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
-
Pros & Cons Of Closing Forum Discussions To New Comments
I work with a site that gets lots of members and conversions from its specialty interest community forum out of organic search. The site has been around for a number of years and still has many forum pages that do well in search that are 5+ years old. Some of these discussions may have dozens of comments and a few have thousand words. The option has been floated to end accepting new comments on specific discussions at some point. I can see the negatives, such as folks coming out of search and wanting to register to comment, but not be able to... if we closed the discussion to new comments. I've always assumed that new comments may freshen up a page a little organic search-wise, but honestly don't know how much that matters. Are there any good reasons to close a discussion to new comments? Related question, what do you think is the optimum qty of unique text before paginating? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945011 -
Need some help/input about my Joomla sitemap created by XMap
Here is my current sitemap for my site http://www.yakangler.com/index.php?option=com_xmap&view=xml&tmpl=component&id=1 I have some questions about it's current settings. I have a component called JReviews that xmap produces a separate link for each category. ex: http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/265-2013-hobie-mirage-adventure-island 2014-09-03T20:46:25Z monthly 0.4 http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/266-2012-wilderness-systems-tarpon-140 2014-06-03T15:49:00Z monthly 0.4
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mr_w
http://www.yakangler.com/fishing-kayak-review/343-wilderness-systems-tarpon-120-ultralite 2013-11-25T06:39:05Z monthly 0.4 Where as my other articles are only linked by the content category. ex: http://www.yakangler.com/news monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/tournaments monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/kayak-events monthly 0.4
http://www.yakangler.com/spotlight monthly 0.4 Which option is better?0 -
Wordpress Comments Pagination
Hi Mozzers What is your view on the following. Should you Paginate comments to increase page speed? If yes, at what # of comments would you begin pagination? (with the objective being decreasing page load times) Apply rel="canonical" back to the main article URL? eg: url/comment-page-1 => url noindex the comment pages? create a "View all" comments page? Thanks in advance for your help! 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jeremycabral
J0 -
Joomla to Wordpress site migration - thousands of 404s
I recently migrated a site from Joomla to Wordpress. In advance I exported the HTML pages from Joomla using Screaming Frog and did 301 redirects on all those pages. However Webmaster Tools is now telling me (a week after putting the redirects in place) that there are >7k 404s. Many of them aren't HTML pages, just index.php files but I didn't think I would have to export these in my Screaming Frog crawl. We have since done a blanket 301 redirect for anything with index.php in it but Webmaster Tools is still picking them up as 404s. So my question is, what should I have done with Screaming Frog re exporting to ensure I captured all pages to redirect and what should I now do to fix the 404s that Webmaster Tools is picking up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bua0 -
Joomla Duplicate Page content fix for mailto component?
Hi, I am currently working on my site and have the following duplicate page content issues: My Uni Essays http://www.myuniessays.co.uk/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=it_university&link=2631849e33 My Uni Essays http://www.myuniessays.co.uk/component/mailto/?tmpl=component&template=it_university&link=2edd30f8c6 This happens 15 times Any ideas on how to fix this please? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grays01800 -
Joomla duplicate content
My website report says http://www.enigmacrea.com/diseno-grafico-portafolio-publicidad and http://www.enigmacrea.com/diseno-grafico-portafolio-publicidad?limitstart=0 Has the same content so I have duplicate pages the only problem is the ?limitstart=0 How can I fix this? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kuavicrea0 -
Will changing my wordpress permalinks add SEO value?
I'm considering changing my permalinks from: http://www.musicliveuk.com/corporate-entertainment-1 http://www.musicliveuk.com/corporate-entertainment-2 to: http://www.musicliveuk.com/corporate-entertainment-london etc... (these are example pages and don't actually exist) as I want to optimise pages for specific cities. This will create a load of 404 errors which I will have to 301 redirect (I presume that's the best way of doing it?). Does having the keyword in the url help and is the added SEO value (if their is any) worth it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Where would the SEO juice go if I have a wordpress site hosted by godaddy?
I am planning on moving my website to a wordpress that is hosted by godaddy. I am wondering where the SEO juice that my website has already gained would go. Would it go to godaddy when I make the move instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SierraPCB0