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How WordPress Beat Joomla!

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August 5th, 2011
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Best of WordPress, WordPress Discussions
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  1. Dan (1 comments.) says:

    Thanks for the post. I recently changed over my site from Joomla to WordPress. I sometimes miss the great CMS features that Joomla offers, but the Ease of Use was a major factor in making the switch. Just like your business, we now build most sites in WordPress and a few, more complex sites in Joomla.

    • Dan (6 comments.) says:

      Hi Dan, yes I haven’t written Joomla off completely but I find it harder and harder to justify using it when my main push has always to get our clients managing their own sites and it’s so much easier with WordPress. We still use Joomla / VM for a lot of our ecommerce sites and some larger / community type sites.

  2. Brian (1 comments.) says:

    Great analysis Dan. Any similar comparison data with Drupal or any thoughts on proprietary CRM packages that are tied to full marketing service providers like Hubspot?

    • Dan (6 comments.) says:

      I don’t know a lot about Drupal except that every time I’ve tried to use it I’ve quickly discovered that it would be useless for our small business clients and gave up fairly quickly. The integrated commercial systems definitely have some potential. There is a certain amount of core focus you can achieve when you are building something for one particular purpose (as opposed to open source / one size fits all approaches) but again it’s not really my area of expertise since we focus on open source.

  3. Mark Biplob (1 comments.) says:

    Hey Dan Norris….its a verry Nice post thanks!

  4. Dave Clements (5 comments.) says:

    I have a very similar story about me, Joomla and WordPress. It was my platform of choice about 5 years ago when is started getting into web design, but after maybe 2 years, I was fed up of how arduous and complex it was to do the simplest of tasks, not to mention trying to teach family, friends and clients how to do it!

    WordPress have done well with their UI and have made any task simple to do, including as you say, upgrading the system. Joomla could do well to take a leaf out of WordPress’ book, but it’s got to the point now where I think WordPress has shown itself to be superior to Joomla and will continue going from strength to strength given its massive user (and contributor) base.

    • Dan (6 comments.) says:

      Yes I think that’s possibly true. It’s almost too late for Joomla to compete with WordPress as a simple CMS. Perhaps competing against Drupal for the more complex sites will be a better approach.

  5. C says:

    I moved from Joomla to Textpattern, couldn’t be happier. I get complete sites done in 25-50% of the time, and that includes admin panel customization, like adding custom fields, customizing the admin theme, etc.

    If you’re not a PHP guru, development is MUCH easier using Textpattern’s XML-like tags. Which would you rather use, some super-heavy plugin to do events listings, or just a simple tag like ?

    The learning curve was higher at first with TXP but it has saved me thousands of dollars in development and maintenance time.

    Anyway, I was really big into Joomla but it’s mainly an enterprise product now and its huge footprint and difficult-to-customize core are just an unacceptable expense to me now.

    Also…I feel the same way about WordPress. :) Good article though…

  6. C says:

    Hm, looks like my example tag was stripped by the parser. Oh well. :-)

  7. Givesuccess (2 comments.) says:

    OMG I tried Joomla years ago and went back to doing it all in html…lol I then found WordPress and never used anything else since. I mostly build smaller sites but I have taught kids as young as 10 to use WordPress and as old as 83. I would not even try to show anyone how to use Joomla. I give it a look over every now and then but end up giving up again on it.

    Great article!

  8. Angie (20 comments.) says:

    The amount of money Matt Mullenweg had to work with was more than enough and then some to beat any competition that may have existed in this market. It even bought him hoards of brownnosers who like sheep line up to munch on his brown eye. Comes to show how powerful money is when there is a lot of it.

    • Givesuccess (2 comments.) says:

      It is imo not the money that beat the heck out of Joomla it is the the product it self and the people. Matt, i am sure did not beg for peoples money. They saw the future and quality of WordPress and chose to invest in a winner. Money would matter more if we had to pay to use WordPress. I would pay to use WordPress but not Joomla. They would have to pay me to use it. I like easy and free..I have both…and as for sheep…we are cute!

