare these two software as a personal publishing system, I would say that Wordpress built around writing content and publishing that content. Joomla from the beginning built around presentation of content – reflecting absolute meaning for CMS – Content Management System. Managing content in some nice way first and only then writing and publishing it.
I’ve personally tried both, and what I feel is that Joomla seems like a very complete system, like it comes out of the box able to build your menus, your weblinks, your “contact us” form, polls and everything, your content can be static or dynamic, and its great to use Joomla if you are familiar with all the great features. In addition to that, you can also extend Joomla with different components, mambot and modules. The downside is – for the Joomla newbie, its tough to pick up. I had to download a user guide and read it to understand how it works!
WordPress comes out of the box as a clean blogging platform, and getting started with publishing your blog posts is really intuitive. WordPress is extendable using plug-ins, and customizable using themes – and you can find a truckload of them from WordPress.org. However, again, for the newbie to start customizing it takes time. You don’t have a navigation menu at the top out of the box, even though its easy to find a theme that does that in the WordPress site.
My personal feel to this is – if you are going to be the person customizing and extending the system and then using it, I guess its easier to start with WordPress, because by the time you’ve learnt about the templates and the template tags, you are already ready to customize WordPress into whatever you want out of it. However, if you’ve got an expert to create and build the CMS base for you, and you are only the person managing the content, I still feel that Joomla does a better job.
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Tan Kian Ann is blog marketer based in Singapore. He now works with individuals and small businesses reach out to the world using blogs. 
March 2nd, 2007 at 8:04 am
Visit muztagh
I absolutely agree with the last post. You cannot begin to compare Joomla/Mambo and WordPress. Joomla is built to be much much more than just a blogging system! I’ve so far built about 6 different types of websites using Joomla. My sites now range from portals to a simple informational sites.
March 2nd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Muztagh. By the way, I’m not too sure about this, but is search engine optimization easy for Joomla? When I tried it Joomla the other time, it was all messy because I couldn’t seem to control much what each other components created.
March 3rd, 2007 at 3:42 am
Visit muztagh
The beginning process of Joomla is little more difficult compare to wordpress, but once you have learned it you will love it. The best thing about Joomla is you can treat each post(or page) individually so it will not look like template created similiar pages. There are many components and modules which can help you to make your pages more search engine friendly (such as search engine friendly URL creater).
March 3rd, 2007 at 4:46 am
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Muztagh! Heh, I guess we all would take time to learn a new system… Hopefully one day I have the time to really try out optimizing a Joomla installation!
March 7th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Visit Joomla Singapore
Kian Ann / Muztagh,
Do keep a look out for Joomla Singapore User Group.
We hope that with this new local group. Joomla Users in Singapore will have a new channel of support and knowledge base on information to spearhead the usage
and development of one of the World’s Award Wining CMS here to our shores.
Cheers..
August 7th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
Visit Dodski
What Muztagh said was true, when using wordpress, every pages have the same header and it make it look like a template. And in Joomla you can also change the header so it won’t look like a template. In Wordpress there is a way to make a random header image or an image set only for the page to view, the way is you need to learn PHP for you to able to change things in Wordpress template so it won’t look like a template.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:57 am
Visit Kian Ann
Thanks Dodski,
Actually once you know PHP, it is all about diving down to the code level and then making the changes – but that is where the tough part begins.
June 10th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Visit Diana
I have used WordPress for numerous client sites and it really does a great job. It is so much more than a blogging platform now and you can find plugins for every type of functionality imaginable. You can also create different layouts and looks for each page on your site by creating “page templates” within your theme that will then show up in a drop down menu when creating a new page.
I lost a few hours of my life trying to use joomla. I couldn’t even figure out how to add a new page and make it show up. So I have been very reluctant to consider it for clients who are less tech-savvy than I am.
June 22nd, 2008 at 2:24 am
Visit Directory submission service
Content is king on the web because content is information. People love information and search engines want to make people happy. Feed the search engines good content and the search engines will bring you people, just like one big happy family. It’s easy-sort of.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Visit Marketing Geek Self help marketing podcast for new technology communication. » Blog Archive » Marketing Geek Show#57 CMS
[...] WordPress vs Joomla and a discussion on which one may be right for you as a choice of content management. A good article here at blogopreneur. [...]
November 11th, 2008 at 7:02 am
Visit Michelle Rahn
I have used both but my experience was not extensive. I created a Joomla site (BestDisneySites dot com) because I wanted to create a free Directory, and Joomla had the free extension to do that. I didn’t check to see if Wordpress had plug-ins for that but I thought not. I can tell you setting up the Joomla site was not as easy as setting up a Wordpress blog. I felt like I was in the cockpit of an airliner. It’s hard to figure out all the dials! But once you slog through the manuals, it gets easier.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:18 am
Visit Kian Ann
Hahah.. Yes, Michelle, the learning curve for Joomla is not exactly for the faint hearted. Somehow I just feel the way Joomla sees “content” is weird.
November 22nd, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Visit Arman Temel
“Joomla or Wordpress ? which is better?” Nowadays these questions make me crazy
Wordpress is more easy to use but not designed for everything,The biggest problem of joomla is finding theme, There are thousand free and beauty themes for wordpress,wordpress indexes from google easier than joomla.But joomla is unlimeted you can do what you want! The last centences makes joomla bigger,
February 13th, 2009 at 6:22 am
Visit Soma.
Soma….
Soma radio. Soma cube. Soma side effects. Soma. Soma online next day….
February 27th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Visit Directory Submission Software
I have to agree with the consensus on this. Wordpress blogs out of the box offer some awe-inspiring features but you do need some degree of knowledge to implement it effectively. The Joomla out of the box is much friendlier for the novice and can be implemented without much in the way of web savvy.
March 2nd, 2009 at 6:17 am
Visit Viktor Petersson
Good article. I actually just published an article myself on the similar topic. I compared Joomla! and WordPress from a usability point of view. My verdict is that WordPress beats Joomla! by a light year when it comes to usability.
http://www.playingwithwire.com/2009/03/open-source-and-usability-joomla-vs-wordpress/
March 25th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Visit Japan Website Designer
I am building a portal and my first choice was Joomla because there are extension that just fits to the type of portal I would like to have. However now, I like a look and simplicity of a Wordpress, because it is very complex to customize Joomla modules and the portal is heavy. I wounder if my portal would run faster with Wordpress??