What is wordpress and joomla. Clash of Free Titans: Joomla or WordPress. Who will win? WordPress Strengths

Today it is no surprise to anyone that almost every second active Internet user is the owner of his own website. This state of affairs has largely developed due to the fact that nowadays there is no need to know HTML markup well, and it is not at all necessary to be a programmer.

How did this become possible? It's simple - now site management systems, better known as CMS, are responsible for all this. The most famous are Joomla and WordPress. They gained popularity because of their simplicity and focus on the most inexperienced users. Using them you can create even very complex websites, and not just simple author’s pages.

What is a CMS?

If we decipher this term, then in the English version we get System. Translated into Russian, this means a specialized system for managing content on a website. Much more often, CMS is referred to as “Site Engine”.

To put it simply, this term means special program, which the webmaster installs on the hosting. This is a “layer” between the site owner (administrator), hosting system and users.

The most important component of any such system is the database. What is it? If you do not delve into the explanation of concepts, then almost any extended table can be called this way.

In the cells of such a “table” the name of each publication is written, its content, comments and other important information are entered in the appropriate fields. Using the web interface, the site owner can make changes to When a specific page opens in the user's browser, the content management program simply retrieves all the necessary information from the database, and then enters it into a pre-prepared template.

This is how all pages of the site are drawn. A huge advantage of this type of system is the fact that you can completely change the design of the portal at any time, and these actions will in no way affect its content. Entering new information is no more difficult than working with your page in social network.

The agony of choice

Many people ask an important and painful question: “Joomla or WordPress? Which engine is better and more reliable? We will try to give a detailed answer in this article.

Let us warn you right away that you will not receive a definite answer. Both systems are good in their own way, and therefore we will only talk in more detail about the advantages and disadvantages of each engine.

In order to somehow decide, you need to know at least about the preferred places to use each of these engines. Simply put, you should have a clear idea of ​​what is best for a home page and what is preferable to use for creating a small social network.

So Joomla or WordPress? Let's start to understand in more detail!

A little about Joomla

What can this engine be used for? Joomla is perfect for your own social network project, as well as for developing a mid-range enterprise. Do you need a high-quality infotainment portal? No problem, this engine will cope with this task perfectly. By the way, it is on Joomla that the recently popular online cinemas are created.

In general, if you need a really large website, with a lot of photos and videos, then Joomla will often be the only optimal choice. In addition, Joomla templates from famous designers are not as expensive as similar work for WordPress.

As for the expandability of functionality, this engine is better than its competitor in this regard as well. There are thousands of widgets, and Joomla modules do not require any programming knowledge to install. If we talk about WordPress, then to expand the functionality of the site you will have to practice mastering PHP.

Manageability of different page elements is also a strong point of Joomla. In this case, the administrator can edit almost all the content, while in WordPress for the same purposes you will have to buy a paid template, and even choose its Russian version, since otherwise it will be very difficult to understand it.

Many website creators speak warmly about Joomla menus. In this respect, this CMS is far ahead of its competitor. A bunch of different categories, and you can create new ones and edit existing ones. In the case of WordPress, things are not so simple. There are only “Categories” and “Pages”, which actually limits the functionality.

SEO

If you want to make a profit from your website (and who doesn’t!), then you will have to pay special attention to this point. Joomla is an excellent engine, but its capabilities in terms of search engine optimization are somewhat limited.

WordPress is literally ideal for creating websites that in the future will be able to rank in the best search results in Google and Yandex. Of course, this does not replace the need for long and hard work with the content and including the necessary keywords in it.

The main disadvantages of Joomla

Of course, this container of honey also has certain disadvantages. Let's talk about them in a little more detail.

First of all, not all users like the design of the template itself. In particular, it has a huge number of elements that need to be removed for comfortable work with the site.

