I love WordPress. I’ve been blogging off-and-on since 2007. I started with b2evolution, but after a while, I lost my rhythm. Then, after a hiatus, I came back and discovered WordPress. I’ve been in love ever since!
Now, fast forward a little bit, and I’m shifting positions at my church. My lead pastor, who’s a very smart guy, is currently in charge of our church website, and he’s looking to unload it on me. I welcome this change, except for one small thing:
He’s a big fan of Joomla.
So know I am faced with WordPress vs Joomla.
Our entire website has been built with Joomla, which I have incredibly limited experience using. So, now, the debate becomes this:
Do we ditch the redesign that my pastor’s been working on for over a month just so that I can have a CMS that I’m used to?
Added into this mix is this awesome WordPress theme, Resurrect, that ChurchMag recently profiled. It’s reasonably priced, and it looks pretty sweet. In fact, this theme is the perfect responses to my pastor’s biggest complaint about WordPress sites: “They don’t look like websites. They look like blogs.” It’s a fair criticism of WordPress sites, and again, themes like Resurrect do a good job of combatting it.
We’re still discussing our next steps, trying to figure what makes the most sense, and I’m having trouble separating my good sense from my love of WordPress. So, I’m brining this to you, the faithful and wise readers of ChurchMag.
- What CMS do you use and why?
- What would keep you from using the other?
- What limitations and frustrations do you see in your preferred CMS?
Let’s all take some time to learn from each other. I’ll go first:
Why I Love WordPress
WordPress is fantastic for a lot of reasons: frequent updates, visually appealing front and back end, etc. My bigger reasons are right here:
Low Learning Curve
WordPress is just easy to use. I’ve taught middle schoolers with incredibly limited technical abilities how to blog on a WordPress install. To me, it’s perfect for a small business or a church where a secretary or even a volunteer might be tasked with some editing/maintenance.
Power
In case you don’t know, ChurchMag is a WordPress site. That’s right. WordPress can power my tiny little blog and a major player like ChurchMag. But, in case ChurchMag isn’t big enough to convince you, check out these even bigger dogs.
Community
There is so much going on with WordPress that It’s hard to keep up. In fact, I’m always behind on the newest and coolest plugins and themes, which is fine with me. I’d rather have a thriving community with tons of options to choose from than to be able to say that I have my thumb on the pulse of the all that’s not happening.
In the interest of brevity, I’ll stop my list here. Now, if you please, tell me what you like about your CMS.
WordPress or Joomla?
There can be only one!
(Just kidding. Let’s keep this friendly.)
Bryan Chalker says
Love WordPress. Used to like it…but over the years, it’s matured into a very client-friendly approach to development. I’ve always liked the “best tool for the job” approach to design, and WordPress fits MOST of the time. When it doesn’t, I like Modx and Drupal, as my fallbacks.
Like it or not, WordPress is the standard by which the other CMS’s strive.
Phil Schneider says
Bryan, I couldn’t agree more. WP isn’t perfect, but it’s closer than the rest. Everybody else looks at what WP is doing and then tries to do it as well. It’s kinda (not really) like how Apple is in the mobile/PC market. They certainly don’t have perfect products, but they do set the standard.
Thanks for the comment!
Mark Spidle says
I have used both and totally agree WordPress is by far easier to learn and use. Joomla really lost me when their “updates” to the software required major rewrites of templates, plugins, modules and components. Going from version 1.5 to version 2.5 to version 3.0 all required serious work.
WordPress has never really been that way, that I’ve found. WordPress update feature, within its framework, is awesome. I know Joomla added similar functionality in v 2.5, but that was just a little too late for me.
I’ve moved on to WordPress and haven’t looked back.
Phil Schneider says
Yeah, I’ve heard similar comments. It’s a bad sign when each update of your system is so massive and involved that everything that used to “work” is now broken. Obsolesce happens, but it happens faster with Joomla.
Thanks for the comment, Mark!
