The Great Battle of the CMS

When it comes to selecting a content management system that best suits your criteria, there are hundreds of free CMS platforms to download online – each with the promise of easy navigation, simple data import tools and with formatting so easy you may as well be drawing the design on your screen with crayons. From our experience in selecting content management systems for development, it’s really all a case of giving certain platforms the preferential treatment; even in doing so however we’re still in a bit of a quandary when it comes to choosing the right platform for the job – It all comes down to analysing the business requirements, but we’ll save that for a bit later… Let’s start with a simple, objective comparison of two of our favourite content management systems. Thanks to a bit of research online and some web development insight, we’re pleased to bring you…

Wordpress (open-source) vs. Joomla!

Dun dun dunnn DUNNNNNN….

Maybe ignore the lame use of onomatopoeia, but I figured some sort of a drum roll/suspense siren call was needed in order to emphasise the importance of the clash. Just don’t get all judgmental on me here ‘cos I’m a bit of a nerd with English. Let’s get stuck into it then!

The battle begins now…

WordPress, like its other content management brethren, is a PHP – MySQL based application that runs off a database. The WP engine is built for the sole purpose of making the content publishing process as painless as possible, and the execution of its purpose is unparalleled by other content management systems through its clever and innovative blogging interface… But that’s just it, WordPress might by an open source CMS but its primary purpose is to function as a publishing application. The inherent flaw here is that it should not be used to host enormous databases, mainly concerning the hosting of product databases. A simple product database can be easily accommodated by the WordPress CMS, however if you’re looking to expand your product range entailing more complex product variations and IDs, then Joomla tends to outperform WordPress given its comprehensive database search functions and its inherent ability to handle larger databases without plugins – its ecommerce plugins are also exceptional.

When WordPress is configured to manage a checkout system with an expansive product range on top of several content sections as well as a blog, you will find that management of the CMS will become increasingly difficult and SEO problems will start to appear throughout your pages… Why, do you ask? Because the platform was never initially built for complex product databases; Sure there are plugins available on WordPress to help you manage the metadata of hundreds of pages, handle dynamic URLs for different page categories and filter out duplicate URLs, but the reality is that you’re only creating more work for yourself and your business by attempting to juggle all of these issues at once. A fully-loaded CMS such as Joomla is already engineered to deal with larger databases – so it’s better for handling a multiple amount of content sections. Suffice to say, you should not at all discount WordPress for not having the features you require built-in, because truth be told no CMS is built perfectly and even Joomla will require multiple plugins for various facets.

Moving on…

One thing that’s a common factor in determining a good CMS is the quality of security it provides to keep your database safe. It wouldn’t be fair to nominate one CMS as having more security flaws than the other, but when looking at the context of how each content management system is used – security issues in WordPress tend to be more common given the sheer size of its user-base. In contrasting the security issues of both platforms, WordPress seems to be more susceptible to input validation attacks such as SQL injections that manipulate strings within the code due to flaws in its PHP construct. Joomla on the other hand is also just as susceptible to input validation attacks similar to those in WordPress, however I would envisage that these would be less common due to the smaller user-base. It seems that each CMS can ensure that it’s protected against such attacks by performing regular backups and sanitising the code before using a SQL query – I’m fairly sure that this issue has been addressed in the latest versions WordPress and Joomla.

SEO compatibility

When it comes to the support of search engine optimisation, it’s “Avada Kedavra” to every single other content management system because WordPress is unquestionably the industry leader for the quality of plugins, as you can make your entire website search engine friendly within a few clicks and keystrokes – and when we say, “quality of plugins” we’re referring to them from a usability point of view as they are very accessible and relatively easy to locate. If you want to be comparing SEO modules from a performance standpoint, then the best plugins available on both WordPress and Joomla achieve the same results. We personally prefer WordPress for its All-in-One SEO pack, however Joomla delivers its own SEO power-house plugin… What are we talkin’? We’re talkin’ JoomSEF, baby!

I’m sure if you laid the top two plugins side by side, you’d develop a few prejudices towards one or the other, but for the time being just accept that fact that the SEO support of both content management systems is pretty much where it needs to be.

So what’s the verdict..?

It’s too hard to point a discerning finger directly at either WordPress or Joomla based on the simple fact that each of their applications is entirely subjective. How we determine which CMS to use is fairly simple: we scale up the client’s needs. If a client is looking for an ‘out of the box’, no nonsense CMS to manage simple product or function then we use WordPress, however if the client is a larger enterprise, let’s say a large retail chain for example, we use Joomla to handle the complexity of the database.

So there you have it… There’s our side by side comparison of two of our recommended content management systems. End result? No-one wins. Our programmers prefer Joomla, and our designers put their money on WordPress.

Got an opinion on these two amazing systems? Now is the time to vent your true feelings…

6 Responses So Far

1. 1

   By Ian on 30 January, 2010 at 3:15 am

   Both the CMS provides great SEO plug ins, and that is the most important part in today’s competitive era of websites.

2. 2

   By Mark on 1 February, 2010 at 9:47 am

   thanks for the comment Ian – agreed, but it’s also the quality of the plugins on offer that should seal the deal when choosing your CMS. The problem is though, there are way too many plugins too choose from.

3. 3

   By Gery on 1 February, 2010 at 6:24 pm

   what a very informative article! I’m a newbie of webpage development/designing and yeah, it’s really great to know how these booming websites and internet domination affect the SEO and online marketing world.

4. 4

   By David on 7 April, 2010 at 5:33 am

   Great post, the reasons i moved away from my Joomla cms was that i needed to address the 30-40 second load times. Its around 9-11 seconds on the new Wordpress cms and i now have the one-click update cms/plugins when required.

   The changing a blog platform into a cms can take a significant amount of time and some hacks but it will never be a pure cms platform.

5. 5

   By Mark on 7 April, 2010 at 11:09 am

   Thanks for the genuine comments guys – David, agreed that it can take some time but I don’t think I would categorise it as never being a ‘pure’ cms platform… They’ve come along way with Wordpress, to the point now where you can even install multiple sites off the one cms. I think it gets misconstrued a little bit because it still carries the stigma of a blog platform…

   It does become a bit of a pain with setting up categories and tag structures (the guys in here have become guns at it, but i see where it could get painful!). I think that the new 3.0 release will address some of these points however… We can’t wait to get our hands on the new release and try it out for ourselves

6. 6

   By William Ayden on 13 August, 2010 at 3:33 pm

   Great post, the topic for discussion is very interesting.
   I love wordpress. It is an excellent CMS when it comes to blogging and publishing your brain-work and thoughts.