16
Jan
Choosing a CMS – Joomla vs WordPress
When trying to decide which Content Management System (CMS) to use to build your website, it’s important to do your research. While there are many CMS’s to choose from, we’d like to focus on two of the most popular, Joomla and WordPress.
Although there are many benefits to using either Joomla or WordPress there are also disadvantages that come with each. In this post, we will give you a little insight of some of the pros and cons that come with both Joomla and WordPress.
Joomla
- It is an open-source platform
- Easy to edit articles/modules
- Highly customisable
- Supports e-commerce functionality
- Plenty of support available online
- Joomla supports over 70 translation packs for multilingual websites
- There are few ready-built modules available – however, you have the flexibility to create your own modules and positions
- It is not as easy-to use as WordPress, especially if you are a first time CMS user
- You must navigate through paid plugins
- There can be some compatibility issues with regards to components/plugins you have already installed on your website
Essentially, Joomla is not exactly for beginners as you need to have a good experience and sufficient understanding of various coding languages such as CSS, HTML, JavaScript, and PHP to handle this framework!
WordPress
- WordPress is completely free to install on your server
- Updates are always being rolled out for the WordPress CMS
- Performance – WordPress is designed with a minimal amount of code so in turn this allows your website to load faster
- One of the biggest advantages is how easy it is to navigate through the website. It is set up so that those with basic skills can understand how to edit and navigate the back end of their website
- Custom layouts are hard to use – Most of the layouts in WordPress are customised and can be difficult to navigate through, the same goes for the design, it can be tricky to access the themes you’d like
- Many updates to test – Updates are great for security patches and bug fixes, however, with the amount of plugins an average WordPress website would use, be prepared to have several updates a week pending as you test each one for functionality.
Now that we know the Pros and cons to both Joomla and WordPress, it’s up to you to decide which CMS you’re going to choose! Choosing which CMS to use for your next web project is an important decision. Your choice will have a huge impact on the way you manage your website, as well as what features are available to you. In this case, both options are top-notch, but you’ll want to get to know them before settling on one.
Web development beginners will feel more at home using WordPress, thanks to its in-built dashboard and theming system. However, that doesn’t mean that Joomla is a lesser choice. In fact, Joomla offers more features than WordPress out of the box, but it’s a bit harder to get started with if you don’t have much experience using CMS’s. Fortunately, no matter which platform you choose, you’ll have plenty of options for extending its functionality.
Already have a WordPress website? Our Website Maintenance and Management service can look after updates, security and content changes for you.
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