Mark Stennett says
I started off being sceptical over Joomla and yet I found that once you get your head around the processes the module style is very useful to tailor the website exactly how you like it, and with a library of old and new plugins for personal and commercial use: whether it’s a twitter stream, your own calendar or bit of e-selling it really is a useful bank of delights.. I will repeat again that the Joomla system does take a while to get your head around it and therefore if it’s a basic blog site then you may want to step away from it but Joomla is very good to tweak and set up your own personal touches, for example for the last few years I have released a Christian online advent calendar and whilst I previously had to stay awake until midnight on my old CMS, Joomla allowed me to publish articles whenever I liked.
I prefer Joomla to WordPress but I have to admit accessibility and ease is compromised for tweaks and nifty plugins
Phil Schneider says
I’ve heard the similar thing from other Joomla supporters about how powerful and tweakable it is. I guess my question is, regarding the complexity, is what resource or tutorial would you recommend for someone trying to learn it?
Thanks for the comment!
Shawn Jones says
I think the key to get going quickly is to use a good framework as your base. I usually start out with a Yootheme template, but have also recently used the Gantry Framework. I have used Joomla since v1. Since the 2.5 to 3.x versions came out, updating has definitely gotten better. Going from v1 to 1.5 then to 2.5 was a huge mess…
Phil Schneider says
That makes sense. Ok, total n00b question: is Yootheme free? Another thing that WP has going for it is that basic, starter themes that work well are free.
Shawn Jones says
There is a free Master Template you can use. That one is often the starting point for my sites and then I customize it to look how I want. There is a free version of Widgetkit also which is their slider, accordion, etc…
I just started working on site that uses the Gantry framework. It seems pretty good too. And I think it is free. Might be worth checking out.
And both of these frameworks have WordPress versions too which is why I like them.
Phil Schneider says
Shawn, you are just a wealth of Joomla knowledge. Thanks so much! I’ll have to check into all of that.
Shawn Jones says
Just to give you a little background about me… My day job is to make websites for churches. We use a CMS called Ekklesia360 which was built for churches. I think we only have a couple of churches using WordPress. Joomla came from my freelance days and I still use it quite a bit. My new freelance jobs are Joomla or WordPress.
Phil Schneider says
Awesome! Any thoughts on why more churches are moving to Joomla?
Shawn Jones says
I use both Joomla and WordPress quite a bit. When I decide which to use, I look at the number of evergreen pages the are going to have and how much of a blogging presence they are going to have. To me, a site that has a lot of evergreen pages is easier to manage in Joomla. But if a site has level 1 pages and other pages that are more of a blogging nature, I usually choose WordPress. But, I also look at the person who is going to be maintaining the site. If they have a lot of experience in one over the other, I just that one.
I think you can make Joomla or WordPress operate pretty much the same from the user perspective. But if you think of them as a tool, do you want to use a pneumatic nail gun to build a house, or regular hammer. It is up to you which is which.
Phil Schneider says
Great point, Shawn, but which is the pneumatic nail gun: J or WP? 🙂
Shawn Jones says
That is up to you. 🙂
Phil Schneider says
Nice.
Rob Wickham says
I use both joomla and wordpress. I love them both for different reasons but find myself leaving joomla because of the upgrade mess. So, I would like to offer a different perspective. Instead of comparing tools at this point in your website development, I suggest using this opportunity to learn joomla. Both joomla and your experience with it will serve you well for many years. Then you’ll be both a wordpress and joomla expert and in a better place to decide which tool is best for the next challenge.
Phil Schneider says
My thoughts exactly! I actually won out on the website discussion—go WP!—but I still want to learn Joomla. Thanks for the comment!
Eric Dye says
I love WordPress, but like some of the others who have weighed in, I think there’s room for everyone. I’ve thought about toying around with Drupal before, but have just tried to focus on getting good at one CMS—so I continue working with WordPress.
Great discussion! 😀
Phil Schneider says
Good point, Eric. I still want to try Ghost, but I haven’t had time. Plus, as you said, better to focus and excel.