Of course, everything will have to be done manually. Important! To do this properly, you need to know HTML quite well, since otherwise it is simply unrealistic to understand this clutter. And even in this case you will need a lot of time for editing. In general, Joomla templates are far from intuitive, so you will have to work a lot.

Speed ​​is our problem!

Secondly, the loading speed of sites on Joomla is far from astronomical. It happens that even a not too overloaded portal located on a powerful server loads in four seconds! Just a nightmare. You have to shovel half the template, after which the time is reduced to one and a half to two seconds. And even this is far from ideal, since normally the site should load completely in less than a second.

This negative feature is largely due to the fact that Joomla creates a huge number of folders on the FTP server, which has an extremely negative effect on the speed of indexing the resource, and if the user uses a stunted GPRS or EDGE channel, loading the site becomes an unrealistic event.

A little about attendance...

WordPress is completely free of this drawback. Hosting for it can be purchased much cheaper. This is due to the fact that it may not have high performance: the engine will still provide an acceptable speed for loading pages in the browser.

Finally, if the site traffic is really high, the engine may not be able to handle it. Of course, when organizing the work of a banal home page, you are unlikely to have problems, but “for the future” this is worth taking into account.

If you think that in the debate “Joomla or WordPress” we took the side exclusively of the second engine, then this is not so. Joomla is a great option in many cases, but you also need to be aware of some of its weaknesses.

A little about WordPress...

Everyone who has anything to do with creating websites knows about this engine. Note that WordPress has experienced a boom in popularity in recent years, as it is ideal for creating blogs and personal websites.

However, this is not the end of the examples of its use. There are millions of Press sites on the Internet, and not all of them are blogs. You can even find online cinemas, although they are not a good role for this engine. Recently, there are even a bunch of commercial sites, many of which are located in the TOP of search engine results.

In general, there are a lot of options, but WordPress templates more often used to create personal blogs. By the way, this particular option for using this engine is considered the most optimal. We will try to explain in more detail the reason for this recommendation.

Some cons

Are you surprised that we start our “debriefing” with the disadvantages of WordPress? There just aren’t that many of them, so it’s best to discuss them first.

A huge disadvantage of the engine is its weak security. And these are not empty words: it has been repeatedly noted that the percentage of hacking is high on those sites that use WordPress as a CMS. In general, in this case you will have to worry about protecting your portal yourself, and we would not recommend saving on this issue.

Other negative traits

Are there any other negative aspects to WordPress? Installation and configuration of this system is simple, which cannot be said about the possibility of making fundamental changes to the structure of the site.

If you carefully read the part of the article that talked about the advantages of Joomla, you can probably independently guess about the disadvantages of its competitor. Firstly, WordPress is much more complex in terms of deep site customization. To do something more complex than standard operations, you will need considerable experience and knowledge of PHP. In difficult cases, you will have to turn to specialists, since you are unlikely to achieve anything on your own.

However, no more disadvantages as such were noticed. Now we would like to address the issue of the positive features of this engine. There are much more of them than negative ones.

WordPress Strengths

Let's start with the fact that WordPress templates can be edited almost by a schoolchild. Their entire device is intuitive, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time understanding anything. In any case, the average user copes with this in about ten minutes maximum.

WordPress itself, themes for which are already available in incredible quantities on the developer’s website, is very laconic and beautiful. Yes, it is difficult to make something special out of it, but out of the box it is an almost fully operational and functional system.

Additionally, the average blog's loading time rarely exceeds one and a half seconds. If the Internet connection speed is normal, it can be within 0.7 seconds. There are a lot of tips on thematic forums on how to speed up your site even more, so if you want, you can make it almost lightning fast.

Main conclusions

So Joomla or WordPress? Which engine is best for creating a website? Let's go back to the beginning of the article once again. At that time, we just said that we couldn’t give any unambiguous recommendations. If you read the article carefully, you will be able to understand this yourself.

