WordPress vs. Joomla – What to choose?

For those of us who want to build powerful websites without having to worry about all the coding, and technical aspects of it, there are two most popular content management systems currently available on net. Both are fantastic content management systems with great features, easy to manage, secure & free to use. Since, Joomla come with more built-in features than WordPress. However, WordPress beats Joomla with its ease of use, huge global community, plugins and themes.

So which one is right for your site? To decide, we’ll compare Joomla VS WordPress on user benefits as well as overall functionality.

What’s Common in WordPress, Joomla?

Both, the web’s most popular CMS have a lot in common in terms of technology, philosophy, and community.

In Both:

  • Free and open source software licensed under GPL and community-driven projects.
  • Can use themes or templates to change the look of the site.
  • Can be 1-click installed on your own server, so there are no specific hosts and subscriptions to deal with.
  • Written primarily in PHP.
  • Support MySQL as their database management system.
Advantages and Disadvantages of WordPress

WordPress is ideal for fairly simple web sites, such as everyday blogging and news sites; and anyone looking for an easy-to-manage site. Another strength of WordPress is, it can handle tons of visitors. It will not break down easily, even with loads of articles. On SEO part, WordPress SEO power comes from the excellent array of plugins available to make your life easier. It is a definite winner here, but Joomla isn’t that bad that you should completely avoid it on the basis of SEO alone.

WordPress also has it’s own disadvantages. For instance, adding or removing post dates and changing navigational structure need to be changed in design mode and it requires knowledge of WP scripting. Also, changing the order of categories or pages you may need external plugins while in Joomla these options widely given.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Joomla

Joomla is a powerful CMS that is great for building all kinds of websites including business, corporate, government, non-profit, schools, and blogs. However, it is known more with performing as a community platform, with strong social networking features.

On disadvantaged part, importing articles from one site to another is not as easy compare to WordPress. Moreover, in this platform to upgrade from older to new versions is not an easy task and it may interrupt some functionality of 3rd party extensions. But likely it’s solved on latest versions.

Security Measures

All popular opensource CMS systems are vulnerable for hackers because they know the system. But, by having tens years of experiences in this field, in each updates they are minimizing the threats. To overcome security issues in both platforms at least you should follow these measures:

  1. Updating the site as soon as there is a security update is therefore important.
  2. Try to install a firewall to block the most common attacks. For Joomla, you can use AdminTools, for WordPress WordFence. Use the paid versions since the free ones only cover a part of the vulnerabilities.
  3. There are many other firewall plugins and some even you can combine to strengthen your security.
  4. If you work with members, force them to use strong, illogical passwords.
Conclusion

To answer, which one is better fans of each of these two content management systems will argue forcefully that the one they prefer is the best option out there. For those looking to set up a small, personal blog, or a website for their small business, WordPress is likely the way to go. Joomla is great for those who wants to go more advanced functionalities, more attractive designs with great initiatives from support team. The fact is, each situation will require something different, and taking the time to look at all your options is the best way to go.