Vajaah says
I’m a WordPress lover but have been getting introduced to Drupal by another developer that I work with. It’s powerful. I used to also use Joomla (1/1.5) but ditched it for WordPress. Not too long ago I ran into Ryan Ozimek (former Joomla leadership dude) and he gave a motivating pitch for Joomla 3.0 as a framework… I loved it and STILL have not even installed it locally to see the improvements.
It sounds like you’ll be transitioning the website, but maybe you can write up a little diddy about your impressions before you go? And ask the lead pastor what he likes about it? Would certainly love to hear more.
Phil Schneider says
A lot of folks have mentioned Drupal in the last month or two. What do you think of it? I’m still going to try to learn Joomla, but yeah, I’m gonna try to write up my thoughts as I develop the new site and learn the other system.
Thanks for the comment!
Steven Gliebe says
I’ve never used Joomla so I couldn’t speak on how useful it is but I’ve used WordPress a whole lot and one major reason I use it is because it provides a good combination of flexibility for the developer and ease of use for the end user. The selection of themes and plugins is fantastic too. What keeps me from trying Joomla is simple: I haven’t found WordPress unable to meet my needs.
As far as limitations or frustrations, WordPress could be cleaned up a bit for more logical development (MVC is a refreshing concept) but I suppose one reason that hasn’t been done is backward compatibility and that is one of the hugely attractive things about WordPress. Your theme or plugin is probably not going to break when a new version of WordPress is released. Even so, I’d be excited about a complete rewrite eventually to eclipse the current WordPress.
Phil Schneider says
Great insight, Steve. Thanks for sharing!
(A complete overhaul might not be a bad idea. Great thought!)
Steven Gliebe says
I don’t know if there has been talk of it. Backward compatibility would be killed so it’d have to be a parallel project with separate theme/plugin directories, codex, etc. I think it’d be a prudent move sometime in the next 5 years though in order for WordPress to stay ahead of the pack.
MySpace was once at the top then Facebook ate them with all their slick modernity.
Phil Schneider says
Great point about FB and MS. I haven’t heard anything either, but if WP wants to remain dominate, they had better be thinking along those lines.
Josh Davis says
I started on WordPress, but quickly became frustrated with what I felt like were layout limitations with the widget system, and looked for alternatives. I quickly found Joomla and loved it from the get-go. Not sure why, but the menu/article/module system just made sense to me. I continue to use both platforms, though Joomla is definitely my first choice, especially with the rise of powerful components such as EasyBlog and WordPress for Joomla, that replicate the WP blogging experience and give me the best of both worlds.
The way I usually explain the WP vs Joomla debate to non-webby folks is by comparing it to Apple vs Android. In my mind, WP is like Apple….it does what it was created to do incredibly well, but does it the way it was created to do it. There is not much flexibility/granularity, and it requires a lot of hacks to achieve certain customizations. Joomla, like Android, is much more flexible/granular, but has a higher learning curve for non-technical folks, and looks to be an all-encompassing powerful platform rather than a finely-tuned niche solution.
The other key difference is that Joomla is open-source to the core and backed by a nonprofit organization (Open Source Matters), while WordPress is an open-source component of a for-profit organization (Automattic).
The newest versions of Joomla are quite amazing, IMO, and all of the upgrade and security issues have been addressed rather nicely. Either way, they are both awesome tools that power a huge portion of the web, so use either with confidence.
Phil Schneider says
Great points, Josh. Clearly you’ve got a deep understanding of Joomla.
It’s funny that you’d compare it favorably to Android, which I also find clunky and unintuitive. (Don’t mean that as a jab. I really think it’s funny.) Maybe that’s a clue to the real divide: it’s about who you are as a person. Not everyone is going to like the limited-ability/simplicity of WP. Not everyone is going to understand the super flexible/high-learning curve of Joomla. I can’t stand Android stuff. It makes no sense to me, but an iOS device…it’s like I can see through the Matrix.