Joomla is good for voluminous and content-rich websites. There are some problems with the number of folders and the speed of loading content, but this is fully compensated by the huge functionality of the engine and the ability to create really large portals.

In general, in terms of functionality as such, Joomla is significantly superior to its competitor. Many webmasters believe that it is ideal for beginners, as it allows you to “get under the hood” by adjusting literally all the parameters of your page at your own discretion.

On the other hand, many people like WordPress. User comments indicate that a completely serious blog can be built even by a person who has had no prior experience in creating web pages.

WordPress is ideal for blogs and small home pages. It is characterized by high loading speed and simplicity, but for serious projects you will have to either buy a paid template or improve your knowledge of PHP yourself.

In conclusion

Thus, to answer the question: “Which is better, Joomla or WordPress?” - is not possible, since everyone decides for themselves, based on their own needs.

Currently, there is a tendency for the majority of professionals to use WordPress. This is due to the ease of installation. There is practically no need for any complex initial settings, there are a lot of free themes, and the community is quite active.

Regarding the last point, it was no coincidence that we mentioned the community. If you have any problems, you can always hope to find a solution on the developer forum. Of course, for this it is preferable to know English language at least at an average level.

In addition, patches and updates are constantly released for this platform, which successfully correct previously found errors. As a result, this CMS is very stable and reliable. However, Joomla is only slightly worse in this regard, but its security is much higher.

In short, only you need to choose! Fortunately, both systems we reviewed can handle almost everything.

Currently the share CMS WordPress accounts for 23% of all sites on the Internet, and at the same time it is not the only source of automated content systems (CMS) on the market. There are a number of other equally attractive systems such as Joomla or Drupal. All three are similar in many ways, but at the same time, each of them has both advantages and disadvantages. In this article, I will provide a little research on the current issue - and also look at the Drupal system to try to figure out which one is the best.

WordPress or Joomla which is better and what is common between them

All three CMS are the most popular in terms of the number of websites created, and are also largely similar in technology, management and performance.

• WordPress, Joomla and Drupal are free engines;
• All three of them are written entirely in the PHP programming language;
• They all have MySQL database support;
• Everyone uses ready-made themes and templates to visually display the site, as well as plugins, modules and extensions to connect additional features;
• Since these are open sources software, all of them are development projects of programmers united among themselves.

Besides their similarities, these systems have many different aspects. They have different policies from each other, differences in the core of the program, the way they manage modules and templates, the use of the security system, etc. These features affect the choice of users with which engines to create their website.

Let's look at them from different angles in order to find out which system is better - WordPress, Joomla or Drupal, comparing each with each other.

Ease of use for beginners

Most people who create their own websites or blogs do not have the knowledge of a professional developer, designer or programmer. These are ordinary people who decided to create their own website/blog. Ease of use will be the most important factor in choosing a CMS among users here.

WordPress

The WordPress engine is known for its simplicity and installation in 5 minutes. Most hosting providers offer one-click installation of WordPress. This circumstance makes the installation of WordPress quite simple, even for a beginner who wants to start blogging.

Writing an article for a novice webmaster who has created a website on WordPress is also more convenient compared to other engines. The user in the blog admin panel can easily find a menu for creating articles, pages, or start customizing Appearance, or the installed theme.

Joomla

Installing Joomla may not seem as fast as WordPress, but it is done in a similar way. In addition, many hosting providers also offer one-click installation of the Joomla engine.

After installation, the user is taken to the control panel, which is not as intuitive as in the case of WordPress. There are too many menu sections and settings for the site. Followers of this CMS will say that this is due to more powerful options than in WordPress, but I suspect that such a menu will only intimidate a novice user.

Drupal

Installing Drupal is very similar. Simply download the archive file and unpack it using the installation script.

Drupal also offers distributions. These are unpacked files with modules and configuration for creating a specific type of site.

Writing a post for most beginners seems somewhat difficult. The user will have difficulty understanding how to change the site settings. The Drupal engine makes it easy to add content, but changing the appearance and adding site elements is not so obvious.

