How does Joomla compare to Wordpress?

[henry456]

WordPress easier setup with wide range on WordPress theme. So I found WordPress is best.

[pansonic]

Never ending question, above all because, in my experience, i can find pro and cons for each system. anyway i can say this about the topic.

Joomla is a fork from Mambo, when developers of mambo desagreed with Miro Corp. They become member of "Open source Matter".
Joomla is a powerful cms with the lack of build-in for 2.0 solutions (comments, forum, etc...), so it is more indicated for brand and corporate site. Anyway i use it for some projects and with all the extensions on JED you can build more or less what you want and  Jdownloads (the forum you are on) is one of the advanced one (sincerely like it).
You can easily modify template files to obtain what you like (override technique) but you need to be careful in mantainence.

Wordpress is the open source release of wordpress blogging platform. They smells the business of OS CMS.
That said it is largely used because of its semplicity, but i think the way you manage plugins is very poor. It is more indicated for blogging or sites with few section.
I think there are two kind of user for wordpress:
the lazy one, a not-expert user, who just buy a 30$ template and configure something in 3 workly days;
the advanced one, who is able to hack the CMS and obtain everything.
I'm neither of ones and sorry if i'm wrong.

Drupal is a powerful CMS, maybe the first Open source CMS ever released, who was intended to create a virtual neighborhood community.
Lots of people laments the lack of easy-of-use. I can understand simple user, but... come on, are you really refering to yourself as "developer"? 
Drupal is very extensible, easy for mantainance (from the version 7 core is separated from site) and community is working hard to clean the code.
It has some built-in and very advanced function, and it's funny.
It is the best solution for community-oriented sites, as well as for blogging.

But the most important thing you should think about in making your choose is the meaning of Open-source. Why are you choosing and Open-source system?
This may be the discern between WP/Joomla, as well as Chrome/Firefox

[yellowmarshmallow]

I think Wordpress looks 'prettier' out of the bag, it also seems more user-friendly. A lot of my clients found Joomla hard to get their heads round.

[peterjack]

I prefer joomla is the better option compare to other cms, it support lots of excellent features.

[costisefu]

Joomla is a professional CMS. Full power I would say. It is more difficult to configure and easy to break appart, also there are sections that even a pro does not use or does not know how they work.

Wordpress using is easy, an old man without computer knowledge can learn to use it in a 20 minutes. Instead, in a Joomla installation this guy will ruin everything
Wordpress is also a lot more rigid, a lot more simpler, lacks a lot of power if you are a computer geek.

[peterjack]

Joomla is the better option for web development. We can easily manage large scale sites  by using joomla. It also offers lots of good features.

[micropeter]

I have the same question as "andyscraven". I have used WordPress many times both for my clients and me. Is it better to experience something different like Joomla or other?

[2recker]

I think WP is more flexible.

You know I have to agree with you in part but in the end don't they do the same thing.

[emaderam]

I tend to use Wordpress which is blogging software that you can do some really cool things with. It has lots of addons, but you can install it, then start blogging or editing pages straight away. Install a theme to give it a look you like. Add pages of text and graphics, or add blog posts. There are a huge number of addon's/themes which you can find and install from the admin interface. Drupal and Joomla are CMS's (Content Managment Systems). These are much more complex to configure, but more flexible. I have very little experience with either of these though. It depends what you wish to do. Do you want a quick and dirty blog/website thats easy to set up and looks nice, or do you want something that's a bit more challenging to learn, but has huge scope once you have mastered it and can be shaped into almost anything.


There are some resources helping you have a right choice when choosing your needed CMS.

See the comparison chart of WordPress, Joomla and Drupal on
http://www.threehosts.com/ratings/comparison-software/wordpress-vs-joomla-vs-drupal.html

There is also a useful article at
http://www.rackspace.com/knowledge_center/article/cms-comparison-drupal-joomla-and-wordpress

You can also use demo account of WordPress, Joomla and Drupal via their official websites to see one of them is proper for you. My favorite program is Joomla. Joomla allows you to build a site with more content and structure flexibility than Wordpress offers, but still with fairly easy, intuitive usage.

[wendy]

It is true that Joomla has been considered more complex and in the end better than WordPress for more advance sites however with custom post types and custom fields you can now make really complex and easy to use websites. The best part is that if the client wants a simply website use WordPress. If they want a complex website use WordPress (with custom post types and custom fields). You get my point  This way you get the best of both worlds. Simple and complex.

[ColinM]

Afraid I disagree.  Joomla is undoubted more capable, just about everyone accepts that, and for the webmaster there is a steeper learning curve.  However I find Wordpress frustrating as it has a poor editor by comparison and minimal access control.  Further one has to keep resorting to adding in html directly.

I run a community site with a lot of entries that are constantly changing.  There are editors who only have front-end access who can quite happily make more entries, modify existing ones and so on all without having to know any html at all.  They can even add to menus.  The only skills are those necessary to run a modern word processor, and to be aware of buttons for adding links. People make entries on the Event  Calendar where they can only modify their own entries, and so on. That means as the web master I can concentrate on the technical aspects whilst others keep the info up to date.

Because of the lower initial learning curve for Wordpress then it does attract many web designers, and certainly Joomla could improve in that area.  In particular I have found many people have an initial 'challenge' with setting up Joomla menus,  but then one can have multiple tailored menus against only the one or two allowed by most Wordpress Themes.   But I also suspect that WordPress web designers like it because one has to be able to have a modest knowledge of html and a smattering of css - so the client has to come back to them for updates and so on!!
Of course in any large website such skills are needed no matter what is the base platform.  But its actually easier with Joomla

[frankee]

Both are good according to their niche. Joomla is well known when it comes to business website or community websites, while wordpress is well known for blogging platform. When someone will ask about blogging site, the first thing that comes to mind is wordpress. However, when someone ask for business website platform then joomla known for that.

[authvn]

I prefer Wordpress, so many awesome plugin, great amount of themes to choose. Just the best for me

[BrianCBurke]

My vote also goes to wordpress.  Google just loves worpress sites for some reason.

[premz]

in joomla i belive you have to code well     but in case of wordpress u have so many plugins that u can make it more sophasticate in joomla u can code as you wish and build website.