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#1 October 28 2013

Locha
Member

Joomla vs Wordpress ?

Good evening guys,

I was asked to do a website for a budget of 600/1000 $ for a company that doesn't need more than 5 pages and a bit of design. What do you suggest to choose to work on? Which platform? Joomla or WordPress? any other advice?

Thank you for your concern.

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#2 October 28 2013

Nabs
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

If you're focusing on design, then it's neither. Build from scratch, I say.

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#3 October 28 2013

rolf
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

Well yeah in general I would say neither, but if I have to choose, I'd say ditch Joomla, always. I've had nothing but bad experiences with it - except maybe at the very beginning, when you don't know how to build anything, and you create new pages in Joomla, and wooo! you see them on the website... look, magic!! But that's all.

Wordpress seems to be better quality overlall - but it was initially designed for blog-like websites, not like what you described.

Wordpress can help you churn websites fast and cheap, for people who want to get online and aren't very picky about the look and the design, nor the performance or the ease of using the backend.

If the website will be mostly static, with no real need for a CMS, please use plain HTML/CSS from scratch!

PS: if the price that you gave includes the design work, it's pretty low. If you tell me about such a thing, I would say once you pay the designer, there will be maybe $500 left for me, so no. (Although I would have said yes and been happy about it a couple of years ago!).
But if they're ok with you sticking a logo on a template, or having the design work done by an amateur designer, then go ahead and enjoy!

Last edited by rolf (October 28 2013)

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#4 October 28 2013

Joe
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

I have limited experience with both of them, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
I would naively go for Wordpress, not because it's any better, but because it's (slightly) more popular. Popularity has its benefits, mainly you'll find it easier to host, you'll get more support for your problems and more plugins for any specific needs you may have.

But more importantly, I would absolutely not build from scratch. Even for an experienced web designer, reinventing the wheel is a bad decision. I've talked about this before.

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#5 October 29 2013

MrClass
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

It all depends on how good of a web designer and developer are you. I prefer Joomla because you can drastically redesign the existing templates to anything you want. But this requires alot of experience in CSS and PHP; in addition to fully comprehending how Joomla is built. I don't understand why people are recommending Wordpress as a website platform; Wordpress is more of a blogging platform than a regular website. It works beautifully with many social networks but renders useless if the company does not want user comments on their pages. The Joomla community is large enough and you'll find thousands of extensions to use (you might need to do some tweaking to these extensions before using them in production).

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#6 October 29 2013

rolf
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

rahmu wrote:

But more importantly, I would absolutely not build from scratch. Even for an experienced web designer, reinventing the wheel is a bad decision. I've talked about this before.

It's not reinventing the wheel, it's called using something that already exists, which is HTML and CSS.

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#7 October 29 2013

samer
Admin

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

But more importantly, I would absolutely not build from scratch. Even for an experienced web designer, reinventing the wheel is a bad decision. I've talked about this before.

Wouldn't you think it's overkill to use a bulky PHP CMS to build a simple 5 page website? Moreover, both Wordpress and Joomla have to be actively maintained (security updates) as they are highly scrutinized by attackers because of their popularity.

If you are keen on using PHP, just write it the website by hand and use PHP includes for the redundant parts.

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#8 October 29 2013

rtp
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

Even though I had limited experience with both Joomla and Wordpress, i would highly recommend Wordpress.
I think wordpress is far superior when it comes to user friendliness.

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#9 October 29 2013

Joe
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

samer wrote:

Wouldn't you think it's overkill to use a bulky PHP CMS to build a simple 5 page website?

No I don't think that it's overkill to follow a framework (or to an extent a CMS) to build something that simple. PHP is bulky, I think we can agree on this. Personally, if I wanted to build a 5 page website, I'd probably use something like Jekyll or Octopress. But the question specifically asked for Wordpress vs Joomla.

Moreover, both Wordpress and Joomla have to be actively maintained (security updates) as they are highly scrutinized by attackers because of their popularity.

This is a variation on the security by obscurity argument. It's doesn't work like that. You're going to need to maintain your website, especially for security updates, regardless of how you built it. Vulnerabilities are not only found in frameworks, but also in PHP, in web browsers, in web servers, etc.

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#10 October 29 2013

rolf
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

rahmu if I sometimes choose to "build from scratch", it's not because I like to "reinvent the wheel", but believe in the KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid - I know you know) principle, and it does pays off sometimes.

When you are going to have more code, more layers, more complexity, you are also going to have more potential bugs, and, yes, security holes. Which means more frequent updates necessary - and that is regardless of security by obscurity.

And one more thing, when you build a website, you are often trying to invent something new to some extent. It is a good thing when you and your team are not constrained by limits of whatever framework or pre-built CMS you are using, and they will get in your way at some point... hello creativity and experimentation! I just wish more people would take advantage of that.

I am not saying your approach is moot, but I am advocating a more measured approach - and I am against your extremism, as I perceive it when you say "I would absolutely not build from scratch". I wonder what brought you to have such an opinion.

PS: It must be conceded that there is a little of each in both... Using a pre-built CMS is sometimes the KISS choice, compared to developing and maintaining your own source code with all the concerns that come with that... And using a framework or library is sometimes reinventing the wheel, take for example templating engines out there... well PHP is a template language already!
Like you I also seem to have a somehow emotional reaction to the topic, and also can make it something personal sometimes!