Winner: WordPress

Themes and Templates

For each of the three CMS there is a huge number of installation themes and plugins/modules to increase functionality and change the design.

WordPress

WordPress allows users to change the appearance of the site by installing different themes. The installation file already contains many themes. At any time, you can add a new theme with one click by going to Appearance > Themes on your blog.

In addition to free themes, you can find many premium WordPress templates developed by sites like StudioPress, Themify or ThemeLab. These are paid themes with support service.

Increasing the functionality of a WordPress site is... More than 38 thousand plugins have been developed for the engine, which can be freely accessed on the official website. There are also paid plugins created for even more functionality.

Joomla

Like WordPress, Joomla CMS has a ton of templates and extensions. There are a huge number of them here and they are designed to perform any function, from creating a commercial online store to managing mailing lists.

However, the quality of these templates and extensions is not as large as in WordPress. Finding a quality template and extension seems somewhat difficult.

By default, Joomla does not have properties that allow you to search and install extensions in the blog admin panel. Exists special function, which allows you to add various extensions from the network directly to your blog. But to search for templates, the user can manually find the templates and then install them by adding the corresponding URL.

Drupal

Drupal has the same issues with theme and module availability. Webmasters will have to search for modules and themes on the Internet, then save the copied archive file on their computer.

The modules are also not created as high quality as compared to WordPress plugins.

Winner: WordPress.

Support

The ability to get help and support can be very important for first-time users. Undoubtedly, a beginner may have some difficulties with installation new system. And it will be a huge plus if the CMS has a detailed support service that you can always contact.

WordPress

WordPress has a forum for users where you can find many answers to problems. You can go to the Support tab on wordpress.org and get official support in the form of documentation, user manual, questions and answers, as well as forum reading and other important information about web design and development.

In addition, there are a lot of freelance sites where you can hire a designer and layout designer for little money, who will customize your blog according to your wishes, including all the necessary elements, in the form of pop-up windows, advertising blocks, placement of pages and sections, sliders, etc. . I wrote about this in more detail.

Joomla

Joomla, like WordPress, has a detailed support service. On the Joomla website you will find documentation that is a useful resource for beginners. For a better understanding of certain functions, users can use the forum, chat, mailing list, etc.

Unlike WordPress, for the Joomla CMS, finding affordable expert help is not so easy to find. Hiring a developer or expert to set up a Joomla website will be much more expensive than hiring a WordPress developer.

Drupal

Drupal also contains detailed support for users. This includes extensive documentation, a forum, subscription to updates, user groups, chat, etc. Here you will get any advice and free help.

Drupal tries to involve as many users as possible in development and offers a professional services company.

Winner: WordPress

Localization and multilingual support

The ability to obtain information in languages ​​other than English is especially relevant for the Russian-language Internet. For a novice user, it is much more convenient to start using a CMS that has the possibility of Russification and there is support in Russian.

WordPress

WordPress offers an excellent option for building a multilingual website. It doesn’t come with this feature initially, but by installing plugins, it allows you to easily create a multilingual website.

More than 53 languages ​​are supported here. New languages ​​can be installed directly from the admin panel of your WordPress site.

Many themes in Russian have long been developed for Russian-speaking users, so there shouldn’t be any problems with this.

Joomla

CMS Joomla already has a built-in ability to manually change the language without installing additional extensions for this. You just need to go to language management, add the desired language to the content line and start running the site in Russian.

Translation of the admin panel is also available and can be easily installed in the admin panel of the site itself.

Winner: Tie – all engines have support for a multilingual website and the ability to blog in any language.

Safety

Security is a very important factor when choosing an engine for your website. Almost any website located on the Internet can be vulnerable to attackers.