    • Kerry Webster (2 comments.) says:

      Haters will hate.

    • Chris Cree (1 comments.) says:

      Ironic that you’re so hostile and rude when your own site is powered by WordPress.

    • Aamir Rizwan (4 comments.) says:

      WordPress is leading because of its quality, ease of use, large amount of free plugins and themes. There is literally a plugin for anything you can think of. Joomla is harder to use especially if you are a non-technical person. With WordPress you can focus more on content than managing site. Just my 2 cents.

  9. Jay Andrew Allen (1 comments.) says:

    I think WordPress has excelled in creating a system that’s easy to use out of the box. It doesn’t take much effort to get a basic blog-like Web site up and running in WordPress. Even creating a site with a static front page and blog-like capabilities is fairly easy. Joomla has greater flexibility, but a steep learning curve.

  10. David Perednia says:

    You have hit the nail on the head. I started out with Joomla because it was labeled a CMS system. At the time WordPress was still a blogging platform.

    Over the years it seemed like starting from scratch to upgrade from one Joomla version to the next. Some Joomla version upgrades (1.1 to 1.5) have been so technical and complex that while the base system upgrade was supported by the project not all extensions were so easy to upgrade. WordPress releases do not break previous versions nor do they require administrator or programmer knowledge to upgrade.

    Despite being Open Source Joomla suffers from being a committee run project. The WordPress development is extremely open and transparent but is not encumbered by the organization.

    • Dan (6 comments.) says:

      Yes good points, the upgrade process is definitely a problem. I just looked at their site last week to try to patch a site from 1.63 to the latest and I found that all of the 1.6 stuff had been removed and I had to search through the forums to find the patch downloads for 1.6.

  11. Tom Coburn (67 comments.) says:

    comparing Joomla to wordpress is like comparing apples to oranges, Joomla and wordpress are two complete different pieces of software!
    Joomla is a PORTAL…which is the definition of a CMS.. wordpress is a BLOGGING PLATFORM, NOT a CMS! a portal usually has a blog and forum rolled into one, along with user profiles and all that, wordpress doesn’t even begin to compare with that.. so what is this comparison doing here?
    your comparing apples to oranges man :) seriously. thats like comparing phpnuke to phpBB, two totally oppoiste pieces of software.

    • Tom Coburn (67 comments.) says:

      now if you compared Joomla with buddypress, that would be something to read…but Joomla with wordpress? NO! least buddypress is closer to what Joomla accomplishes then wordpress does

      • gerrica101 says:

        You never seem to have anything positive to say about WordPress or anything posted on this site. Why is that?

      • Dan (6 comments.) says:

        Regardless of what terminology you use, for a long time people have turned to Joomla! or WordPress ahead of all other platforms to build their dynamic websites. I focus on small business websites and like a lot of people, have used Joomla for this purpose for a long time.

        The point of the article was that WordPress has made the transition from blogging platform to small business CMS very well. I believe Joomla could have made a similar transition by focusing on a few simple things.

        Whether they want to be known as a CMS for smaller sites or not is another thing.

    • Chris says:

      A “portal” is the definition of a CMS? Really? No idea what that is supposed to mean but truly — they are both CMS’s.

      • Ashby says:

        I agree with Chris… Portal not best thing to say there as its completely different (and in this day in age shouldnt exist but thats a different argument).

        They are both CMS’s as they both manage content to a degree BUT! In agreeence with Tom they are 2 completely different levels of CMS’s and yes WP is a bloggin system naturally. Joomla was built (you can see this by the terminollogy used in Joomla) as a news infomation management system with user management and all that were WP was originally built as a bloggin system and made availibale so that the general public could easily with a couple of clicks have thier own blog.

        No matter how much it improves WP will always be the little smaller system and until IT makes the leep to a full blown cms such as Joomla and yes i will say it Drupal it will always be the litle guy and best suite bloggin.

