·
Joomla (Good for E-commerce type of sites, but
require at least some level of technical coding)
THE TABLE OF COMPARISON BETWEEN DRUPAL, JOOMLA AND WORDPRESS
WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal + CMS “comparison chart”
For those of us who want to build
powerful websites without having to worry about all the coding, and technical
aspects of it, there are three main options. WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have
established themselves as the leaders for online content management
systems.
To be honest, they are all incredible
systems, and can make creating a website quick and easy,
no matter how little one knows about computers and technology. Choosing which system
to use can be difficult, but it is an important choice to make. For most
people, once they’ve started with one, they won’t want to change,
so let’s take a few minutes to review each of these three content management
systems to see which one is right for you.
·
Joomla (Good for E-commerce type of sites, but
require at least some level of technical coding)
As someone who has been dedicated to implementing Joomla web sites for
many years, I was very reluctant to add
WordPress to my client offerings. The two products ostensibly have a similar
purpose, but ask afficionados of either one which is better, and you’ll get
strong opinions.
However, clients have started to come to me and ask for WordPress by name.
They heard good things from other small businesses who were using it or had
some experience with the free WordPress-hosted blog software, and it was
important to them to try it. In the end, the market demanded that I at least
investigate this software. After several projects where I became the consultant
in charge of managing a WordPress site, I finally agreed to implement one from
scratch. Now that I’ve done that from soup to nuts the way I’d do a Joomla
site, I have some observations on the practical differences — not for me as the
geek behind the scenes, but for my clients, who do all the work of keeping the
sites updated over time.
5 PRACTICAL DIFFEREENCE
http://www.business2community.com/tech-gadgets/5-practical-differences-joomla-wordpress-0837622
1. People really like the WordPress interface better than the
Joomla interface.
In my heart, I believe that I can teach anyone to manage their site in
either product, but at first glance, people really do feel more comfortable
with WordPress. The font is larger, there are fewer options right out of the
gate, and something about the options being on the side instead of on top make
it feel like there are fewer things to learn. Here’s the first thing you see
after logging into WordPress:
While I know that Joomla is easier than it looks (especially if, as I
do, you provide your clients with good training materials), web site owners
need to go into the project feeling confident that they can learn. In the
“judging a book by its cover” contest, WordPress does win this round.
2. Joomla is way more flexible about some important things.
In my first full site build in WordPress, I found myself telling my
client “That’s not really doable in WordPress right out of the box” many, many
more times than I do with a Joomla site build. From how WordPress handles page
titles to creating pages outside the menus to managing who could see what
content, there was just a lot less granularity in WordPress. The themes
themselves seemed a little more “locked-down,” with some features so deeply
embedded into the theme as to make customizing those features impossible — even
if, as I am, you are very comfortable mucking around in PHP and complex CSS.
A very simple example I found was in the differentiating between the
title of your page as it appears in the top of the browser bar versus the title
that appears in your menu versus the title that appears at the top of the
content. In the core install of WordPress, these are all controlled by the same
thing, as far as I could tell. This meant that if you wanted the title that
appears at the top of the content to be “About Jebraweb: Our Past, Present, and
Future,” but you wanted the menu item for that page to be “About Jebraweb” and
you wanted the browser title to say “Jebraweb.com: About Jebraweb,” that wasn’t
an out-of-the-box option. I’m sure there’s a plugin somewhere for that — but
Joomla does this seamlessly right out of the box.
3. WordPress and Joomla should combine their media file strategies.
This was where I thought both systems had their advantages and
disadvantages.
WordPress advantages:
·
Saved “alt” and title tags: This is fantastic — text title tags, captions, and “alt” tags for images
are saved in the WordPress database, so when you create a page that contains an
image of a laptop sitting at the base of a tree, and you tell WordPress that
the title of this image is “Laptop at base of tree,” when you go re-use that
image elsewhere, you don’t have to re-type that title. Joomla does a terrible
job at this — so much re-typing, all the time.
·
The icon for adding media files is big
and separate from the WYSIWYG editor: For my
clients who don’t want to have to memorize what all those tiny buttons in the
WYSIWYG editor do, this is really nice. The “Add Media” button is above the
editor, and since it’s probably going to get used often, it makes a big
difference in usability and a huge advantage over the tiny image in the WYSIWYG
editor in Joomla or the functionally-hidden [IMAGE] button beneath it.
Joomla advantages:
·
Adding space/padding around the image
is done in the same window in which you add the image: I can’t figure out why on earth WordPress hides this option. It’s there,
but it takes several clicks to find it. In Joomla, it’s part of the process of
adding an image — you set the alignment and the spacing all in one window.
·
It’s simpler to make folders in your
media library: It’s a small feature but useful once
you have a bazillion files in your library.
4. WordPress does blogs like a boss.
Do we even need to discuss this? WordPress is a million times better at
blogs than Joomla. That’s because it started as blog software — that’s its
core, and that is what is designed to do. All of the things that it does
outside of building a fantastic blog were added later. Building all of the
functionality we have come to expect from a blog — post archives, tag clouds,
simple “about” sidebars, commenting, etc. — can be done in WordPress in five
minutes.
This is the biggest weakness of Joomla. You can build a blog in Joomla,
but it requires a lot of third-party extensions and canoodling. It just cannot
hold a candle to WordPress’ blog skills, which are mad fierce, yo.
5. Joomla can do a lot more tricks.
I am sure this is where I’ll get the most argumentative comments from
WordPress experts about how WordPress can do everything I’m saying Joomla can
do, but my experience so far is that Joomla can grow into a more complicated
site than WordPress. The variety of extensions being built for Joomla, and the
granularity that is built into Joomla for adjusting every tiny detail — these
are what make me feel instinctively that Joomla is just more scalable. I’ve
installed very complex calendar systems, tightly controlled and specific user
permissions, community software, and other “big” components into Joomla sites
that, frankly, I cannot imagine installing into WordPress.
In the end, these seem to me to be products designed for very different
clients. For my clients who need sites that just deliver text and images and
have basic interactivity like social media sharing and a contact form, and
who will likely never need more than that, I would recommend WordPress. For clients that will
need more than that either now or later, I would recommend Joomla. As time goes on, I’ll
be keeping an eye on how each of these products grow and change.
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