When it comes to choosing the right Content Management System (CMS) for your website, it is an important decision as it directly has a huge repercussion for your system. You can get a number of available frameworks in the market like Laravel, CakePHP, Joomla, WordPress, and more.
Each of these web development frameworks has its own advantages and disadvantages. But the two most popular platforms that stand out amongst the lot are WordPress and Joomla.
Both CMS platforms are renowned for their active communities, extensive customization opportunities, and ease of use. In this blog, we will learn about both these frameworks and also see the comparison – Joomla Vs. WordPress.
What is Joomla?
Joomla is a popular open-source platform that enables developers to create sites and applications. This content management system easily connects your website to a MySQL, MySQLi, or PostgreSQL database to make the management and delivery process easier on both the visitor and manager sides.
The primary focus of Joomla since 2005 is to offer extensibility and usability. It is a CMS framework that has been the recipient of various awards, like PACKT (Open-Source Content Management System Award).
Besides this, being an open-source and free framework, it is available for anyone at any time. Joomla offers a desire to build robust and dynamic websites for a variety of purposes. It is a framework that has been used by some of the most powerful and recognizable brands like MTV, Harvard, and iHop.
Besides, Joomla also has the capability to carry out tasks like creating eCommerce websites, business sites, blogs to social networks, and more.
What is WordPress?
WordPress is one of the most popular, free, and open-source website development platforms. It is a content management system that is written in PHP language that uses a MySQL database. WordPress is known for its easy-to-use and powerful blogging approach.
It is a perfect choice for almost any business. From blogging to eCommerce portals to business sites, WordPress is a well-known CMS. It is a framework that is designed with flexibility and usability in mind. Besides, it is the best solution for both small and large websites.
Difference – Joomla Vs. WordPress
Here are some of the main differences between Joomla vs. WordPress –
1- Ease of use
Every web developer or designer, be it a fresher or experienced person, requires a tool that can make website creation an easy job. But when it comes to beginners, having a simple content management system is a must-have. And both Joomla and WordPress are quite simple to use.
WordPress
WordPress is a popular CMS for its fast installation process and straightforwardness. Any business owner can create his WordPress site within a few times and it can go online in even less time. And after the first log-in, the WordPress users don’t need much time to understand the basics of this framework.
The system of this technology is user-friendly and every feature or every step makes sense. Besides, a learning curve is also involved in it, but as the majority of the menus and options are ready to navigate, there is no complication or need to study.
But if you want to use WordPress at a higher level and not just for creating simple blogging sites, you can go through the learning tutorials step by step and learn WordPress tips and tricks to become proficient in it.
Joomla
Joomla is also a simple CMS framework. Its installation process is the same as WordPress’. It is just one-click installation software. But that’s all, the similarities between these two technologies end here as after installation, Joomla becomes a bit complicated to handle.
When it comes to Joomla, the control panel that is responsible for managing all the major
modules of the website isn’t well prepared for beginners. This means that it is useless if you don’t know much about Joomla. Learning Joomla properly is required and it will definitely take a lot of time as Joomla’s user interface and control panel are a bit more complicated than WordPress.
2. Content Management
The main purpose of starting a site may be reaching a lot of customers and earning more money. But later, creating content and managing a blog will become as important as selling more products. Blogs help in attracting more visitors to your website and also enable the audiences to connect to your site.
WordPress
WordPress is a platform that knows how to please users. It offers everything from creating and publishing blogs and pages to managing various files. With WordPress, it doesn’t matter if you are a marketing expert or a casual blogger. The only thing that matters is managing content which is a very simple and intuitive process. So, if you are a business owner who wants to attract customers through different types of content or if you are someone who loves to write, using WordPress can be the perfect option for you.
Joomla
Joomla is a framework that is intended to work on more complex projects. And because of that, it is not the perfect choice for a simple blogging site. Having said that, running blogs with Joomla can be possible but it will require much more effort and a long-term management process than WordPress. There are cases where one can see the experts on Joomla running their blogs on WordPress.