  12. Joshua Parker (5 comments.) says:

    Great article, Dan. You hit the nail on the head about the menu system. When this was changed in 1.5, its structure made no sense whatsoever.

  13. Cheryl Allin (1 comments.) says:

    It’s great to see someone blogging about Joomla, even if it’s less than positive. I’m a severe Joomla evangalist, it’s like my baby and I adore it.

    One point I might make is that while you don’t get a notice that you need to update Joomla – it is NOT a difficult process IMHO. You can download a zip file, ftp and unzip (either with putty or for many, via their hosting panel) and can be done in seconds.

    I do agree that the ‘takeover’ by WordPress is gigantic, but I feel it’s more about misplaced popularity – doing it because the “gurus” talk about WP all day and not about actual power, scalability or features. WordPress confounds me, I feel it’s clunky and gives me a feeling of ‘fluff’ rather than strong and capable. To each his own, as they say. I’m no hater!

    Great post, I’m glad I found your blog! Keep it up!

    • Dan (6 comments.) says:

      Hi Cheryl thanks for the reply and the compliment. At one stage I thought about measuring the amount of clicks it took to upgrade Joomla vs WordPress. We maintain a few hundred sites and it just really struck me how hard it is to upgrade Joomla compared to WordPress when you have to do a lot of them at once. I agree it’s not necessarily difficult (especially for a web developer) but these extra steps are too much for most people – especially the average small business owner in my opinion.

  14. Ashby says:

    Joomla is still the more powerful and more flexible cms, this like articles not being automatically linked to menu just allows for more advanced customisation of the menu structure. In regards to updates 1.7 now includes automatic updating for those who need it…. Updating joomla with security releases (generally 0.0.1 type releases) is as easy as uploading the update files over top of existing and if the site is built CORRECTLY then thats it.

    Its an argument that will never be settled as it is the exact same argument as Holden vs Ford

  15. Chris says:

    Glad to hear someone went through the same process I did a few years ago when i was supporting Joomla and WordPress sites. Nowadays I never recommend Joomla and if someone insists I let them go elsewhere — not worth my time.

    It just never made sense to me nor anyone i did a site with — but all along i thought it was just me since it seemed to be so popular.

    While WordPress has its issues — it seems every few months they do something to make it better and better.

    Also people know what it is and understand it. That is a big plus when recommending it to a newbie client.

  16. Oliver says:

    Ironically, I tend to consider one of the strong points of wordpress (the frequent and quick updates) is also a liability for small businesses.

    Not all the time, and not for all companies.

    In one precise case : when a wordpress plugin grows VITAL to the company. Ecommerce plugins especially, but it can be any other one.

    That could mean that roughly once per month (security fixes) there’s going to be an update that will potentially break the plugin and force a race against time and against the axe to hack that plugin back into working order.
    For small businesses it’s a lot of pressure.

  17. Connie (1 comments.) says:

    one of the main problems of Joomla! was the complete lack of UTF-8-support and I bet UTF-8 is still not default in the system and the extensions completely.

    I remember I once had to convert ALL Joomla!-files to UTF-8-format to get clean armenian and/or cyrillic output, what a pest!

    And if you have to edit an article, you will never find it again …

  18. Taloweb (10 comments.) says:

    Dan your comparison is perfect: you never say in your article “WordPress is better than Joomla”, and this is true, but WordPress is fantastic, it has a low learning curve, great embedded functionalities, a big community for free and paid themes/plugins, and so on.

    I’m an asp.net developer and when I tested WP the first time I falled in love…and I started learning mySql and php. By now I use WP for every small/medium content oriented websites and Asp.Net for high personalized projects.

    If I have to find some defects to WP I have to say that I don’t like very much images/media management and I would like to see some plugin functionalities embedded in WP core: for example multi-language support or precise user rights capabilities.

    However, for small businesses, WP is the right choice.