WordPress

Since WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world, sites on it are subject to frequent attacks from hackers. At the same time, the developers have created a fairly secure code, and this gives reason to be confident that vulnerabilities will be eliminated very quickly. Also, the engine is automatically updated and at the same time the level of protection becomes higher.

WordPress sites can be protected by automatic database backup, double authentication and other developments.

There is also a built-in mechanism that shows updates for themes and plugins. So when it comes out a new version, the site owner immediately sees this and can update the plugin from the admin panel of his blog.

Joomla

Joomla is very similar to WordPress in terms of security. It actively monitors all possible vulnerabilities on the site and quickly adds the necessary updates.

There are special extensions to backup databases on Joomla sites. There are no less opportunities to improve site security on Joomla than on WordPress.

Drupal

Drupal takes security issues very seriously. They publish various vulnerabilities on their website when they are discovered. There is a feeling that Drupal developers take the security issue more seriously, since so far there have been no cases of sites on these CMSs being subjected to massive attacks from hackers. But perhaps the reason is that it is not as popular as Joomla and WordPress.

Winner: Tie - All three engines actively support safety standards.

Conclusion

Drupal, Joomla and WordPress are excellent content management systems. Drupal and Joomla have more built-in features than WordPress. But WordPress is superior to them in that it is easy to use, has an extensive database, additional plugins and themes. I believe that a webmaster who does not have extensive knowledge of website building would be better off starting a website on WordPress than on Joomla or Drupal.

Final winner: WordPress

I hope this article has answered the painful question - which is better, wordpress or joomla, and after it you can choose the best CMS for yourself.

Most modern websites operate using content management systems (CMS). The most popular of them are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. These engines offer many settings and additional functions that allow you to change the structure of the site without writing special code. Which system should you prefer for creating a new website?

All these content management systems are in the top 5 in popularity in the Russian-language segment of the Internet:

What do WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have in common?

All these CMS are freely distributed and have open source, which can be edited if you have the necessary skills. Evaluate the capabilities of the site, the tools required to develop its functionality, and your skills to make a choice in favor of one or another CMS.

What common options do WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have?

• These engines are created in PHP.
• All of them allow you to use MySQL as an embedded database management system. In addition to MySQL, Joomla and Drupal can work with other databases.
• For each engine, technical support is available - official communities, blogs and forums for developers on this engine.
• These CMS use templates to display sites, as well as modules or plugins to increase functionality.
• Each engine has many additional tools to add unique features to your site.

Although there are many similarities between these three CMSs, they differ in some aspects. These differences can be critical to a user's choice of whether to use WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal on their own site.

WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal - comparison, differences

WordPress is the most popular content management system that even a beginner can understand. Today, almost half of all sites created on CMS run on this engine. The second most popular Joomla is powerful enough to run most Internet resources without any problems, and does not require a high level of special skills from the webmaster to operate, like the next most popular engine - Drupal. It is one of the most powerful open source CMS available and will require some technical skill to operate.

Website appearance and design - from business cards to online stores

All three engines allow users to change the visual display of the site using templates. The design of a new site can be transformed in a couple of clicks, but for an existing project you will have to check each page and possibly edit the content to fit the new template to crop images and format text.

Free and paid WP templates

WordPress contains pre-installed themes from the system developers. If desired, in the admin panel you can select the “Add new” item in the “Appearance -> Themes” menu and activate the template you like from the official repository.

In addition to free ones, users are provided with a wide selection of premium themes from third-party developers. For example, the online platform themeforest.net offers twice as many themes as the official WordPress directory.

Free and paid Joomla templates

Joomla also has many available templates, so customizing the external design of an Internet resource will not be a problem for users. The developers offer about a thousand templates for various thematic websites created using this CMS.

Free and paid Drupal templates

The official Drupal repository contains almost 2.5 thousand ready-made templates, which can be sorted by development status and track their versions. However, when searching for the required theme, you will have to rely on the text description of the template’s functionality and check the design directly when installing the theme.

