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
-
Robots.txt blocked internal resources Wordpress
Hi all, We've recently migrated a Wordpress website from staging to live, but the robots.txt was deleted. I've created the following new one: User-agent: *
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C
Allow: /
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php However, in the site audit on SemRush, I now get the mention that a lot of pages have issues with blocked internal resources in robots.txt file. These blocked internal resources are all cached and minified css elements: links, images and scripts. Does this mean that Google won't crawl some parts of these pages with blocked resources correctly and thus won't be able to follow these links and index the images? In other words, is this any cause for concern regarding SEO? Of course I can change the robots.txt again, but will urls like https://example.com/wp-content/cache/minify/df983.js end up in the index? Thanks for your thoughts!2 -
Sudden drop in organic traffic after migration from Django to Wordpress.
I have seen a sudden drop organic reach in a particular page of our website www.hackerearth.com/innovation earlier this was www.hackerearth.com/sprint. I although understand that it happens while migration but it has been a while we did the migration. The migration happened around May month. Something similar has happened to our blog. Earlier it was a blog.hackerearth.com now hackerearth.com/blog _Could anyone suggest me what could be the possible issue for the drop in traffic? _
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rajnish_HE0 -
Moving html site to wordpress and 301 redirect from index.htm to index.php or just www.example.com
I found page duplicate content when using Moz crawl tool, see below. http://www.example.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gozmoz
Page Authority 40
Linking Root Domains 31
External Link Count 138
Internal Link Count 18
Status Code 200
1 duplicate http://www.example.com/index.htm
Page Authority 19
Linking Root Domains 1
External Link Count 0
Internal Link Count 15
Status Code 200
1 duplicate I have recently transfered my old html site to wordpress.
To keep the urls the same I am using a plugin which appends .htm at the end of each page. My old site home page was index.htm. I have created index.htm in wordpress as well but now there is a conflict of duplicate content. I am using latest post as my home page which is index.php Question 1.
Should I also use redirect 301 im htaccess file to transfer index.htm page authority (19) to www.example.com If yes, do I use
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com/index.php
or
Redirect 301 /index.htm http://www.example.com Question 2
Should I change my "Home" menu link to http://www.example.com instead of http://www.example.com/index.htm that would fix the duplicate content, as indx.htm does not exist anymore. Is there a better option? Thanks0 -
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 -
Updated Wordpress version and installed SEO plugin, ranking went down
Last week, we updated our Wordpress version to the most recent version, and installed the SEO plugin. Our rankings immediately went down from #9 to #19. Is this normal? Will our rankings improve once the search engines crawl our site in the next couple weeks? Any feedback is helpful!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | safiaabbasi0 -
Wordpress blog in a subdirectory not being indexed by Google
HI MozzersIn my websites sitemap.xml, pages are listed, such as /blog/ and /blog/textile-fact-or-fiction-egyptian-cotton-explained/These pages are visible when you visit them in a browser and when you use the Google Webmaster tool - Fetch as Google to view them (see attachment), however they aren't being indexed in Google, not even the root directory for the blog (/blog/) is being indexed, and when we query:site: www.hilden.co.uk/blog/ It returns 0 results in Google.Also note that:The Wordpress installation is located at /blog/ which is a subdirectory of the main root directory which is managed by Magento. I'm wondering if this causing the problem.Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!AnthonyToTOHuj.png?1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Wordpress No 404
Hello, My issue is that in wordpress 404 does not seem to be working properly. An example of this is: sitename.com/category/catname loads the files in that category but I can also type sitename.com/category/asdasfaasd/catname and it still goes to the posts in that category and does not 404. I can replace the misc text with anything and it does not 404. My worry is that this can be used to exploit duplicate content. I've looked at a couple of other sites and they do the same. I'm using Yoast as my SEO plugin and my theme is elogix from themeforest. I've tried disabling all plugins, cloudflare and changing theme and the same issue exists. If anyone can help it would be extremely appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LukeHutchinson0 -
Redirecting site from html/php to wordpress
I've never come across this and haven't been able to really find anything that explains it very well. I want to get opinions before we make a definitive decision. Here's the scenario... I am working on a site that was built in HTML/PHP and some of the pages are ranking pretty well. (some page 1, but not number 1) We are going to start using the Wordpress platform by year's end. The pages that were built in html have been built a little spammy but they still rank. I just think they are keyword stuffed a little and not very "reader friendly" (I think the last person was spinning content). So, we've built completely new content on our new pages and we've commissioned really good content writers for them. I will be handling the on-page SEO going forward so I know what to do there. My questions are this.... Should I 301 the old pages to the new pages with the better content? (old pages have the .html or .php extensions so www.example.com/keyword.php will become www.example.com/keyword-keyword Is there any negative side to doing this since the content will be completely different then the old pages that are being 301 from. (Keywords are pretty much staying the same with the exception of minor variations. ie, www.example.com/red-cashmere-sweater.php to www.example.com/cashmere-sweater) I ask this because I've moved sites before where I've just changed the location of the same content. I've never done it where the content is changing and so is the URL extension. Thank you in advance for your help and guidance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DarinPirkey0