3. Appearance and Extensions
When it comes to CMS, having different plugins and templates has become a must. They allow normal users to extend their websites without going through the trouble of coding. And in this case, both WordPress and Joomla offer different ways to the users to the extent of their systems. Let’s check its details below Joomla Vs. WordPress difference.
WordPress
WordPress being a renowned platform offers its unique plugins and themes to the users. They are free and premium themes that enable WordPress developers or non-techie users to build a professional-looking website without going through much trouble with designing and coding. There are thousands of WordPress plugins that enable users to add features that would be difficult to create from scratch.
Besides offering so many easy-to-use items, it also offers some complex themes and plugins that act as a system on its own. Therefore, with WordPress, one doesn’t only get to build a simple WordPress site or blog, but can also create an entire eCommerce system.
Joomla
Joomla also offers various templates and extensions that enable the users to achieve many things on the website. But being not as popular as WordPress, one can only find a few templates and extensions of this technology on the web search. Besides, Joomla offers some add-ons that can be easier to use than WordPress.
4. Customer Support
Customer support is something that every business owner must offer in order to increase the popularity of the site. When a customer gets answers to all his questions and is satisfied with his experience, he will definitely recommend your platform to others. And this is why both WordPress and Joomla offer amazing customer support approaches.
WordPress
The official support pages enable users to start with WordPress. Besides, the users get documentation files that explain the basics. There are multiple support forums in WordPress which have thousands of active users. And all these features are free to use. Besides, if someone needs more professional support, he can hire a maintenance services officer and get the job done.
Joomla
Though WordPress is more popular than Joomla, this framework has millions of active users. This means that Joomla has an active community that helps the user to find everything they need. Besides, there are various tutorials, articles, and videos that Joomla offers. And this makes it easier for the users to understand this technology without any problem.
5. Multilingual Sites
When any business has a website that offers more than one language support then it can be a very attractive feature. All the website owners need to have is content in different languages, the rest of the things can be easily done with the use of the two best CMS, WordPress and Joomla.
WordPress
WordPress comes with an option that enables the setting of a language for the website, but it doesn’t offer the support for creating multilingual content. But, there are some plugins in WordPress that help in transforming your website into a multilingual system. It is an easy process, but one will have to spend some extra amount of money for its subscription.
Joomla
Joomla is an open-source platform that offers multilingual options from the very beginning. All you need to do is select an additional language and start the content translating process. This shows that it is very easy to use Joomla and it enables quick language settings through the admin panel.
6. Security Measures of WordPress and Joomla
Security is one of the most important aspects for any website owner. Therefore, while choosing the CMS, the most important thing that the user wants to know is how well security supports the framework it is.
WordPress
As you know by now, WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the market. And this means that it is the first target for hackers. So, despite WordPress being safe and secure, web app development companies need to create a code that makes the website more secure. Besides this, the website must be frequently updated.
The most important factor in security is the person working behind the site. Therefore, hiring a perfect WordPress development company person is very important if you want to protect your website.
Joomla
CMS Joomla is similar to WordPress when it comes to security measures. The Joomla developers keep on working on fixing security measures and developing new updated features. It offers some of the best security extensions but keeping them in check and updating is in the hand of the domain owner. This shows that even not-so-popular CMS like Joomla has a lot of security measures and plugins to offer.
Conclusion – WordPress Vs. Joomla
As seen in this blog of Joomla Vs. WordPress, both WordPress, and Joomla are very flexible content management systems and both offer incredible customization options. But WordPress being more popular than Joomla has greater customer reach, more features, and easily accessible tutorials. Besides, these two platforms have their own pros and cons.
Therefore, choosing the right CMS is in the hands of the business owner, as he needs to understand this website’s requirements and the CMS platform’s features and then select the one that fits the best. Hope this, Joomla Vs. WordPress difference would be helpful in your selection process before you start to build a website.
