Comparing Joomla and WordPress

These days, the two most powerful Content Management System (CMS) packages out there are Joomla and WordPress. Each has its own benefits and disadvantages; so lets have a look at both of them.

With Joomla, it is what is known as an Open Source Solution (OSS) for CMS. It allows you to construct a website and incorporate powerful online applications (third party packages) into your site. The program is easy to use and very good for creating extensive web pages for your site. As a result, Joomla has become one of the most popular website software packages available. Since Joomla is an Open Source Solution, and it is freely available to anyone who wants it, you can modify the program as needed for your use. Over time, a huge library of extensions is available for you to use. There are e-commerce websites, online publishing websites, large corporate and small business websites, government and school and collages websites, and even personal websites.

In terms of advantages and disadvantages, Joomla has several. First off, it’s a full-fledged CMS, it’s a very powerful and robust program, you can set up administrative users and password protected areas, and it is very Search Engine Optimized (SEO) friendly. So, in general, it has a lot more “under the hood”, as they say. Now, Joomla does have its negatives. It does tend to have a bigger learning curve than WordPress, when first installed it is not SEO friendly, you have work that out, and it can have a slower loading time. Also, if you make use of JavaScript and cascading style sheets CSS in your website, they can get bulky. However, through the minimal use of tables, and by using template code that’s easy to validate to World Wide Web standards, you can load the site faster, and make it easier to maintain.

With WordPress, it’s very popular as an open-source and blogging program. It’s written in PHP using MySQL, and currently used in hundreds of thousands of sites. While it has a very large selection of plug-ins and theme collections, its greatest strength is the ease with which it can be installed in any system. In terms of excellent advantages, WordPress is ideal for blogging and is SEO friendly, and both can do that right out of the box, as they say. It’s also very easy to install, as opposed to Joomla. Then, when it comes to graphics, its graphical user interface (GUI) is much easier to use. On the flip side, articles written using WordPress come across as much more blog-like, and they are sorted by publication dates. In terms of power, the program is a bit of a – what they call – a lightweight; meaning it has limited power. Then there are add-ons and extensions, the library of usable ones are limited. Finally, in terms of administrative uses, it is also very limited.

So, while having to learn how to use Joomla can take some time, once you have mastered it, it is a powerful software package.