If you want to create a unique blog or news site, the simplest and quickest way is to use a CMS platform like WordPress. It is the top choice for many large and small websites because of its ease of use, convenience, and extensive customizations.
However, in the CMS market, WordPress is not the only platform that helps you build your website optimally.
Therefore, in this article, we will bring you two of the oldest and best options on the market. From there, you can compare Joomla vs. WordPress: Which is the better CMS platform?
- About Joomla
- About WordPress
- Which factors create a great CMS platform?
- Ease of use
- Themes and designs
- Plugins and extensions
- Content management and potential
- Multilingual sites
- Security
- Support
- CMS comparison: Joomla vs. WordPress
- Popularity
- Ease of use
- Themes and designs
- Plugins and extensions
- Content management
- Multilingual sites
- Security
- Support
- Which one will be best for your website?
- Conclusion
About Joomla
As an open-source content management system and launched since 2005, Joomla is suitable for those who want to publish their content on the website. It is also written in PHP and includes many advanced features and services thanks to a MySQL database connection.
After only 3 years of operation, Joomla created a boom in the CMS industry at that time. They have twice won the most important award as the world’s best open-source software with millions of members on many major websites.
The businesses involved in Joomla spread across many countries around the world, including both personal and business websites, and even large, highly complex websites.
Why is Joomla so popular?
It’s simply because it is easy to use, cost-effective, and it offers many outstanding features and everything we could ask for in a CMS platform.
Features
- Page caching to speed up rendering
- Indexing
- RSS feeds
- Print pages, newsletters, blogs, forums, polls, schedules
- Search within the site
- Multi-language support
About WordPress
WordPress is so famous that anyone who cares about website development hears this name. Anyway, we will still introduce WordPress briefly in case you don’t know much about it.
Similar to Joomla, WordPress is also open-source software, and therefore, it is completely free for all users. It is also written in PHP with the MySQL database management system, developed by the Automattic company.
WordPress is considered as the most popular open-source CMS on the planet when there are many websites using it. Among them, there are a variety of major websites in the world, such as CNN, BBC, Metropoles, Sony Music, MTV News, and Quartz, etc.
Features
- Full User System
- RSS feeds, APIs, and preset plugins
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- SEO support
- Plenty of widgets
- Countless free themes
- 169 different languages
Which factors create a great CMS platform?
Although you will have a comparison of the outstanding features of Joomla vs. WordPress in this article, we still want to give you ways to choose a great CMS platform. It is the first step to becoming a website developer, and hopefully, it will help you in the future when you need a change in CMS for your site.
Ease of use
As you learn about CMS platforms on the market, you will notice that many vendors have very user-friendly products.
In other words, even if you are not a website or CMS expert, you can perform operations on the platform easily.
However, you should note one thing when considering them. While some platforms are easy to use, they have limitations in functionality. It is like a compromise they make when offering you an easy-to-install and operate option.
So, let’s choose a CMS that is capable of meeting your business goals, including content updating and maintaining and offering superior applications.
Themes and designs
A good CMS platform will provide you with a plentiful selection of themes and designs. You can even customize your website display based on the template available in a number of options. This way, you can make a personal impression of your business and decide what will show up on your website.
Furthermore, the themes and designs provided by the CMS for the website also need to be able to support mobile devices. This will help increase not only traffic but also sales productivity because customers can access your website anytime, anywhere with just a phone and the internet.
Plugins and extensions
A great platform will provide enough features to meet your online business needs. However, some have other alternatives – use third-party plugins and integrations.
You should consider it because when using third-party applications, everything will be much more complicated.
Although they will save your time and effort, you will have to pay an extra fee for them. Besides, the developers of such applications will not continue to support you in the future. And security is also an issue when you cannot control it.
Content management and potential
Even if you do not intentionally write articles or make blogs on the website with CMS platforms, content management features will be helpful for you someday. CMS with effective content management will help your website grow its rankings on search engines like Google. As a result, you will have more potential customers and increase sales.
Multilingual sites
The multilingual feature for the website will be a great help to those who want to expand their audience. If you are one of them, you should not ignore this useful feature because not all platforms provide it.
Security
Online business is also risky, and it’s even more serious than traditional stores. Your website may be compromised or taken down by hackers. If they’re sophisticated, you can’t even restore your data.
That is why you need to find a CMS platform with high security. It will help keep all the information on the website about articles, users, links, etc. protected.
In addition, CMS, with excellent security, will manage your website to ensure that there is no data breach. As a result, it will be safe from cybersecurity units.
