WordPress and Joomla are two of the more popular Content Management Systems used on the web today. Both are free and easy to install and both allow you to get your content online quickly without the need for an in-depth knowledge of HTML. Professional website design is important but equally important is the ability to edit website after it is launched. While on the surface WordPress and Joomla are very similar, if we dig a little deeper we will find that both have traits that make them more desirable for certain applications.
Blog vs. Website While it’s possible to host a blog or website on either CMS, after further investigation it becomes obvious that WordPress is more suited to hosting blogs while Joomla! offers more flexibility for building the website. For an amateur blogger who just wants to host their own blog, WordPress offers a quick and user friendly interface that allows users to edit and upload their posts as well as make simple changes to the default template without too much grief. A user creates a post and publishes it. All post will then appear in chronological order on the front page of their site by default.
Through the appearance menu the user can change the masthead of the sites default template as well as add or remove menu items and widgets as they please. It’s also possible to browse through and select free, templates from within the WordPress backend which can then be edited in the same way. With WordPress a user and can be up and blogging within an hour. In Joomla a user creates articles and then selects weather or not to display these articles on the home page or in the own specific page. This is more suited to website lay out where different pages display different articles as opposed a blog layout where all articles are displayed on one page. While is possible to display articles in a blog layout with Joomla! it’s not nearly as straight forward as in WordPress. Joomla’s strength lies in the ability to create pages with varying content, not just different articles. Using modules and positions the user can display different pieces of content in different position on different pages.
A newsletter signup module that would be confined to the right or left hand column in a WordPress site can displayed above or below the main article as well as to the left or the right, or even in the banner if mood takes. Most templates come with large selection of module positions to choose from and with a basic knowledge of HTML module positions can be created and edited easily while maintaining the overall look of the site as presented by the template.
Doing this in WordPress involves a steeper learning curve and in trying to do so you will soon discover that WordPress is not as well documented online as Joomla. So in closing, for a blogger looking to host their own blog, WordPress is the way to go. For a small business or organisation looking to get their info online Joomla! provides a more flexible option. For more information on great deals on setup and hosting of a custom Joomla! and WordPress sites with professional website design, visit us at www.epresence.ie. For more info on wordpress visit WordPress.Org and for Joomla visit Joomla.Org
