Joomla! Does WordPress Spell Doom For It?
Earlier in January, I wrote an article about Joomla!, wherein I discussed the present trends and future prospects of Joomla! In this article, I shall be comparing Joomla! to WordPress.
However, my focus shall not be on mainstream comparison metrics such as ease of use, user interface, etc. Instead, I will take that as granted (seriously, if you are reading this, in all likelihood, you have tried both Joomla! and WordPress, haven’t you?), and focus more on reasons why Joomla! is losing out to WordPress. If, for some reason, you are looking for a more graphical comparison, Noupe has got you covered here as well.
arrogance humor.
Still, if Joomla! has been around for ten years, there must be something that it is doing right, isn’t it?
Sadly, this is a two-edged sword. Joomla!, with its modest market share, does not command the same amount of love from internet users as WordPress. Look at Noupe: you will find a separate category titled "WordPress", not "Joomla!" or "Drupal". The same logic applies elsewhere too: search for help resources, documentation, tutorials, free/premium themes, and so on. WordPress is all over the internet; Joomla! isn’t.
Now, before going any further, let us have a recap:
Image Courtesy: Joomla! Community Magazine[/caption]
On the downside, however, Joomla!’s major flaw has been the fact that it hasn’t managed to evolve at an acceptable pace. For a good portion of time, when WordPress was talking about being retina-ready and what not, Joomla! was still struggling to match pace with the new trends. You cannot expect your users to do great things if your own house is not in order, can you?
As a last note, there is another often overlooked yet extremely obvious reason behind the slow progress rate of Joomla! Assuming you wish to win converts by attracting WordPress users to migrate to your CMS, what will you do? Offering extra functionality, being better at any particular thing, etc. are all opinion-based answers. An easier approach will be to offer something that WordPress does not -- give functionality in the core itself and eliminate the need for addons. Yes, you cannot have everything in the core, but CMSs such as MODX have demonstrated time and again that if you try real hard, it is not that difficult to target the “missing from the core” drawback of WordPress. Joomla!, for some reason, has not yet noticed that. Ironically, even if Joomla! were to go the MODX way, it may not succeed -- Joomla! itself has a lot of functionality missing from its core.
Joomla! -- Why Can it Not Match WordPress?
The Prelude
Certain obvious points first: WordPress has a much larger market share as compared to Joomla! This does not really come as a surprise to anyone: WordPress is way more user friendly and has a simpler mode of functioning. Joomla!, though younger than WordPress in terms of age, has more core versions to its credit. However, having a higher number of core releases does not essentially add up to the fact that the software is usable too. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qjnc0H8utks Along similar lines, the market share and popularity of WordPress cannot be matched by Joomla! WordPress has surpassed Joomla! in terms of numbers, like it or not. Thus, if you are looking for statistical figures about user base and number of templates as a comparative yardstick, don’t bother looking -- WordPress wins easily, and yes, WordPress users often consider this to be a good enough reason forOn the Surface
The benefits of WordPress are known to the world: faster and simpler blogging, easy management, no rocket science required, great collection of third party help resources, market popularity, and so on. When it comes to Joomla!, however, the same benefits are harder to find. Upgrading from one major release to another has always been a pain for me, and I have never been happy with Joomla!’s SEO features, to be honest. Speaking of positives, I personally appreciate the fact that the Joomla! repository is not overcrowded like that of WordPress. Yes, this is not something Joomla! deserves credit for -- after all, it is not even half as popular as WordPress, so obviously the repositories will have lesser content. But at the end of the day, having less plugins/addons thrown towards you helps you find the right one. It is easy to pick the ideal plugin out of ten plugins, as compared to finding the same ideal plugin out of 1000 plugins.
Sadly, this is a two-edged sword. Joomla!, with its modest market share, does not command the same amount of love from internet users as WordPress. Look at Noupe: you will find a separate category titled "WordPress", not "Joomla!" or "Drupal". The same logic applies elsewhere too: search for help resources, documentation, tutorials, free/premium themes, and so on. WordPress is all over the internet; Joomla! isn’t.
Now, before going any further, let us have a recap:
- WordPress has way more users than Joomla! Not just users, WP also has a bigger market share, powers many more websites and is growing at a better pace.
- Joomla! has lesser third party resources, even lesser addons in its repository, and is definitely not an easy software to use.
There’s More to it...