Due to the less popularity and greater complexity of Drupal, the number of paid themes for this engine is small; on themeforest.net this number is about 500 templates.

Website design on WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal

Among all the CMSs under consideration, WordPress offers the most free themes and a huge number of paid templates that can be adapted to any site theme. A convenient and clear presentation of the design plus demo options for previewing themes make this CMS a leader in the visual design of Internet sites.

Additional functionality - SEO, forms, site functionality

WordPress comes with a significantly larger number of plugins and templates than any other engine. The official catalog alone offers about 50 thousand plugins, the use of which allows you to create a resource from a simple blog to a large portal.
Thanks to the widespread popularity of WordPress, its developers are creating free or inexpensive new extensions that will help equip a themed website that is SEO-optimized for online promotion. Premium versions of plugins are available, the purchase of which will allow you to seek support from developers and get additional opportunities for customizing the functionality of the site (i.e., the basic functionality of the plugin is available for free, and additional functions are available in the paid version).

For sites created on Joomla, many additional extensions, allowing you to create electronic stores, large portals and manage mailings via e-mail. Joomla perfectly combines the power and functionality that Drupal provides while maintaining the visually clear controls of WordPress.

The number of extensions in Joomla is not as significant as in WordPress, which sometimes makes it difficult to select a suitable module. In addition, the standard Joomla installation does not allow you to search for and install extensions and templates directly from the admin panel. For this purpose, you will need to install a special extension, but the search and configuration will have to be done manually.

Drupal is known to have similar difficulties with installing templates and modules. The webmaster must find the required add-ons on a third-party site, and then enter their address in the “Modules” or “Themes” section to activate. Drupal is easy to customize with the help of many available modules - there are about 37 thousand of them on the official website. It is possible to directly edit files in the root of the site, which is convenient for those users who make significant changes to the structure of the site as it is being developed.

Drupal sites typically have improved performance—pages load faster and have faster response times than sites built on WordPress and Joomla. This is partly due to the fact that this CMS does not require significant resources, expensive server or hosting. Keep in mind, as with all engines, installing a large number of third-party modules can reduce the speed of the site.

The use of plugins and modules allows you to use any CMS to create websites on almost any subject, from landing pages and business cards to large portals and online stores. When using WordPress and Joomla, you can find a suitable template for any purpose. For an Internet resource on Drupal, you will have to tinker with the settings - this engine is more suitable for advanced users, not for beginners.

Please note that it is still better to create online stores on specialized engines with specially provided capabilities such as OpenCart or PrestaShop, and not on universal solutions.

Example of a site created using WordPress:

An example of a promotional site created on Joomla:

An example of a magazine publication website on Drupal:

Communities and useful information

Available technical support is necessary for those new to website building, since various questions usually arise when creating a new website. All three engines provide useful information on installing and managing websites.

If you have problems with your WordPress site, it’s easy to connect to the multimillion-strong community of developers and experienced users who are already using and developing this system. Help can be found in official WordPress docs, codes, guides, blogs, and any website building or web design forum.

Joomla provides a large help portal for answering technical questions. To get more interactive help, you can join a large community of users on forums, subscribe to mailing lists and topical chats. Compared to WordPress, paid expert support on Joomla is more expensive, but definitely less expensive than paid development on Drupal.

Drupal has a very active user community and provides extensive documentation, newsletters and updates, a support forum and chat rooms where you can find answers to fairly complex questions.

The main problem may be that most of the current information on Drupal is presented in English.

Best localization and translation

A significant portion of the websites created every day are multilingual or written in a language other than English. All of the engines under consideration support the development of multilingual websites and allow configuration in different languages, including Russian.

WordPress provides more than 50 languages ​​in the admin area. New languages ​​are installed with one click. This platform itself does not support multilingual websites, but you can connect special plugins that allow their creation. The most popular templates and plugins are also available in several languages. Their developers actively respond to help for translation into other languages: if you have made such a translation, you can offer it to the developer and get a discount on this product.

