A huge decision that could have enormous repercussions for your business website is choosing a CMS or a Content Management System. So many content management systems are available nowadays, each with its pros and cons. At present, WordPress and Joomla are two of the platforms that stand out among the rest. So I will discuss WordPress vs Joomla: which PHP CMS framework to use in 2023?
We are trying to decide whether to choose WordPress or Joomla? Both are famed for their usage ease, active communities, and extensive customization opportunities. Although both platforms have pros and cons, both could be utilized to create contemporary and feature-filled websites. We have formulated a draft on this subject with the help of PHP developers from India to dig deeper and bring a clearer insight for you.
Brief Overview and Market Share
Both Joomla and WordPress have been around for more than a decade, and both are open-source and self-hosted. In 2003, WordPress was originally launched as a blogging platform. Today, it has become a multi-purpose CMS that powers more than 40 percent of all websites. It has a more dominant 40 percent market share in terms of market share.
Joomla, on the other hand, was launched just a couple of years after WordPress. It’s the second most popular CMS, powering about 3 percent of all the internet’s websites. It also holds 5.4 percent of the CMS market.
Joomla was leading or equal until the year 2010 when WordPress started dominating. While still in second place, for now, Joomla’s market share has been shrinking since 2010, and in 2017, for the first time, the web market share shrank. As WordPress continues growing, Joomla is gradually moving in the opposite direction.
Nonetheless, don’t think that Joomla has none to offer!
WordPress Vs Joomla — the Advantages
To know the basic difference between both content management systems we have to learn the advantages of Joomla and WordPress. Find out the advantages of both CMS.
The Advantages of WordPress
1. Better for Blogging. The platform includes a distinction for ‘blog posts’ against ‘static pages ‘out-of-the-box. On the other hand, Joomla only includes one article type”, which could be manipulated with categories.
2. Usage ease. In general, WordPress is deemed the easiest CMS to use, particularly for non-developers.
3. Extensibility. So far, the platform has the biggest ecosystem of themes and plugins, making it easy to extend your website with various features.
4. Big support community. Due to its popularity, finding help is easy to find via the massive third-party ecosystem of Facebook groups, blogs, and developers.
5. Lesser cost of development. The significant community support also means that you can generally get development work done at a lesser cost.
Joomla Advantages
1. Different content types flexibility. Joomla’s components and modules provide more flexibility for displaying non-standard types of content.
2. Numerous templates. Joomla allows you to use different templates for various content. With WordPress, you can only use one theme.
3. Multilingual support. The platform has built-in multilingual support to the core. WordPress, on the other hand, requires the use of a third-party plugin.
4. More advanced user management. When it comes to user access controls and out-of-the-box user management, Joomla has a more advanced system.
WordPress vs Joomla — a Comparison
In this part, we will compare both Joomla and WordPress. Find some basic differences.
Usage Ease
Tools should be as seamless as possible, even for professional web designers and developers. For beginners, however, a simple content management system is a must-have. WordPress and Joomla, fortunately, are quite easy and simple to understand and to begin with.
WordPress
WP is renowned for its fast and seamless installation process. In minutes, your website could be online even if it’s your first ever. Moreover, after the initial log-in, users could easily understand the platform basics. In its entirety, WordPress is user-friendly. Thus everything makes sense.
While there is a learning curve, the menus and options are within reach, and you could maneuver the admin area without issues. However, if you think that you’re more into more than just seamless usage, you can also learn WordPress step by step.
Joomla
Joomla is also pretty straightforward. Installation is very similar to WordPress. Moreover, a lot of hosting companies feature one-click installation software. However, the similarities end here since Joomla is somewhat more complicated to handle the installation.
For beginners, the control panel for managing all modules is not very well prepared. Thus, unless you know a thing or two already about web technologies, the best thing to do is be patient. It definitely would take more time to understand the control panel of Joomla as well as the UI.
In-Built Security
So, which between WordPress vs Joomla is the more secure out-of-the-box?
Because of its popularity, WordPress has a mammoth target on its back in terms of security vulnerabilities. Thanks to the hundreds of thousands of plugins and themes, every WordPress install is unique. Although this is a definite pro, it is also a nightmare when it comes to the security viewpoint.
Making sure that each plugin employs the correct safety standards and stays compatible with newer platform versions is impossible. WordPress does not ship with basic features, like forcing an SSL or Secure Socket Layer connection to the dashboard. You have to do a modification to the core files or the Two-Factor Authentication to enable it.
Most of the advanced security features, as a matter of fact solely rely on plugins. Joomla, however, ships with an option to force connections over SSL and another for the Two-Factor Authentication. Additionally, it offers its security extensions, and developers maintain a list of the extensions that have vulnerabilities.
Appearance and Extensions
These days, for content management to be considered good, it should feature some plugins and templates, which enable regular users to extend websites with no need for touch code. Joomla and WordPress could let you extend the system in various ways, but still we have to know regarding WordPress vs Joomla.
Joomla
The platform does not fall very far behind. It also offers extensions and templates, which could help achieve a lot of things on the internet. However, just because it’s less popular, there are lesser extensions and templates. Nonetheless, the same add-ons that you could get are somewhat simpler than the WordPress counterparts.
WordPress
Popular for its plugins and themes. Although premium and free themes could help create a professional-looking website without any design and coding know-how, the thousands of plugins could help add features that otherwise would seem impossible to make.
There are so many available items, but they could become more complex as you move forward. Some plugins work like their own systems and move beyond the original WP idea. Thus, aside from simple blogs and websites, you can build entire CMS, eCommerce systems, or photography portfolios, among others.
Content Management
WordPress and Joomla are complex content management systems, letting users create and manage just about any website. While WordPress is often associated with simple blogs, it’s a terrific solution for landing pages and even websites that are more complex.
Joomla is known for being complex. It does, however, offer several fantastic documentations. A website built with Joomla could evolve into anything. The learning curve, however, is steeper for those without any experience in web development.
With all these considerations, the final round is awarded to WordPress, which overall gives the contest to WordPress! Although equal in terms of sheer potential, it’s fair to say that WordPress lets users manage their content much easier. In minutes, anyone could install it and pick up how to make posts, pages, or custom post types. Joomla is not that easy, however.
Which Should You Choose—WordPress or Joomla?
At a glance, WordPress and Joomla look so similar. This, in one way, is true, but they also have differences that make it easy to choose which one is best for your website. The overall winner is WordPress.
Definitely, for beginners, WordPress is more suitable, yet it still lets you expand a website into a project that’s more complex. It enables you to develop the system seamlessly since it features a repository full of plugins and themes. Hiring professional designers and developers and maintenance services is easier because a lot of people are devoted to WordPress than Joomla.
Final Thought
Joomla is more complex and has more in-built features. The platform could help professionals create more complex websites since it provides more technical options from the very beginning.
The same options, however, could confuse newbies unnecessarily. Moreover, when it comes to casual blogging, Joomla is not as good either. I thank, the topic WordPress vs Joomla is more clear to all of you.
