This site has been our first project with Wordpress.  We are very well versed in Joomla.  We haved used Joomla since the days of Mambo for a very large number of sites.  So, these opinions are based on these experiences and this really serves as more of a comparison of the two.

Firstly, I want to talk about the overall impressions on the inteface and casual user interaction.  Wordpress has quite wowed me here.  Obviously there are caveats that drive me crazy, such as the inability to disable certain elements of the admin.  When building out a site for a client, some of the items in the admin can be quite confusing.  I would like the ability to enable and disaable certain features of the admin on a per user basis.  Elements such as links and plugins and widgets are things the casual users should not be confused with.  Links is really something that should be done away with all together, but thats a rant for another day.

The one thing that makes WP stand apart from Joomla and the other CMSes that I have tested out over the years is its standard posting system and integration with media.  They have done an excellent job here, and writing content, the main reason for an admin interface, has really been made quite simple.  Again, I would like to be able to disable certain elements of even this section on a per user basis, but, to WP credit, they have implemented a very nice “Screen Options tab at the top of every page so you can customize what is displayed!  Kudos here!

Overall though, the admin interface for adding and editing content is a fresh breath of air for us and we look forward to getting some client feedback here as Joomla has presented issues over the years with its rather steep learning curve, especially in the media adding department!

Now, onto the technical side.  The best way of descriubing the difference between Joomla and many other CMSes out there and WP is that WP is made to be a blog.  Yes, you can extend it and build it up to do alot more, but its honestly meant to be a blog and display mostly just textual content and articles, or pages.  This is what it does well and this is why it serves well for alot of sites.  However, when it comes to adding in additional applications and more sophisticated features, Joomla wins here, hands down; at least from a simplified end user standard.  Its easier to get something up and running with a fair level of complexity in very little time.  With WP, everything is custom.  Now, I personally like the fact that alot of this is custom.  This means I have more control over individual layout more so.  But, the new Joomla 1.5 has the added benefit of an MVC framework now, which makes customization of the view pages possible.  Although, I find the documentation and the “Loop” of WP to be much nicer, at least for now.

The actual frameworks of the two are not really something to be comparing b/c they are actually written to do different things, but I will give my 2 cents on this anyway… Joomla’s framework is alot cleaner in 1.5 than it use to be, the move to a MVC framework and the efforts of the dev team have really improved things as of late.  However, its still built to be a true CMS which controls nearly every aspect of the site from the menu to the users to simple statistics.  Wordpress on the other hand, is a much more simplified, streamlined, clean, framework, built with automated updates (coming in Joomla 1.6), and not alot of other control aspects.  It also has a very nice SEF url rewriting system, albeit a little buggy at times.

So, which is better and which will we use?  Thats a good question that cannot be answered straight up.  Each one has its advantages and each one will probably be used on a per case basis.  Sites that require very little user management and/or application integration will most likely be placed on a WP framework, whereas, the others will be placed on a Joomla framework, or, better yet, build custom using the Symfony framework.

So, there you have it, our down and dirty, after jumping in and learning WP and putting together our new portfolio site in just a couple days.  Please be sure to leave any and all of your comments and suggestions on this topic, we would love to hear.