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When talking about websites with clients – in particular content management systems, many people have heard of WordPress and have even used it but haven’t necessarily heard of Joomla or edited a website with this CMS before.
Often clients are under the impression that WordPress is the best and/or only option out there because it’s so popular. They may have heard from friends or work colleagues that it’s ‘super easy to use’ or have even used it themselves to edit or build a simple website.
There is no doubt that WordPress is a great content management system that’s incredibly flexible and enables people to set up a website and add plugins; however, just because something is perceived as easy to use or popular doesn’t mean it’s the best tool for the job.
Regarding fueling your body, a salad with protein from meat or tofu with nuts and seeds is one of the best options (from a nutrition perspective) however, Mcdonald's is a far more popular option and fast food restaurants are more numerous than salad bars (just because they’re popular doesn’t mean they’re ‘good’, it just means they’re popular).
The release of WordPress in May 2003 gave people the opportunity to install a content management system on a hosting platform and have complete control over their own blog instead of using a hosted solution. Just one year later, in May 2004, WordPress released version 1.2, which came with a plugin architecture, allowing developers to write their own plugins and a large open-source community was born.
Joomla, on the other hand, wasn’t released until September 2005. Instead of focusing on ‘blogging’ like WordPress, which appealed to journalists, online marketers and people looking to find an easy way to put their thoughts online with a personal blog, Joomla was designed as a more fully featured content management system that appealed more to business websites, therefore, appealing to a smaller market.
A broader market appeal and an earlier release date helped WordPress to become more prevalent; however, it’s worth noting that WordPress was and continues to primarily be a blogging tool that’s only recently been turned into a website content management system.
Ok – so WordPress is popular; what does that actually mean?
One of the things to take into account when people talk about the popularity of WordPress is that all those hosted blogs (including spam blogs, forgotten blogs, personal blogs, etc) are incorporated into the overall stats about WordPress’ popularity which can skew any stats relating to overall websites built with a particular CMS or hosted solution.
Nobody can deny WordPress’s popularity as a blogging tool and, in more recent years, a website content management system, but it’s worth noting that at its core, WordPress is a blogging platform, which is excellent if you want an easy-to-use blogging system, but not so great if you want a full-featured website content management system.
Let’s explore this a little further.
Now that we’ve established why WordPress is such a popular option, let’s take a deep dive into some of the reasons why Marketeam, as a website development company, chooses Joomla over WordPress as our content management system of choice.
Joomla does more ‘out of the box’
Because Joomla is a more fully featured content management system, it does much more ‘out of the box’ than WordPress. Need a members-only section on your website? That’s baked right into the Joomla core, along with many other features. Here are just a few of the features that are native to Joomla that you won’t find on a WordPress install.
Whilst having a large plugin library is a selling point for many people, there are several considerations that most people don’t take into account when installing plugins into their content management systems. Many people think WordPress is an ‘easy’ CMS for building websites because, for anything you want to do, a developer has likely built a plugin that enables that particular functionality.
More plugins equal more security risk
It’s tempting to add multiple plugins to enhance your website functionality, but each plugin you add to a website install comes with an increased risk of security vulnerabilities. Think of each plugin you add to a website as a potential entry point for hackers to get in and make a mess of your website. Even if only one of these plugins has a security loophole, it’s enough for hackers to get into your website and cause all sorts of problems.
Plugins add great functionality to your website, but installing too many of them ultimately leads to security issues down the track, particularly if many of the plugins you install aren’t supported or updated with security patches.
“I’ve updated my WordPress plugins, and the site fell over”
This is by far the most common issue we face with clients who have had their website built in WordPress by another company who then approach us to redevelop it or help them make changes.
Using too many plugins on a WordPress website almost always leads to conflicts and update issues
Often plugins conflict with one another, causing errors and can even crash your site to the point it may take a developer hours to figure out what the issue is. This is such a prevalent issue that many hosting companies make it easy to set up a staging site (a staging site, also known as a staging environment, is a separate testing area used in web development to test website changes and updates before they are pushed to the live website).
So yes, lots of developers have created lots of different plugins that can make WordPress do anything, but like any marketplace, some products are great and work as they’re intended to, and others are full of security and compatibility issues that make it more challenging to edit and update your website in the long run.
Can’t I just leave my website alone and not update it?
If your website falls over when you update it, this can lead to many people simply leaving their website alone and not updating it. One of the quickest ways to invite hackers to attack your website is to run out-of-date software (just like your computer or your mobile phone, content management systems also require updating).
A majority of WordPress websites are hacked because they are running out-of-date software. Because WordPress is an open-source platform, it’s constantly being updated and improved by core developers. When security issues are discovered, updates are released to fix those issues. If you can’t or won’t update your website software because of issues when updating, that’s just asking for trouble.
Here at Marketeam, we only install four core features in our Joomla environments:-
This keeps our installs lean, mean and clean, meaning we very rarely have issues with updates and upgrades.
We also choose to support the developers of these components by subscribing to the professional versions of their software. This way, we invest in ongoing updates and security patches for those particular pieces of functionality, meaning our clients can rest easy knowing their website isn’t going to fall over when they update it.
In contrast, some web development companies (particularly low-cost providers) will install free or low-cost plugins into your website that aren’t updated regularly and don’t provide security patches for new vulnerabilities. Whilst this approach saves people some money upfront, it ultimately leads to issues down the track because of the reasons listed above.
Additionally, each plugin you add requires regular updates to maintain compatibility with new versions of WordPress and other plugins. Keeping track of updates for multiple plugins can be time-consuming and confusing, and failing to update them in a timely manner can lead to compatibility issues.
To avoid these issues, it's best to limit the number of plugins you use on your website.
Only install plugins that are essential to your site's functionality, and make sure to research each plugin thoroughly before adding it to your site. Look for plugins that are well-reviewed, regularly updated, and have a large user base.
It's also important to keep your plugins updated and to remove any that you're not actively using. Regularly updating your plugins will ensure that they continue to work properly and stay secure. Removing unused plugins will reduce the number of potential entry points for hackers and help keep your site running smoothly.
Joomla offers a high level of User Roles and Access Control
Joomla gives website owners a much more granular approach to user roles and access control. This enables businesses to allocate particular roles to different team members and permissions to various users. If you have a team working on your website, you can ensure that people logging in only have access to particular areas of the site they are supposed to edit or maintain.
Likewise, setting up a members-only area within a Joomla website is easy as that functionality is built into the system. Again, you can set up groups that have access to specific content depending on the permissions you allocate to them. For example, you can have multiple tiers of membership to your website that, depending on their access levels, will see different, more or less content depending on the permissions you set up.
For more info, read our article How to add a new user in Joomla.
Joomla offers advanced content management features
If you’re wanting your website content to be able to be categorised in a logical way, Joomla offers many advanced features for managing and organising your content. As an example, you can have nested categories, which is great when you have a website with multiple pages that need to be organised logically. Joomla also offers custom fields and more granular control over article layouts.
As you can see, there are many reasons why we choose Joomla to develop a majority of our websites. The main reason is that we find it to be the best tool for the job as it allows us to build simple, one-page websites right through to complex websites with thousands of pages that require a lot of functionality.
See our article 10 questions to ask your Joomla developer before you hire them for more info.
Ultimately, whilst Joomla isn’t the most popular CMS available, it’s the one that offers the most flexibility, security and features for our customers.
We're a Joomla website design company so if you're interested in getting a free quote contact us today.
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