Made in 2003, WordPress is the world’s most popular Content Management System (CMS), powering over 40% of the web. Dozens of Fortune 500 companies use WordPress to make their websites, including The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros. Discovery. Even this blog is powered by WordPress.
Joomla, on the other hand, was released in 2005 and has been in decline since. It powers 3% of the web. These statistics might not seem impressive, but Joomla is still the second most popular CMS. And just because WordPress is more popular doesn’t mean it’s right for you.
In this post, we will discuss the pros and cons of both WordPress and Joomla and determine which is right for you.
Ease of use
Both WordPress and Joomla are open-source and can be easily installed on your web server. After installation is where things get a little different.
On WordPress, you can add pages and posts to your blog by using the drag-and-drop block editor. The block editor allows you easily add elements and format the content without any hassle.
Joomla, on the other hand, lacks the ease of use that WordPress has. When editing an “article” (what Joomla calls a post), rather than a handy block editor, Joomla offers a simple text editor, not unlike Microsoft Word or Google Docs.
That’s not to say that Joomla’s text editor isn’t good, but it lacks the flexibility of WordPress’s block editor. Both platforms allow you to directly edit the source code of the post if you want the extra customizability.
Once you publish your article, things can get a little bit confusing on Joomla, as it may not immediately show up on the homepage. WordPress categorizes everything into Posts and Pages, and you can change the style of your website by using the Theme Customizer. With Joomla, customizing pages and making your articles show on the homepage was a headache.
To get the articles to show up on the homepage, they must be set to a featured article. To add a page, an article has to be created first and then assigned to a menu item. Sounds confusing? It is.
With its clear navigation and convenient block editor, WordPress is much easier to learn and use than Joomla.
Customizability
Both WordPress and Joomla allow you to easily customize your website by adding themes and templates. These completely change the look and feel of your website. WordPress offers a theme repository with over ten thousand free themes. Joomla does not offer an official template repository, forcing you to download themes from external websites. However, Joomla templates are generally more customizable (albeit with a steep learning curve.)
When it comes to extending the functionality of your website, WordPress takes the win too. WordPress has over 60,000 plugins that could be used to extend the functionality of your website. While Joomla also offers plugins, their library is much more limited.
Which Runs Better on Free Hosting?
Both WordPress and Joomla are self-hosted, meaning that they need to be installed and ran on a web server. However, not everybody wants to pay for web space, so they might opt for free hosting.
While free hosting is great, there may be more limited server power than on paid hosting. As such, your website needs to be well-optimized to ensure it runs great on free hosting.
Both WordPress and Joomla are quick and well-optimized, meaning that both will run great on free hosting. But, as more plugins and themes are added, it might slow down the website a little bit. Either way, both CMSs will suit you perfectly if you want a fast website.
Final Verdict
While WordPress seems like the clear winner here, there are some cases where Joomla might be better. This doesn’t mean that Joomla is a bad option though. If you know what you’re doing, Joomla might attract you with its flexible templates and better user management. For the majority of people, however, WordPress will take the cake.