Joomla has ready-made functionality for processing a multilingual website without additional connection extensions. In the admin panel you will need to go to the language manager and specify the desired content language. Translations of templates can be easily installed from the admin panel.

Drupal has built-in capabilities for handling non-English or multilingual Internet resources. You will need to add modules to select the local content language. The admin interface languages ​​are configured in the configuration section.

How is site security different on these engines?

Pay attention to such an important factor as security when choosing an engine for website development. Almost any Internet resource is vulnerable to hacker attacks. WordPress portals are often hacked due to the widespread use of this engine in the world. However, the WordPress community is quick to find possible vulnerabilities in the system. Sites are updated whenever a new patch is available and are further protected by two-factor authentication and other best practices. The mechanism for displaying updates in the admin panel allows users to monitor security and respond to any problems in a timely manner.

Joomla is similar to WordPress in terms of security. Developers actively monitor the detection of weak points and quickly neutralize them. However, keeping the web resource up to date and installing updates falls on the shoulders of users. You can strengthen your site's security using similar methods to WordPress.

Drupal takes a serious approach to website security. The development team publishes vulnerabilities on the official website as they are discovered and fixed. There is an observation that Drupal is the most secure compared to other engines, but this may be due to the fact that the engine is not as widely used as Joomla or WordPress.

Installing CMS on the server

All engines are easy to install and compatible with most hosters. Many hosting service providers provide fully automated one-click installation of any of the three engines. Archive with installation distribution of WordPress, Joomla or Drupal for manual installation You can also download from the official websites of these CMS, and the installation itself takes 5-15 minutes.

Installing WordPress

The WordPress distribution needs to be unpacked and connected to the database. Then all files using file manager must be moved to the root folder of the site. The installation is started using a command from the address bar of the browser. The whole process takes about 5 minutes.

Installing Joomla

A web installer is also used to install Joomla. The installation files must be unpacked to the root of the site. Then you need to connect the database and check the configuration settings. The installation process of this CMS takes approximately 10 minutes.

We offer with automatic installation CMS in 1 click.

Installing Drupal

Drupal allows you to set custom database settings. The installation files are also downloaded from the official website and unpacked onto the server into the website directory. After connecting the database, installation is performed from a browser window at the site address and takes about 10 minutes.

We offer automatic installation of CMS in 1 click.

Which engine to choose?

WordPress is optimal choice for beginners due to the ease of use of this engine. It is well suited for small and medium-sized websites, blogs and simple business cards. Joomla is useful for creating commercial websites, but this CMS requires basic website management skills. Drupal is the most complex, but also the most powerful CMS. Its use requires a good understanding of HTML, CSS and PHP, so this system can be recommended for professionals.

If you want to quickly get started with a simple website or blog, choose WordPress. If you know that the resource will develop and require significant improvements or writing additions from scratch, look towards Drupal. Joomla will be a middle option compared to these engines.

A comparison of the main parameters for the three most famous content management systems is shown in the table - WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal.

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This post will most likely be useful to a novice webmaster, or someone who is still familiar with WordPress and Joomla and is choosing between them a CMS for their website.

Previously, about 5 years ago, I would have recommended Joomla to you, since there were no fundamental differences in ease of use between these systems. Today I will recommend WordPress. Why? Details under the cut.

Advantages of Word Press over Joomla:

Possibility to preview material before publication

WordPress has good function preview of yet unpublished material. Moreover, the preview can be viewed in the context of displaying the entire site. In Joomla, things are more complicated with previews. Joomla has a preview of the material before publication, but it is quite sparse. The situation with previews in Joomla can be solved by the extension - Real Preview for Joomla, but it is paid and costs 19 English pounds per year.

