Wordpress or Joomla? Discussion
-
Hi All
I'm about to start on a new project where I've been having lots of discussions with the developers involved on the merits of both wordpress and joomla. I'm experienced with wordpress but haven't really done too much with Joomla. I've found some general info on Joomla online, most issues seems to be around duplicate content, but can't seem to find too much else.
Therefore I thought I'd throw it out there for discussion as I'd love to hear from those of you who have used both CMS's and the drawbacks/ pitfalls or plus points in both.
The project is based around a non transactional site, offering a service, but no product. There's lots of thought leadership type content planned, either through interviews, surveys, articles, video etc, and some linkbait etc. Lot of content will also be newsworthy so keep Google news etc in the back of your mind too. Lots of social integration too...
Looking forward to hearing what you might have to say Mozzers.
-
Have you considered Expression Engine? Might be worth considering.
-
Thanks for the details response again!
-
Thanks Ryan.
This un-usual project ratio is for one reason.
We have more niche customers who need their niche specific features, as compared to general websites.
For Example, this month, we did 2 projects.
1. Rent a Car Company: their full automatic quote and reservation system including Fleet management.
2. A job Board including lot of advance HR portal features.
And joomla provided us great foundation, and for both requirements, some components were available which helped us to customize and deliver the solution quickly.
In the best of my knowledge, wordpress doesn't have any solutions available for both requirements.
I hope this clarify that why we have un-usual ratio.
-
Khuram's response offers some great specifics as to how to help make a choice between the two platforms.
I am surprised by the project ratio. Most developers I know have the reverse where they had 100 WP projects and 20 Joomla.
-
We have worked on over 100 joomla projects and almost 20 projects of Wordpress.
I am fully agree with Ryan, that its largely depend on developers that what type of issues you face with site either it is developed in Joomla or Wordpress.
I usually make my decision based on following points:
- If site is niche based like for specific Industry. Joomla is better, as it has plenty of extensions available for specific industries like auto, realestate, event management, etc.
2. If site is multi-ligual, I choose Joomla. As it can handle multiple languages from within one system with really powerful options. Wordpress, we have to make separate installations for each language.
3. Multi-Template Website: Joomla can easily have different templatings for different parts of website.
4. If site is for small business, which doesn't need above complexities, I prefer to use Wordpress. As it is simple specially for end user to handle.
As far as SEO is concerned, Before Joomla 1.7, Wordpress was on Top. But now Joomla has almost same options. But definitely, as Joomla sites are usually more complex, SEO handling can be more complex.
One more thing, I am not sure about Wordpress, but Joomla's Admin panel is also fully customizable. We can make our own internal template, hide complex stuff for advance users only. And you can brand inner panel with your own graphics etc.
-
Joomla can be a pain in the arssssss if you do not have a good team of developers who understand it and its work around.
If wordpress can do the job id stick with wordpress. If you see functionality which joomla can handle and wordpress cannot, then you know my next suggestion.
In the future if you do not need major functionality and just a basic site for SEO & PPC purposes I would use modx. Its very easy to use and developers love it. SEO functionality is built in.
-
Thanks Ryan, that's the kind of info I'm looking for. I have a lot of faith in the developers in this project and they are suggesting Joomla is a better option for them to achieve what they want, but very aware of the SEO aspects and want to ensure I'm happy. Appreciate your thoughts.
-
The content I've found online seems to focus on issues such as duplicate content issues being a bit of an issue.
There are not any duplicate content issues I am aware of on a properly designed Joomla site. With both Joomla and WP (and many CMS), the sites are created by site owners or less experienced developers and the result is a variety of quality issues such as duplicate content.
Another issue is rather then resolving the core problem, the site owner or developer will simply add on an SEO extension which can resolve the problem but it also buries it. The solution is not ideal.
Is there any major drawbacks on Joomla that I should be aware of though? Any limitations?
Nothing specific to Joomla I can think of other then general disadvantages inherit to all CMS.
The only quirk specific to Joomla is their software upgrade model. They provide a major version upgrade every 18 months, and a minor upgrade every 6 months. The result is many site owners and extension publishers stick with the major updates, while others update more frequently. The system is not ideal as you may wish to update your version but are unable to do such because you are dependent upon an extension which has not been updated to work with the latest version. This situation can happen with any CMS package, but it is more prominent in Joomla due to their update model.
The solution...be more selective as to which extensions you become dependent upon.
-
Great feedback so far guys. As I said, I have little experience with Joomla. The content I've found online seems to focus on issues such as duplicate content issues being a bit of an issue. I've found a few plugins that seems to be able to fix such issues. Is there any major drawbacks on Joomla that I should be aware of though? Any limitations?
-
I'd have to cast my vote for Joomla! on the basis that it offers a tremendous amount of flexibility, has a massive user community and a seemingly endless supply of extensions.
Don't get me wrong. Both are quality choices. Wordpress is a bit easier to use out of the gate, but in my experience Joomla! is simply more customizable/flexible.