Besides, there's not such thing as "building from scratch", in the pure sense, I mean we're not writing assembly, are we?

Last edited by rolf (October 29 2013)

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#11 October 29 2013

Joe
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

Yes rolf, you're right I exaggerated. I tend to get carried away when trying to make a point.
I still maintain though that telling @Locha to avoid Joomla/Wordpress is bad advice.

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#12 October 29 2013

samer
Admin

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

Sure, he still needs to maintain the PHP binary, the web server, the SSH daemon and anything else that can be attacked. However, using a framework will make the attack surface wider. OP wants to build a very simple static website. I believe that given this particular situation, writing the whole thing in HTML and using a PHP "require" for the redundant parts is more secure than maintaining a whole CMS (which widens the attack surface by accepting user input and interacting with a database). My reply was not an attack on frameworks, I just don't think Wordpress or Joomla are the right tools for the job in this particular situation.

rahmu wrote:

Moreover, both Wordpress and Joomla have to be actively maintained (security updates) as they are highly scrutinized by attackers because of their popularity.

This is a variation on the security by obscurity argument. It's doesn't work like that. You're going to need to maintain your website, especially for security updates, regardless of how you built it. Vulnerabilities are not only found in frameworks, but also in PHP, in web browsers, in web servers, etc.

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#13 October 29 2013

rtp
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

who wants to attack an irrelevant company website ? which contain 5 pages

Last edited by rtp (October 29 2013)

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#14 October 29 2013

rolf
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

rtp wrote:

who wants to attack an irrelevant company website ? which contain 5 pages

It's not a personal thing. Your website will be scanned by computers who scan a great number of websites per hour for known vulnerabilities.

rahmu wrote:

Yes rolf, you're right I exaggerated. I tend to get carried away when trying to make a point.
I still maintain though that telling @Locha to avoid Joomla/Wordpress is bad advice.

Well maybe I misread you, and I seem to have gotten carried away too, likewise. Anyway, I believe you did make a point, and it is appreciated! Also, thanks for the links, I'll be checking them out in more details - especially Jekyll.

Last edited by rolf (October 29 2013)

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#15 October 29 2013

samer
Admin

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

rtp wrote:

who wants to attack an irrelevant company website ? which contain 5 pages

It would not be a targeted attack. A worm could infect it.

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#16 October 30 2013

rtp
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

My point was that in this situation, security is not a critical issue.  There are no transaction involved, it's a simple online presence.

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#17 October 30 2013

samer
Admin

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

rtp wrote:

My point was that in this situation, security is not a critical issue.  There are no transaction involved, it's a simple online presence.

Wouldn't it reflect badly on this company to be serving spammy pages?

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#18 October 30 2013

rtp
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

samer wrote:
rtp wrote:

My point was that in this situation, security is not a critical issue.  There are no transaction involved, it's a simple online presence.

Wouldn't it reflect badly on this company to be serving spammy pages?

He is using a well known CMS, I doubt it will go without fixing... Both Joomla and Wordpress are mainstream.

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#19 October 31 2013

Locha
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

Thanks mates for the advice and i really enjoyed your discussion in the previous posts. I would like to ask in case you want to build a cms website, would you build the whole management system from scratch? What is your opinion about Drupal ?

Thank you again.

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#20 November 7 2013

hussam
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

Drupal is very heavy and slow. Wordpress is much lighter. Both will require some additions (modules in drupal and plugins in wordpress) but wordpress will always be lighter on resources.
For drupal, you may need ctools,metatag, token amd xmlsitemap modules. Finding a good theme is not easy.
There are a lot of drupal theme frameworks not not very themes or attractive ones.
One positive thing about drupal is the flexibility of custom urls. I can create a mywebsite.com/projects/something/blah/blah without the need to have a parent /projects and /projects/something.
Drupal as a whole is designed to be a framework you can use to make your own distribution and everyone will encourage you to write your own modules.

wordpress is very light on resources, and has many themes that work well for CMS purposes as well as blogs. An example of a wordpress website http://www.gnome.org/
one disadvangate of wordpress ithe the lack of flexbility of custom urls. I can't have mywebsite.com/projects/something/ custom url without having a parent mywebsite.com/projects/ custom url.
wordpress has a plugin for everything but you probably just need all-in-one-seo-pack. Wordpress is a ready to work out of the box product.

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#21 November 25 2013

Lobo
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

Wordpress is mainly designed to handle blogs it is not a suitable platform for anything else than what it was intended to be.

On the other hand Joomla is a fully fledged CMS that has unlimited capabilities nevertheless be very cautious if you want to develop under Joomla as it requires a lot of experience with all the attributes of coding and web design. "It's not a walk in the park" if you're not a truly experienced developer / designer.

Drupal is the king of the hill when it comes to CMS as you can build from scratch the modules / plugins / compnents which means you should be totally proficient in Joomla to move up to Drupal....

Best Choice for a 5 page website is custom HTML with a CSS style sheet. And study your design and coding before you jump into it to write some clean code and keep everything simple and easy to maintain.

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#22 November 25 2013

Nabs
Member

Re: Joomla vs Wordpress ?

@Lobo, it is true that Drupal is way more than Wordpress, but Wordpress can be used to create web apps. Check out scripts like ClassiPress and Vantage, the user can't even tell it's Wordpress.

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