  19. Bertel Bolt-Jørgensen (1 comments.) says:

    I have had a similar discussion with a colleague who makes Drupal sites. His claim is that WordPress i a “CMS for girls”. Excuse me. If “For girls” equals ease of use, tons of free plugins and possibilities. Well then I choose the girlie-solution every day. ;-)

    • Rafa (1 comments.) says:

      There’s always going to be these kind of “tough guys” that think that more complicated to use = better.

      And that is really not the case

      Kiss (Keep it simple Stupid)

  20. John Coonen (1 comments.) says:

    Well done, and a fair critique of Joomla! Would like to have heard some constructive criticism of WordPress as well, seeing as it too has its own shortcomings, but overall, very well articulated.

    Dan, HERE is the point that hits it on the head for me:

    * * * * *

    “To me the message in this is really clear and it’s about listening to your customers. The issues that were holding Joomla! back in 2006 are holding them back now and meanwhile WordPress have stamped out their issues and excelled at exactly those things that were problems for Joomla!

    Joomla! continued improving but they didn’t improve in the areas that their customers wanted. At least not their small business customers.”

    * * * * *

    1.7 was absolutely the *best* major upgrade path. I participated on the upgrade team, and I can tell you, hundreds of hours were invested by very dedicated vol’s who all wanted to make sure the 1.6 > 1.7 upgrade would NOT be a repeat of past train-wreck upgrades. I can honestly say, the 1.7 upgrade was smooth as butter. The folks working on the project made it look easy, and the one-touch upgrade, back-end admin tools additions and modularization of Joomla Platform (#JPlatform) from Joomla CMS (and subsequent re-insertion) were very substantive improvements.

    I know the leadership team got together for a leadership summit last week, and a bright future is in store for Joomla.

    The proof will be in the pudding, however. We will SEE whether the developer-driven PLT (Programming Leadership Team) will in fact listen to to the community for subsequent updates/improvements. My hope is not a strategy, and words are just words; so we’ll see in the coming weeks and months whether actions will back up those words.

    • dnorris (2 comments.) says:

      Hi John, thanks for your well thought out reply. I’m not giving up on Joomla as an option for my small business clients and we still use it quite a lot so some of those positive comments sound good. However I wonder whether particularly in the micro business / DIY type market the horse has bolted. I guess time will tell. Perhaps this was never Joomla’s audience anyway.

    • Dan (2 comments.) says:

      The 1.6 to 1.7 upgrade was not a significant issue for Joomla’s reputation. The buggy, less-than-anticipated, and late release of 1.6 and the lack of a simple upgrade from 1.5 really did the main damage, to say nothing of the perpetually nasty, fairly public but cloaked enough to never be cleared out interpersonal DRAMA involved in building Joomla by committee. Mainly what gets built is committees that engage in unprofessional nonsense that’s impenetrable and offputting to most serious users looking for a long term platform to trust. Community dysfunction can be found anywhere in any band or FOSS community, but it has always really hung out in the open for Joomla.

      The maintenance and upgrade issues tied to security patching are really huge — it’s true WP is not a hands-free solution with its plugin updates, but it has handled the problem better than Joomla. We’ll see if Joomla can get on board now with its own one-click updates and if that helps.

      I don’t see anyone notin that you were very correct in your prediction about this year’s open source cms market share report. Major declines for Joomla. I found your article here looking for analysis of the causes, but I don’t see much public reaction.

  21. Jay Gilmore (1 comments.) says:

    I’d like to point out that WordPress is a CMS (although I am contradicting things I’ve said in the past) but it is a consumer oriented software product like MS Office or Freshbooks. It is meant to be easily deployed and administered by end users. It doesn’t require any intervention by developers save for customization. It is a car you buy from a dealership that you take to a custom shop to make it unique. You can drive it, put gas in it and put fuzzy dice on it and it’s wonderful. It just works. For many customers and clients its a good fit.