Support
Typically, some CMS platforms will not give you direct access to support options, but instead, there is software that will help you automatically update and secure. All you need to do is to download the software and install it on the server.
However, for those who are not familiar with technical issues, support will be a necessary feature for them. Not only do they provide periodic technical support, but platforms are also available 24/7 to help you enhance the security and advanced features for the website.
CMS comparison: Joomla vs. WordPress
Popularity
In the CMS market, of course, WordPress does not let anyone take over the top position. It is shown by the figures about CMS platform market share in the market.
Specifically, according to a report by Web Technology Surveys at the end of 2019, WordPress has a 61.7% market share. It is followed by Joomla with over 4.8% market share.
With the huge difference between the first and second positions in the CMS market, WordPress is still the most widely used unit today. Thus, in terms of popularity, WordPress won.
Ease of use
In terms of ease of use, WordPress is still slightly better than Joomla, although Joomla is among the top CMS platforms for beginners.
Both are user-friendly, with an automatic installer for easy software installation in just a few hours. Evenly, WordPress is pre-installed on the server, so you will not need to know too much about computers and websites.
However, while WordPress is easy for you to design content based on a simple, structured layout, you must create categories for each type of content you need on the website using the Joomla platform.
The Joomla control panel also has more options. Although it is useful for some people with specific website types, it still goes against the advantage of the ease of use. You will have to spend more time analyzing and installing when using Joomla compared to using the drag-and-drop functionality of WordPress.
Also, WordPress has some new additions, the WordPress Customizer and the Gutenberg editor, which make the content you create much more unique and interesting.
Themes and designs
Themes or extensions will make your website look more special while plugins and extensions add more features.
WordPress has over 5,000 free themes, not to mention thousands of premium themes they developed for their users.
On the other hand, you cannot find any available template on the official Joomla website. Instead, you can search on Google search engine, which will show you lots of free and paid premium templates.
However, compared to WordPress with a large community of users, Joomla templates are more limited.
Plugins and extensions
A website running on a normal CMS platform will not be able to utilize the benefits of the platform without plugins (according to WordPress) or extensions (according to Joomla). They provide specific useful features that you can choose based on your needs.
WordPress has a large developer community, offering lots of free and paid plugins that are especially useful. As for free plugins only, this provider has more than 54,000 units.
Although Joomla has much fewer extensions, just over 8,000 units, their variety is not inferior to WordPress plugins. You can find them at the official sites of these two leading CMS providers.
Thus, regarding the breadth of features of the platforms, we evaluate WordPress and Joomla equally.
Content management
WordPress is easy to use and suitable for all types of websites, from simple blogs to more complex sites. Therefore, if you are looking for a platform that supports managing content, WordPress will be the solution for you.
In contrast, Joomla makes many bloggers inexperienced in website development feel confused. Although it has some handy documentary available, its learning curve will be steeper for you rather than using the WordPress platform. With WordPress, you can create a post with available content in just ten minutes, a lot faster than Joomla.
Therefore, in the content management war, we especially appreciate WordPress.
Multilingual sites
While WordPress does not allow you to set up multilingual sites or you have to pay additional fees for registration and licenses, Joomla does the exact opposite. Everything will be free, fast from the time of installation, and very easy to use.
Thus, in terms of multilingual sites, Joomla has impressed users more.
Security
When it comes to security, both Joomla and WordPress are notably safe for your website.
In particular, these two options have a similar way to keep websites protected. That is, they offer users to install security plugins and extensions. There will be hundreds of options for you.
Moreover, developers will often find ways to fix bugs as well as security issues. Therefore, you also need to pay attention to regularly update the platforms to keep the system protected from hackers.
Support
If you compare the help of platform communities, it can be said that both WordPress and Joomla will make you satisfied with active and knowledgeable communities. Whatever your problem, just raise questions in the forums, and people will support and share a lot of information for you.
Also, you can sign up for maintenance services if you do not have much time searching and learning.
However, when comparing the support from experts, WordPress still meets more needs than its competitor.
Which one will be best for your website?
After the analysis, it can be seen that WordPress is still superior to Joomla, partly explaining the popularity of this platform in the world. However, if you appreciate the importance of a multilingual site, Joomla is still one of the top CMS platforms for you.
Conclusion
There are various types of CMS that offer many different functions and tools. They are also written in many different languages. Therefore, the answer to Joomla vs. WordPress: Which is the better CMS platform is based on the purpose of your business. If you are still confused with other options, don’t hesitate to contact us or visit our website. Please like and share the article with others if you find it useful. Thank you.