So maybe that’s the answer to the whole thing: to each their own.
Thanks for the comment, Josh.
Jason says
I’ve built both on both platforms for church websites. The key is giving the person who’s going to be making the updates on the website access to a test site on both platforms to let them play around for a while and familiarize themselves with the features within the admin portion of the website.
I’ve gotten good and bad feedback from both platforms. I think someone above mentioned their status on building preference based on what the website was more geared toward. I couldn’t agree more. If a church is adamant about having constantly updated/refreshed content, I may be more geared to set them up with WordPress. On the flip-side, K2 has excellent blogging capabilities in Joomla. I’ve got more experience with Joomla but WordPress is easy to use and learn. Joomla ACL however has some great ways to only allow a publisher access to things they need control over to perform updates and add new content… It really is a toss-up but I suggest giving the person who will be behind the wheel a test-drive to see which they feel most comfortable with.
Phil Schneider says
That’s a good point, Jason, letting the user try both platforms and choose.
I’ve tried both and felt like Joomla was very convoluted and disorienting and that WordPress, for basic updating done by the average computer user, was much easier.
Is that my bias creeping in?
David says
I primarily use Drupal as that is what I was introduced to and is what the web development guys at the company I work for use (awesome for when I need to troubleshoot or fix something 🙂 ).
I am starting to explore into other platforms as I am wanting to do a bit of web design and dev on the side and think its good to have a few options to choose from to do the right job..
I have tinkered with Joomla before (long time ago) and didn’t really like it. Another turn off for Joomla is that out of all the websites we host with my work (we are an IT solutions company so web hosting & dev is a small part of what we do), Joomla sites seem to be the most vulnerable.
There are a couple of customers whose sites keeping getting hacked and at times have crashed the web server. The way they are getting in is through insecure modules and features.
Depending on how much trouble they are causing we give the customer an ultimatum, either they fix the insecurities themselves or we look towards migrating them away from Joomla onto Drupal. Once we migrate them usually we don’t hear from them again in regards to being hacked etc.
I think WordPress would be the only platform I would move to, to become my default platform if I had to move away from Drupal. I have played with WordPress a bit but the flexibility of Drupal wasn’t drawing me to use WordPress more. (Granted its been a couple of years since I seriously played with WordPress so things probably have changed)
My church’s website is currently built on Drupal. Im not the best one to be maintaining the website in the sense of content and making sure its current, but I am happy to build and fix it.
Ive built the site in the sense of I that I am not going to be the one updating the content so it needs to be simple enough that someone who knows how to fill out an inline form can update the content.
If it was me I would just use the standard editors and standard processes, but because I want others who may not be a technically inclined as me to be able to update the site.
Each content feature I create, I match it with a form that it can be updated by.
Users can’t change the layout and design, but a leader from the youth ministry can potentially create an event post and it will display on the front page, display on the youth page, gets posted to Facebook as an event (still working on this one) and has an expiry date on it so that once the event has passed it is automatically removed so old content doesn’t stay on the site and look like the site has died.
Just a little about my thoughts and usage.
Phil Schneider says
Hey, David. Those are some great thoughts. I’ve not used Joomla enough to know from experience that they’re vulnerable, but I have heard that from others.
I’ve also heart the argument that once Joomla is set up anyone can edit it. Maybe that’s the same for Drupal, but I don’t know. WP isn’t that flexible, but it does seem to have the lowest threshold to engagement.
MarionePatt says
Recently there was a necessity for me to migrate my Joomla web project to WordPress (for all the above-mentioned reasons). I’ve been surfing the Net and came across an automated tool http://goo.gl/lzFMpu and got acquainted with the service. Despite the fact that there occurred some technical problems during my migration (mainly because my Joomla site had a lot of customized things) – their guys helped me greatly.
Phil Schneider says
Marione—this is awesome! Thanks for sharing! (I hope you enjoy WP!)