Despite the fact that we all have tons of information about Joomla and WordPress, sometimes it is still a little bit complicated to figure out which one suits you better or is more appropriate for you. There is a bunch of basic difference between them. At the same time, there are several overlaps of Joomla and WordPress. With extensions and plugins they can do much more than their original purpose allows. At the same time, both are free to use and have huge development community.
1. Flexibility of a Huge Scale
When we talk about flexible content management system, Joomla maybe is the first that come to your mind. Its biggest strength is complexity, as it has deep level navigation structure, categories, sections in sections and lots of power for your hands. Yes, it seems complicated from the beginning, but once you understand, it does not need much programing knowledge after all.
Surely WordPress is very efficient CMS, but basically it is very user-friendly system. With plugins, you can add some functions that Joomla includes as standard but it demands insistence. For instance, navigation structure of WP websites is determined by theme layouts. Changing the structure requires WP script and CSS knowledge. At the same time with Joomla, the menus are controlled through the control panel. The same thing with changing the order of pages and categories, to create a strong menu system, equally Joomla, only widgets can compensate that on WordPress websites.
2. Intuitive Interface is Privileged
Do you know how Joomla’s or WordPress’s back-end look? When it goes to your site management, website users prefer the CMS platform, which is more comfortable and looks better at first first glance. When you use WordPress from the very beginning of your web undertaking, dashboard looks pretty comprehensible and easy to get used to. There are just a few things to know, the front-end of WordPress includes the basic options for your content editing. However, while comparing WordPress to Joomla, the latest is more complicated to get to the bottom. In this case, you have to spend some time, go through learning materials but you can puzzle out it for sure.
3. Joomla is More Scalable
With Joomla, you can build more functional website. There are a lot of extensions developed for this software so it can be adjusted for any tiny detail. For Joomla, you can install very complicated components such as tightly controlled, specific user permissions, community software, etc. which will look very natural on the websites powered by this CMS.
4. Software of Up-to-Dates
One of the reasons why people change their CMS platforms is software update. With the every new WordPress version release, you just click the button at your dashboard to get your version upgrade. For Joomla, it is completely different. Joomla upgrade means the full sense of website migration. You have to create new Joomla website and transfer your existing site over there.
5. Managing Media Files
Both Joomla and WordPress have some awesome features for your media management strategy. WordPress allows to add all “alt” and “title” tags and caption for images in the database. For adding media, you have one huge button which is separated from WYSIWYG editor and this is very comfortable. New WordPress 3.9 release has some features which facilitate you media management. It allows you to see live gallery previews, add galleries to your posts and crop or edit image right from the visual editor.
At the same time Joomla also has some great advantages, for instance, you can create folders in a library.
Some CMS critics used to say, that the perfect system should combine WordPress and Joomla’s media file management options.
6. Blogging? Nothing, but WordPress
As for Joomla, blogs are the biggest weakness, for WordPress we do not need to discuss even that. To build a blog on Joomla websites, you should implement third-party extensions and spend the certain amount of time to add a dynamic content. WordPress instead is times better for blogging. Mostly because it has started as a blog publishing tool and it is designed to do that. This CMS has comprised all the functionality starting from built-in comments, post archives, tag cloud, teaser posts, post tag, etc.
7. Make friend, Make Community
Each of these CMS has the different approaches for website management, WordPress focuses on minimalism, whereas Joomla puts efforts for design and functionalities. Both have adequate documentations and their forums look very attractive. However, if you have some specific questions, Joomla does far better job, as the participants are more involved and engaged in the community.
WordPress is not doing enough when it comes to the community, but maybe it does not need that, as it already has a good reputation of very intuitive content management system.
For the End
Joomla and WordPress are just great, both of them. However, they are designed for different users and the most important thing is to make sure that you get not what you want, but what you really need. If you are delivering lots of text information, media and want it all to be shared in social networks by your followers then WordPress might be better for you. In case you look for something different as a network or some newsrooms, forum or website with external authors input, then Joomla is obvious your choice, just because it is made in that way.
Do you think you chose wisely? If it is not like that at all, do not worry, with aisite automated website migration service, you can easily migrate your website from Joomla to WordPress or from any other platform to those two in a couple of simple steps.