    This is the reason it beat out Joomla in use and popularity. They aren’t the same type of product at all, this is a comparison of a extensible (albeit imperfect) CM platform with a consumer oriented app. The old cliché of apples to oranges comparison. A car will get you from place to place but if you need that car to be a chip wagon or a boom truck or an intermodal transport trailer, you aren’t going to start with a Ford Focus. WordPress is a Ford Focus or a Honda Civic to the vast number of things Joomla, Drupal, or MODX sites could be; an aircraft carrier, a amoured personnel vehicle with a cash bar, a power company boomtruck that shoots lasers. They’re all vehicles but very different indeed.

    Many organizations have unique needs from the get go, they need external integration with legacy authentication systems, interface with a SharePoint deployment or process sales transactions and integrate custom applications.

    All CMS organizations can learn a significant amount from the aesthetic simplicity, unity and the whole UX of WP, there are some horribly semantic and esoteric methods and terms that make these tools require massive books to use and god-forbid if the developer customizes the back end. Complicated to use and extensible should never be confused. Interfaces for users should be simple, logical and a joy to use but the power of these other systems should not be underestimated.

    • Dan (2 comments.) says:

      This is how I’ve come to see it. I quit saying WP is not a CMS when it acquired menu system controls and custom content on the backend, but I still say Joomla has never been a CMS–though not a blog engine either.

      I have switched a lot of sites, many of them Joomla, to WP in the past 2 years and now use WP whenever “less is more” is not a major sacrifice in functionality. For example, I would supplement WP with something else or use something else entirely (possibly Joomla) for forums, member sites/advanced access rules, advanced calendars, and some ecommerce situations but WP has been steadily decreasing these exceptions. As a CMS, there is really just one thing left that’s bad about it, and that’s the fact that widgets can’t be mapped to specific pages, posts, or menu items as a core capability.

  22. nikolas_sharp (2 comments.) says:

    If you don’t mind, I’ll give the link to the Russian translation of your article on my blog:
    http://blogto4ka.ru/wordpress/.....oomla.html

    It was very nice and informative read and translate really good article about this two platforms battle, especially on the background of many stupid hollywars from the people who are “not in theme” on all over the Internet.

    The next time when I’ll be asked about advantages/disadvantages of these two platforms I simply give the link to the translation of your article.

    I would also like to note that from the version 3.0 when the WordPress started to provide the taxonomy to it’s core, it has made a big step even to challenge with drupal and netcat CMFrameworks, and I believe that the only Joomla’s advantage today before WordPress – number of extension. But, as we know, this is a temporary phenomenon.

    • dnorris (2 comments.) says:

      That’s great mate. I’d love to know what the comments are saying on there. My Russian isn’t that great unfortunately.

      • nikolas_sharp (2 comments.) says:

        Unfortunately most of the comments are one more holywar about this two platforms :) .

  23. John (1 comments.) says:

    I agree with a lot of points you presented in this article. But I would also like to add a few things to it. The main reason why WordPress beat Joomla is because it offers simpler/easier user interface without bugs and things of this sort. It is also the best platform that is optimized for Search Engines. You can’t beat simplicity and ready-made platform like this.

  24. kurthzone says:

    Great read! I’ve been using Joomla since the MAMBO split and I’m about to start using WordPress exclusively. Major reason: upgrades and updates. Even though Joomla has gotten better at this it is still something that my clients feel uncomfortable doing on their own and rightfully so. Some of the sites I have done are laden with complex extensions and templates that have to be upgraded. If there is just one extension that is incompatible with the upgrade, it won’t work and has to be dealt with in time and time is money. You are correct, WordPress solved this problem. My personal opinion is Joomla is doomed. More and more developers that I interact with feel the same way. It’s too late to wake this sleeping CMS.

  25. Novak (1 comments.) says:

    Good read, but sadly the article is now a bit outdated. It would be nice if you made a second article on this topic as Joomla has changed significantly with version 2.5.x and now the 3.0 is slowly crawling out. The mentioned security issues have been fixed plus the usability is quite straight forward. Plus if using extensions like k2 you get the option of perfect blog experience as well!

  26. Dan (1 comments.) says:

    Thank you sir.



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