WordPress and Joomla Differences

9-Apr-2018

WordPress and Joomla are two widely popular content management systems, clever technology that allows you to modify a website without ever having to look at any code.

WordPress

WordPress is one of the most well-known and popular content management systems today, powering more than 60 million sites across the world and controls over 40% of websites operating via a content management system. It is a free and open-source piece of software with lots of plugins, themes, and widgets which are fully customizable and can be expanded upon.

WordPress is perfect for websites of all kinds, from small blogs to large ecommerce sites. It is very user friendly and does not require any skills unless you want to create plugins and themes of your own.

Joomla!

Joomla comes in second to WordPress as a CMS than does not require a lot of technical expertise. Like WordPress, Joomla has a large variety of plugins, themes, and other addons and powers all kinds of websites and applications. What Joomla is really good at is ecommerce and runs such sites better than WordPress. Of course, a big shop requires a robust, preferably affordable hosting solution to function properly, so keep that in mind.

Overall, people who pick Joomla over WordPress do so because it is more powerful and flexible.

They are not the same though, despite these similarities. Let’s look at some of the ways these two platforms differ in critical areas.

Usability

WordPress is known for being simple to use and can be installed in as little as five minutes. Joomla, on the other hand, does not install as quickly as WordPress. Both WordPress and Joomla are pretty easy to use and intuitive when the installation is complete, and users are redirected to a dashboard to help them get started. Joomla is a little bit more challenging, though, so you might need more time to get accustomed to it.

Security

Both of these software solutions have rigid inbuilt security systems and allow extensions to be made by third party developers to enhance your protection even further. In this respect, both platforms are virtually identical.

Addons

WordPress enables its users to change their websites in no time, with the help of over 40,000 plugins, extensions, and themes. Joomla also offers these, but they’re much fewer in number compared to WordPress’s addons, and it can be quite challenging to find the perfect addon for your site.

Support

WordPress is huge and, as such, has its very own support team backed up by its large community. You can get assistance from support forums or through emails and live chat functions. Joomla also has a big support base, but it is not as big as WordPress’s one. What is unique about WordPress, though, is that you can easily hire somebody to do something for you – such as develop you a theme – because of the large number of WordPress ‘experts’ who work in the industry full time.