Choosing Joomla! over Wordpress
August 16, 2014
Choosing Joomla! over Wordpress
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
1.5
Modules Used
- phoca gallery
Overall Satisfaction with Joomla!
Joomla! is being used by a client who owns a printed and online magazine. After the printed articles are finished, I am in charge of putting the articles with accompanying images in Joomla! for their online version of the magazine. Because this magazine company is using an older version of Joomla! we encounter many problems, especially the problems of being attacked by hackers and malware.
- It does an amazing job of posting articles and posting them in several different styles, such as blog style. This way the newest articles are always on top.
- The linking and navigation is very well designed within Joomla!. It's very easy to create menus on the fly, links to content or to anything else.
- The user interface is very well laid out and designed. The different options available for publishing an article are endless. It is very easy to work within Joomla!
- Search engine optimization is handled very well within Joomla! Articles and pages automatically take the words from the title. The website performs very well in the search engines, the newest articles always show up on google's first page.
- The entire setup of Joomla! is ideal for online newspapers, magazines and more. You can set a publish date and time, or a time to unpublished something.
- With the huge range of modules available for Joomla! there is really nothing you can't do with this program. Whether it's a simple website or a very large online magazine or newspaper, or non-profit, whether the administration is done by one person or an entire team, it all works flawlessly.
- Joomla! allows for many users and user roles which makes managing an online business a breeze.
- Since I am using Joomla! 1.5 with this online magazine, I don't have experience in a newer version but overall I find it easy to work with Joomla!
- Designing a template for Joomla! might be the hardest part to do and maybe could be done in an easier way.
- More control over the featured image of an article would be nice. In Joomla! 1.5 it always grabs the first picture in an article to use on the article list pages, when sometimes you wish it could be a different image than the first one.
- The positive is the speed with which new artless appear in Google and other search engines. Since we are not selling a product or service, the ROI is not that important on this website, we look at readership and number of visits and duration of visits.
- Just like with any website, e-commerce or subscription based, whether it is done in Wordpress, Joomla! or some other CMS (content Management System), you always need to make use of a call to action and not just on the home page, if you want to achieve a good ROI.
- With Joomla! there is nothing standing in the way between the website and being successful, as long as you choose your titles, keywords and Call to Action well. Being a good copywriter is just as important as well.
- Joomla! is excellent for a team environment as it keeps track of who did what and when, so I can see how Joomla! can be a powerful and very efficient tool to manage a website, no matter what the size.
- With Joomla!'s excellent search engine optimization and having good content and keywords, your website will become successful. There is nothing in Joomla! that would prevent that from happening.
The other big players are Wordpress and Drupal. I'm sure there are more but I haven't used them. Joomla! stacks up really well against its competitors. I would think that Wordpress is the biggest competitor and has taken over the market by storm, but I still feel it is not at the level of Joomla! and if I had a client with a large organization, I would recommend Joomla! and not Wordpress. For a simple website I would recommend Wordpress.
My customer was already using Joomla! when I acquired them, so I didn't make that choice myself but I can see why the previous webmaster chose Joomla! over any other CMS.
My customer was already using Joomla! when I acquired them, so I didn't make that choice myself but I can see why the previous webmaster chose Joomla! over any other CMS.