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Joomla Vs. Wordpress

Business

Which CMS Should You Use?

You are finally ready to build your website, but there are so many ways go about it. Do you need a CMS? What IS a CMS? Which CMS SHOULD you choose? With so many options available to you, I am hoping to give you a brief rundown of the benefits of the two main CMS available: Joomla and Wordpress.

Let's start with the basics. What is a CMS? CMS stands for Content Management System. What this means for you as a web developer is that you will have a central interface that allows you to publis, edit, and modify content of your site. A CMS is the complete web solution you are looking for, it allows you to maintain and create content as well as control the look and feel of your website from every aspect available.

Ok, so you want a CMS and are wondering what your options are. There are definitely more than a few to choose from but for now I am going to focus on Joomla and Wordpress. Joomla is an award-winning CMS that is great for any websites ranging from large corporations to churches to personal pages. Just to give you an idea of who uses Joomla, below is a list of well known businesses that operate their website with Joomla: 

Beyond that, Joomla is supported by a large community that is ready to help you whenever you get stuck. Joomla is also well known for their extensions library, with over 10,000 extensions available ranging from social media integration to weather apps to mobile to galleries. Oh and did I mention that the Joomla Framework is opensource and free to download? You can also find many Joomla templates online, some free some not, to personalize the style of your site even more. 

There are some downsides to Joomla. One is that many of their extensions are not free, despite the large variety available. Some would also argue that it is much harder to SEO (Search Engine Optimize) a Joomla Site compared to Wordpress. Lastly, the administrator section of Joomla (where you go to edit and make changes to the website) is less user friendly.

That leads me to Wordpress. Wordpress is most known of course as a blogging platform. It is also open source and free to download. Being that it is a blog-based system, it is of course best used for a website that is (can you guess?)...blog based! However you do not need to be limited by that concept, you can pretty much do anything you want with Wordpress as well. Wordpress also has their own extensions library, now over 23,000 plugins available. Wordpress is also known to be much more user friendly and comes with better SEO out of the box.

Here are some examples of Wordpress sites.

Honsestly, when it comes down to it, which system you decide is best for you is up to you to decide. I have always been a fan of Joomla, and even though I am fully capable of building a Wordpress site, i find that Wordpress is less user friendly. But that is because I am used to using Joomla. I would best compare their differences as one might compare Apple vs. PC or iPhone vs. Android. Whatever you decide to use, anything is possible. There are templates, extensions, and support for both Joomla and Wordpress. I suggest you downoad them both, play with them, and decide which works best for you.

Here are some links below if you would like to download Joomla or Wordpress:

Download Joomla

Download Wordpress 

About the Author

Nicholas Klein

Founder and visual artist, specializing in all aspects of a businesses presence from imagery and video to graphics and web. A graduate of IPFW with a Bachelor in Fine Arts, Concentration Photography as well as an Associates Degree in Business. His personal photography works are focused on landscape, travel, and aerial photography.