Search engines love Joomla!, though you can't go wrong on that count with Wordpress either.
In the end, it may come down to finding an template that just "fits" for your concept.
-
Both WP and Joomla are quality choices. Earlier this year I spent several weeks evaluating many CMS solutions. I chose Joomla and WP as the two I preferred and have been guiding clients to use one of those two choices based on their needs.
WordPress is my preference if a client has basic website needs, or requires easier or simpler administration.
Joomla is more flexible, but it is also more complex.
Based on the information you shared, I agree with Gyi on the WP recommendation.
-
Based on your description, I'd go Wordpress.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Consolidate URLs on Wordpress?
Hi Guys, On a WordPress site, we are working with currently has multiple different versions of each URL per page. See screenshot: https://d.pr/i/ZC8bZt Data example: https://tinyurl.com/y8suzh6c Right now the non-https version redirects to the equivalent https versions while some of the https versions don't redirect and are status code 200. We all want all of them to redirect to the highlighted blue version (row a).Is this easily doable in wordpress and how would one go about it? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wickstar1 -
Should I nofollow my Wordpress tags?
I have a website that have a strong root domain (ranking on many terms) but the subpages (articles) doesn't rank well. My feeling is that the linkjuice is not flowing to them (not enough anyway). When I run site:http://mydomain.com I have my root as the first result and the next many results are tagpages on my sites. I have arund 180 index pages, and I need to go to down to result #50 give or take before I see any subpage using the site command. My website theme have the tags on every page possible. The tags are useful for my viewers, but not SEO useful, but I fear that they are dilluting my linkjuice. Should I nofollow and noindex them? Noindex makes sense (the tags are just duplicate content featuring snippets of text from the articles). But Nofollow would make sense too since I wouldn't send any linkjuice through the tags. What would you guys do? Bests regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | claus101 -
Wordpress Blog in 2 languages. How to SEO or structure it?
Hi Moz community, I have got a wordpress blog currently in the spanish language. I want to create the same blog content but in english version. (manually translate it to english instead of using translation service such as Google Translate). How should i structure the blog for SEO? How will it work? Any structure markups i should know about? Any examples? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WayneRooney0 -
WordPress and Rich Snippets plugin creating 501 error
Good Morning MOZguru's, Right, so I've been trying to install the Google schema.org rich snippet plugin through Wordpress for a website, and after I activate it, the website does not load ( appears a blank page) or loads very very slooooowww. Also through the MOZBar, Http status section, after the plug in it's activated it shows a 501 error. I had this issues with another website I was working on, hosted by Godaddy, and fixed it by installing plugins through the control panel on go daddy and not through WordPress. However this website is not hosted on the same platform. Does anyone know what should I do in order for the plugin to work and not affect the website? Many thanks, Moncia
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa0 -
We are looking for an SEO Company to hire to assist in upgrading a site to Wordpress
Does anyone have a good recommendation or better yet personal experience with one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JCMotors20 -
Questions Regarding Wordpress Blog Format, Categories and Tag pages...
I'm looking to make some optimizations to a website I'm working on but wanted more input before I get started: Currently, when blogs are posted to the website, the URL for each post looks like this:www.mywebsite.com/blogpost I've heard that for whatever reason, the best practice is to make sure that the blog posts get posted to a blog sub-directory like so: www.mywebsite.com/blog/blogpost If I were to make this change, I'm assuming I would have to 301 redirect all of the existing blogs to their new locations. Is this change worth doing and are there any other considerations I should be taking into account? Also, I'm aware that there are certain schools of thought that category and tag pages should be no-indexed to avoid duplicate content issues. Can anyone shed some light on this from first hand experience? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | goldbergweismancairo0 -
How Should I Start Using SEO For Wordpress
I want to ranked my all keywords on top 10 position but unforunately only few keywords are in top 10 position.. Now i already using some recommend plugins like Yoast, Easy WP SEO. So my main question is how should i start promoting my wordpress topic. I already submitting to social network but not getting enough traffic except Stumbleupon... I am using SEO software like SenukeX and Bookmarking Demon but still no luck.. i am not getting quality backlinks.... please help i am very frustrated... please someone give proper guideline.. every day is over by thinking the strategy...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mamuti0 -
Questions about turning my wordpress site into an ecommerce site. Experience needed.
I have a wordpress site that is about a product that is now getting some great traffic. Right now It has affiliate stuff on it. I want to sell my own product so I will be turning this wordpress site into an ecommerce site. I want to redesign it so I am not looking for simple plugins to just add a cart. The part I am really confused about is what to do with my posts and categories? How does that work when turning this site into an ecommerce site? Lets say the site is "hats for adults" My post pages are things like "funny hats for adults", "hats for adult men" etc etc. Would I turn these posts pages into like category pages that have a category of products. Or should I create real categories and have my developer turn those into the ecommerce category pages and then redirect my posts to those categories? Maybe I don't even know what I am talking about. Is this even making sense? This is a small site (5posts and 1 category) and most of the traffic will come from the homepage keywords anyways.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PEnterprises0