Wordpress VS Joomla | What CMS To Use?

When considering what CMS to go with you need to think about the goal of your website. For most of our clients the goal is to build SEO friendly websites that rank well on Google, as well as look very pleasing to the eye. For the most part, all of the content management systems you can choose will help you accomplish your online goals. But after looking at the marketplace you will quickly learn that some are way better than others.

What CMS Solutions Are There?

We have worked with many different Content Management Solutions also known as CMS websites. Some of the options you may have heard about are custom developed proprietary and some are "open source". Some of the open source CMS's we have worked with Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, Volusion, Homestead, GoDaddy's Website Tonight and many more.

Why Not A Propriety Or Custom CMS?

Even though a lot of the options are attractive with some of the proprietary solutions, we decided to avoid proprietary solutions all together for many reasons. With new browser versions coming out weekly, new technology, new coding languages etc. it takes too much time and staffing resources for any proprietary solution to develop fast enough and keep up with the times.

Joomla VS Wordpress: Features & Benefits

For ease of use and the amount of built in features, we prefer to develop our websites in either Joomla or Wordpress out of all of the open source options. Here is why we prefer Joomla and Wordpress:

• Both are open source solutions open to the public to download for free.
• Both have a large community developing new extensions and plugins daily. 
• Both stay up to date releasing new versions to fix bugs, create security patches, and enhance the CMS.
• Both are easy to customize and have extensive support and help documentation.
• Both are SEO friendly and allow you to modify the meta tags, page titles, and set up search engine friendly URL structures.
• Both are easy to use for our clients and intuitive to navigate. 
• Both have a large design community who have developed many different themes, skins, and templates.
• Both have site-bridging options where you can link multiple websites together with common logins, shared content and shared users between linked websites.

Joomla Benefits

• Joomla has library of very powerful extensions not available anywhere else.
• Joomla has everything available (and then some) that most websites need. 
• Deep level navigation and display options built in.
• Very established community base with active members posting daily.
• Very complex and gorgeous templates pre-made out there.
• Many module positioning options. 
• User group management, permissions, private content, and other security features. 
• Progression has been made on each new release making it easier to use.
• More complicated options are available straight out of the box with no added plugins. 
• E-Commerce, news websites, and websites with a lot of content may need Joomla's power. 

Wordpress Benefits

• Fast set up, easy and quick to deploy. Seems lighter all the way around.
• Speed and website load time is faster than most. (Better for SEO and visitor retention).
• File structure is simpler than Joomla and more intuitive. 
• Handles content and photo websites very well. 
• The most common customization options are built in and easy to understand. 
• Navigation and widget management is drag and drop. Much easier to use. 
• Basic computer users can learn to manage a Wordpress website easier. 
• Has very good documentation about all the hooks that can be used. 
• Shortcodes make it easy to code custom features that a website admin can easily drop in where needed.
• Site URL structure is easy to set up through Permalinks and using Categories.
• More stable than Joomla. It doesn't seem to break quite as often. 
• Wordpress uses many less files to operate and seems to have less code bloat. 
• SEO changes are easier to admin, pages are easier to find. 
• Very fast powerful search features on the back end help you find what you are looking for quickly.
• The best solution for the majority of business websites.

Our Conclusion

We currently prefer to build using Wordpress if at all possible. Wordpress seems to be easier for our clients to use when they want to make changes to their websites after it's built. Wordpress has the majority of the options that Joomla has, but doesn't include everything that everyone in the world is going to need. You can always add that on if it's actually needed. That makes the load time of the CMS and the files being uploaded and downloaded much faster and more lightweight.

Themes or templates are more "version specific" in Joomla, so once you design a theme then a new version of Joomla comes out - many times your theme won't work with the latest version of Joomla. Wordpress is way easier to upgrade and update. It has to do with how the template or theme files are communicating with the core platform. Joomla embeds more of the modules, plugins, and the customization you do into the core and actually modifies the core install. So when you go to upgrade things break. Wordpress likes to keep the theme files separate from the core and almost treats them as an add on so the core can stay intact. This makes switching themes or upgrading to the latest version more error free. Things break less, we like that.

We like lightweight websites. The load time being as fast as possible is very important to search engine optimization. We are comfortable to develop both in Wordpress and Joomla and they both have great options. Over the past year or so we have been known to cringe when we have to troubleshoot a Joomla issue over Wordpress.

So Which CMS Should You Choose?

Depending on the nature of your website consider going with Wordpress. If you are planning to display words, images, PDF, slide show etc. you don't need all the extras that Joomla offers "built in". They are probably features you will never ever use anyways, promise. They both allow you to admin your website quickly and easily in all the ways a regular website should need. If you choose Wordpress, all of your text editing, daily life, speed, and use of the website will be much better.

If you feel you need flexibility and built in power, over ease of use, and you like things a bit more complicated consider Joomla. It is still easy to understand, but the learning curve is steeper and there are a lot of settings and options that most people will never touch. We think it's better for managing large amounts of content (thousands of pages) and more powerhouse enterprise level websites mainly.

The choice is ultimately yours, but if you need free advise, we are here to help you. Give us a call anytime, (888) 664-9010.

2015 UPDATE: Wordpress wins by far. Joomla loses. Don't use Joomla if you can avoid it.