Difference Between Joomla and WordPress

Joomla and WordPress are two open source content management systems. The key difference between Joomla and WordPress is that Joomla is perfect for e-commerce, social networking and for medium to large business while WordPress is perfect for small to medium scale business, blogs, and smaller e-commerce stores.

A content management system (CMS) is used to create and modify digital content. CMS provides web-based publishing, editing content, version control and many more. There are different CMSs, and two of them are Joomla and WordPress. Joomla is more scalable, flexible and robust than WordPress.

CONTENTS

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Joomla
3. What is WordPress
4. Similarities Between Joomla and WordPress
5. Side by Side Comparison – Joomla vs WordPress in Tabular Form
6. Summary

What is Joomla?

Joomla is a free and open source CMS and is built on Model, View, Controller web application framework. It is written in PHP and uses Object Oriented Programming techniques. And it supports MySQL as well as other DBMS such as MSSQL, PostgreSQL, etc. Furthermore, Joomla is the second most used CMS after WordPress. It is compatible with all browsers.

Joomla contains various built-in features for the users to manage web content efficiently and effectively. The template manager allows using the templates for the website. It is also possible to handle users. Giving permissions to an authorized user, changing the password are some of the user management tasks. The media manager helps to upload images, video and audio into article editor tool. Menu manager allows to create menu items, and the contact manager allows to add and handle user contact information. A website consists of many pages. Joomla has indexing and smart indexing to support searching operations. Additional features can be added using extensions. Joomla comes with out of box capability to create multilingual websites without installing extensions.

Few drawbacks of Joomla are as follows. Installing several extensions might cause compatible issues. Sometimes the website might be heavy to load and run, and it is not much SEO friendly. Overall, it is a CMS used for building various applications. We can use Joomla for online magazines, e-commerce, online reservations, educational websites, and many more.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a free, open source CMS that can be used to build dynamic websites and blogs. It is written in PHP. WordPress allows to add, edit, delete, preview and publish posts. Therefore, it is easy to install and use. It is popular among beginners because of the simplicity. The user can extend the application by using plugins. WordPress also supports user management activities such as changing user roles, creating and deleting users and changing passwords. There are templates for themes, so the user does not need to start from the scratch. The user can add images, audio and video to make the webpages more presentable. It is also possible to extend the functionalities using plugins. Another advantage is that it provides SEO tools to make the on-site SEO simple.

There are few drawbacks of WordPress. Using many plugins can lead to slow down the loading of the website. Furthermore, updating the WordPress to a new version can lead to data loss. Also, modifying the tables and images might be harder. These are also security risks for WordPress sites.  Overall, it is popular and easy to use CMS with a huge community.

What are the Similarities Between Joomla and WordPress?

  • Both Joomla and WordPress are written in PHP.
  • Joomla and WordPress are open source and are free.

What is the Difference Between Joomla and WordPress?

Joomla vs WordPress

Joomla is a free and open source content management system for publishing web content developed by Open Source Matters, Inc. WordPress is an open source content management system based on PHP and MySQL and is free.
 SEO
Joomla is not much SEO friendly. WordPress is more SEO friendly.
DBMS
Joomla supports MySQL and other database management systems. WordPress exclusively supports only MySQL.
 Extensibility
Joomla application can be extended using extensions. WordPress application can be extended using plugins.
Multi-Lingual Support
Joomla comes with built-in support to handle multilingual sites. There are plugins in WordPress that allows creating a multilingual site.
Applications
E-Commerce, social networking, and medium to large scale business. Small to medium scale business, blogs, and smaller e-commerce stores.
  Learning Curve
Joomla is at a moderate level to learn. WordPress is easy to learn and beginner friendly.

Summary – Joomla vs WordPress

This article discusses two CMS that are Joomla and WordPress. The difference between Joomla and WordPress is that Joomla is perfect for e-commerce, social networking and medium to large business while WordPress is perfect for small to medium scale business, blogs and smaller e-commerce stores.

Reference:

1. Balkhi, Syed. “WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal – Which One Is Better?” WPBeginner, 8 Sept. 2016. Available here  
2. Tutorials Point. “WordPress Overview.” , Tutorials Point, 8 Jan. 2018. Available here  
3. Tutorials Point. “Joomla Overview.” , Tutorials Point, 8 Jan. 2018. Available here  
4. “Joomla.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 10 Apr. 2018. Available here

Image Courtesy:

1.’Joomla Shiny Icon’By Jessekoeckhoven – Own work, (CC0) via Commons Wikimedia  
2.’WordPress’By CMetalCore (Public Domain) via Commons Wikimedia