Availability of convenient custom fields for entries and posts

WP has custom fields and they are very organically built into the system. Joomla doesn't have this. You can use the K2 extension (or others) and provide expanded functionality, but why make a CMS on a CMS and grow something like a monster. After all, in fact, K2, Zoo, Flexicontent are separate cms that are built on Joomla. And you get two compartments with content, the first is the original material manager and the second is materials in K2 (or whatever CCK you use for Joomla).

Availability of thumbnail images for posts and pages

In WP we easily specify a thumbnail image for an entry. Moreover, it is implemented very conveniently. You simply select a picture on your hard drive, click upload and then the photo immediately becomes active, click the “use as thumbnail” or “insert into post” button - you’re done! In joomla everything is a little more complicated. First you need to upload the image to your hosting or media manager. Fortunately, this is convenient to do right when creating the material. But then, in order to insert a picture into a material or a miniature, you need to find it from the hundreds of pictures you have already downloaded on the hosting and only then insert it. At first, when you have few files, it doesn’t bother you. But then... Why not immediately auto-select and use the newly downloaded image. Moreover, this logic applies to both Joomla and extensions for it.

Modules/widgets and their output in the template

What I didn’t like about WordPress before was the usability and confusion with widgets. In Joomla, everything about modules and their positions is clear and organized. I made a position for the module in the template, then in the module settings I specified where it should be displayed and everything is ready. In WP there were some sidebars, sidebar regions, nothing was clear. Also, WP was initially a purely blogging engine (mostly it remains so), and there was some misunderstanding regarding the output and display of modules on the site. Now everything has changed in WP. Similar to Joomla - you can create regions for displaying widgets (analogous to modules in Joomla) and put these same widgets there. I’m pleased with the mechanism for inserting widgets into regions; in WP this is done quite clearly. I can tell how convenient and practical it is after I’ve built a dozen sites on it.

Ease of writing posts and using the admin panel. Usability

The WordPress admin has evolved beautifully and is now very convenient. There is nothing superfluous in it. Extra blocks can be hidden or included for display in the “display options” menu. Everything is done to perfection. In Joomla, everything remains the same, I have it in version 1.5. In version 2.5, the admin panel became more terrible and “monster-like”. When creating the material, for some reason a bunch of security and rights restrictions fields were added. Simotic colored icons were replaced with equally dark blue ones. In general, not a good option. In Joomla 3.0, which will be released at the end of September, the admin panel is generally made using Twitter Bootstrap. It seems to be good, but after installing it and clicking, there is a feeling that it was done on the knee and in a very short time. There is no love for UI elements in it. Everything was done just to show how the software works, but they simply neglected ease of use.

Availability of plugins and extensibility

The vast majority of plugins (extensions) are written for WP. There are also plugins for Joomla, but there are many more of them for WP. For example, I recently looked for an analogue of WP NextGallery for Joomla and found nothing. Or I wanted to find a plugin for cross-posting from Joomla 1.5 - VKontakte and other social networks. Nothing was found, especially for K2. (I found it only for Joomla 2.5 and only one plugin.) I found it for WordPress the first time. Look at all the new trends and features, plugins for them are immediately released under WP. For Joomla you will have to wait or develop it yourself. Even all SEO software works very well with WP, which cannot be said about Joomla. WP immediately from the official website offers you applications for Android and iOS to conveniently blog with mobile device. There is nothing to say about Joomla.

Development

Over the years of its development, WP has shown outstanding results. Dramatically improved interface, new features. Joomla is gradually degrading and falling behind. I was waiting for version 3.0 and I already see that it will not be a salvation. Wait for version 4.0? Doubtful. Probably the most the best version Joomla will remain version 1.5 in conjunction with K2.

Bottom line: what to choose, WordPress or Joomla

If you are a beginner, then choose WP. He's more promising. If you are making a blog or news site, definitely only WP.

P.S. Despite all the shortcomings of Joomla, it has its advantages and I do not completely abandon it. There are categories of sites for which Joomla is an excellent solution.