Jan27
WordPress vs Joomla!
We have been approached a lot in the last few weeks by potential clients asking our opinion about the 'best' content management system to select for their new website.This is a very good question, as different people have vastly different views or perceptions or requirement. The answer depends on a number of considerations related to useability, application and who will be administering the website.
Joomla! & WordPress are both quite similar yet quite different in their own rights. Joomla is a fully fledged content management system and has always been designed and built for this purpose. WordPress was originally designed as a blogging tool and has since evolved into a powerful content management system.
So what are the differences?
Ease of Use
In a nutshell, the main differences are related to how the website will be used, and by whom. WordPress is well known for being an extremely intuitive application, with most tasks being very simple to carry out quickly. It's approach is very simplistic, and users can quickly get to grips with the administrator interface.
Powerful Administrator Permissions
Joomla! is an extremely powerful CMS, however the user interface is a little more complex than that of WordPress, which is hardly surprising, especially with the recent release of Joomla! 1.6, which brings with it a raft of welcome new features, including built in multi-language support (publish your website in multiple languages), custom access levels, and a completely overhauled access control list system, allowing full customisation over who can access what at administrator level.
This is particularly useful to larger organisations who want to delegate responsibility for different sections of a website to multiple individuals, i.e. administrators can only maintain pages of a site to which they have permission.
Joomla! allows you to select any of a number of third party content editor plugins which bring full WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) functionality, the best of which we have found to be JCE.
Custom Development
Both WordPress and Joomla! can be customised through the creation of bespoke plugins and modules, which means if a feature does not exist, it can be hand coded from scratch according to your specification. Both systems also carry a library of third party plugins which further expand their functionality, so it's very likely that many functions you require will already be available.
In a nutshell, the main differences are related to how the website will be used, and by whom. WordPress is well known for being an extremely intuitive application, with most tasks being very simple to carry out quickly. It's approach is very simplistic, and users can quickly get to grips with the administrator interface.
Powerful Administrator Permissions
Joomla! is an extremely powerful CMS, however the user interface is a little more complex than that of WordPress, which is hardly surprising, especially with the recent release of Joomla! 1.6, which brings with it a raft of welcome new features, including built in multi-language support (publish your website in multiple languages), custom access levels, and a completely overhauled access control list system, allowing full customisation over who can access what at administrator level.
This is particularly useful to larger organisations who want to delegate responsibility for different sections of a website to multiple individuals, i.e. administrators can only maintain pages of a site to which they have permission.
Joomla! allows you to select any of a number of third party content editor plugins which bring full WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) functionality, the best of which we have found to be JCE.
Custom Development
Both WordPress and Joomla! can be customised through the creation of bespoke plugins and modules, which means if a feature does not exist, it can be hand coded from scratch according to your specification. Both systems also carry a library of third party plugins which further expand their functionality, so it's very likely that many functions you require will already be available.
Conclusions
WordPress & Joomla! are both worthy contenders as the content management system of choice for a business website. For simple websites which are to be maintained by just one or two people, with simple functions, we would recommend WordPress, however if you are looking for a website, the content of which will be maintained by a number of people, and you need custom development of very specific features, Joomla may be the preferable solution for you.
For further advice, why not give us a call on 02392 123382 or drop us a line!
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