Agreed, Joomla! has way lesser users than WP. And its count of addons and plugins is less too. But that does not actually mean everything is as dismal as it seems to be. Thing is, most, if not all, Joomla! users have some sort of working knowledge of development. Blame it on Joomla!’s poor abstraction, but there used to be a phase when you could not get even the simplest tasks done without tweaking the CMS. While this made Joomla! lose out on the user count game, whatever is left with it (mind you, 35 million is not a small number in itself), consists of folks who know their game. In other words, Joomla! users manage to get work done because they do not actually need third party goods: if a user feels a plugin is needed, he or she codes the functionality, instead of looking up the repository. This is precisely the reason why Joomla! has survived, and even managed to attract a decent audience. [caption id="attachment_77236" align="alignnone" width="550"] Image Courtesy: Joomla! Community Magazine[/caption]
On the downside, however, Joomla!’s major flaw has been the fact that it hasn’t managed to evolve at an acceptable pace. For a good portion of time, when WordPress was talking about being retina-ready and what not, Joomla! was still struggling to match pace with the new trends. You cannot expect your users to do great things if your own house is not in order, can you?
As a last note, there is another often overlooked yet extremely obvious reason behind the slow progress rate of Joomla! Assuming you wish to win converts by attracting WordPress users to migrate to your CMS, what will you do? Offering extra functionality, being better at any particular thing, etc. are all opinion-based answers. An easier approach will be to offer something that WordPress does not -- give functionality in the core itself and eliminate the need for addons. Yes, you cannot have everything in the core, but CMSs such as MODX have demonstrated time and again that if you try real hard, it is not that difficult to target the “missing from the core” drawback of WordPress. Joomla!, for some reason, has not yet noticed that. Ironically, even if Joomla! were to go the MODX way, it may not succeed -- Joomla! itself has a lot of functionality missing from its core.
Joomla and WordPress both has different advantages, even though wp has more and more leaned towards being a cms it’s still the easiest to manage out-of-the-box whilst joomla seems more flexible in bigger enviroments. So for me it’s a fifty-fifty choice depending on what I’m doing.
I inherited a site done in Joomla. It was out-of-date both in Joomla version & in content. I had past experience in SharePoint so understood the CMS aspects. I also had hand coded in HTML for years & years … well, never mind how many years.
I learned Joomla and yes — while parts of it were obvious there was still stuff to learn. I found the Joomla documentation to be weak so I bought the Joomla 2.5 Explained book. That was a big help. Until Joomla pushed MORE changes.
I realized I would *never* be able pass this site (this is a volunteer effort for a non-profit) to someone else. I felt then, and still do, that do provide a quality Joomla-based site — there is a LOT to learn. And it helps to be a techie with past experience.
I started looking at WordPress for a replacement. It took some time to pick the right template, the right plugins. But the move was completed last week and I’m so glad to have the Joomla noose of my neck.
Joomla is very robust. It has capabilities I believe that WordPress does not. But for our volunteer society, we did not need those capabilities. The ones I put in place were NEVER used.
WordPress can be robust too — maybe not as much as Joomla. But how many sites need that level? And I didn’t want a “job” for life. I’d like to think that if something happened to me that the site will go on.
I agree Joomla and WordPress is almost like comparing salt to sugar. If you need to create an eBay you don’t start with a WordPress. If you have programmed under both platforms you will understand that WordPress and Joomla are like Night and Day. I give WordPress to my clients that need no upgrades and a quick blog. But to the clients that need a robust custom situation WordPress would be a joke.
WordPress = Newly Named CMS
Joomla = True CMS
This Blog post and the last one does a horrible job at explaining the core differences.
WordPress core developers should stop focusing on content – they have already done enough – custom post types, taxonomies and post formats are good enough step towards CMS, not they should focus on ACL and multilingual support. User managment really should be better, and the WPML plugin for multilingual support is complex, buggy and not intuitive.
I don’t agree you can’t make robust and serious websites with WP – I created some … ;) . Today WP is waaay beyond blog.
In my point of view joomla is best cms,it offers security,optimization and more funtionality than wordpress.
i don’t care that WordPress became a CMS then took CMS crown, i’m still going to use Joomla. furthermore, the ease of use argument just means there are tons of stupid and lazy people out there. just like the ease of use (and the “it just works”) argument for iPhones. tons of idiots that don’t want to fiddle around/dick around with settings and what-not. well, guess what…….Android blew up and surpassed iOS. how do you like them apples? now Apple and Microsoft have to sue Google because that’s the only place they can compete is in court. anyway back to the CMS topic….i’m still going to be loyal to Joomla just like i have been with Android.