Literally, anyone can build their own business website or blog with the free software solutions available today. Yes, exactly. I meant about the free content management systems that are dominating the web design and development arsenal. Wordpress vs Joomla: it’s something like comparing apples to oranges. Both come up with abundant features, an extensive range of responsive themes, and plug-ins.

Still, let us have a look at the comparison between WordPress and Joomla to make sure which CMS would be your choice. Whether a usual business website or e-commerce platform or a blog.

WordPress Vs Joomla – An Quick Overview

Most of the popular content management systems like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc. will have a lot of features and characteristics in common. Only in a few aspects, one will deviate from others with its unique pros and cons. That difference is the key for you to choose your suitable CMS. Choosing a content management system is a critical decision.

You can easily separate the wheat from chaffs. Plenty of CMS is available though. WordPress and Joomla are the leading open source CMS running websites. Hence, it’s like a piece of cake garnering these two out from the crowd.

But, how to single-out your ‘the BEST’ out of it. Hence, I am going to help out with the detailed insights about each one.

What’s Common in WordPress and Joomla?

Few basic similarities that lie between these two favorite content management systems: WordPress vs Joomla.

• Both WordPress and Joomla are open source content management systems and GPL licensed.
• Both are written in PHP and based on the MySQL database management system. A small cliche, WordPress exclusively supports MySQL whereas Joomla supports other DBMS too.
• Both have a repository of themes for visual abilities and plug-ins for added functionalities. The difference lies only in the names. Themes and plugins in WordPress while templates and extensions in Joomla.
• Both have their own community of developers, designers, users, trainers, and volunteers. It aims to knowledge sharing, events organizing, supporting users, releasing new updates and resolving issues, if any.
• Both are perfect for any type of business websites, or blogs, or e-commerce websites or any online publications.

Though there are a lot of similarities between these two CMS WordPress vs Joomla; they differ in several things. Like how to handle themes and templates, the volume of resources available, security risks, policies and so on.

And, this difference makes a huge impact on the user’s to nudge something specifically. Let’s see how it is going to impact you.

WordPress vs Joomla: Let’s Compare it!

Let’s run through a 9-round comparison between WordPress and Joomla to understand both to the core. After all, you will get to know how WordPress tops the rank, and it makes other CMS run for its money.

1. Market Share/Popularity

WordPress – Recent reports based on big data by a few top companies’ states that WordPress is the top content management system. It powers around 27% of sites over the web. Fortunately, WordPress 4.7 version downloads was around 20 million. WordPress contributes 14.7% of the top 100 websites in the world. The great thing is, WordPress is towards its growth curve, it never sleeps.

Joomla – No way, it lags. Joomla comes almost close to WordPress in many aspects. There are around 2.8 million websites powered by Joomla. Apparently, it touches 75 million downloads. Joomla is the very next most popular CMS with its contribution about 7.2% of websites.

2. User-friendliness

WordPress – Installation will not take more than 5 minutes for any reason. With WordPress, it’s quite easy to build simple websites within no time. It can be anything from creating pages to including widgets to adding images to generating contact forms to anything.

It’s just like a piece of cake to copy and paste the content from Microsoft Word Document into your new website. Even beginners will find it comfy to use WordPress with zero technical coding skills.

Joomla – Though Joomla installation is reasonably quick to do; still it might take few more minutes than WordPress installation. Joomla needs some additional configuration. Even it is simple right behind WordPress, but not as intuitive as it. Still, it’s fairly easy to draft and tweak posts in Joomla.

3. Resources & AMP Customization

WordPress – By default, WordPress installation comes with pre-installed themes. Also, you can install and activate any free themes from the WordPress themes directory. Not only this, but you may also find more responsive premium themes from marketplaces like MyThemeShop, StudioPress, etc. WordPress has more than three thousand free themes alone.

WordPress is the only platform that has most of the free plug-ins to make your website more functional. It has about 44K plug-ins. Like themes, you can either use free plug-ins from the WordPress directory or buy premium themes from WordPress plug-in developers.

Installing and activating WordPress themes and plug-ins are straightforward, and it is simple to find specific themes or plug-ins from its directory.

WooCommerce is one of the most popular plug-ins that connect WordPress and e-commerce together.

Joomla – It is no way restricts itself in offering a repository of resources like themes and plug-ins. Oh. I made a mistake. Themes and plug-ins are called in the name of templates and extensions in Joomla. The great thing is Joomla has its extensions under three main categories: plug-ins, modules, and components. This grouping makes its user get an extension based on the need for certain functionality.

Installing an extension in Joomla might be tedious. You will have to accompany with extension manager for downloading and uploading any extension file. Both CMS allows you to customize the existing codes, based on individual themes and plug-ins policies. I guess you will find WordPress theme customization is comparatively breeze than Joomla, being a non-technical savvy or beginner.

4. SEO

In the perspective of search engine optimization, both WordPress and Joomla developers catered with that in mind.

WordPress – We have a Yoast SEO plug-in that can take care of your on-page SEO and also suggests you improve your content readability. With this master SEO plug-in, you can even optimize your content against target keywords, necessary link placements, image components, etc.

Joomla – Like WordPress, Joomla is also wiser with its EFSEO plug-in. Like Yoast, this plug-in you can though edit your Meta tags in the front end. Moreover, both the CMS gets you more responsive and SEO-friendly themes/templates and plug-ins/extensions.

5. Support

The support function is key for any beginner to prefer any content management system, especially for beginners.

WordPress – It has a great community of users, developers, designers, and volunteers. You will find more online publications, forums, slack communities crunching about WordPress. In multiple ways, you can avail free WordPress support, video tutorials, from the core WordPress team or its wings.

With its popularity in the market, it’s dead easy to find WordPress interests to get even paid premium support on anything about WordPress. Above all, it is affordable for newbies too.

Joomla – It never gives it up. Like WordPress, it also has a strong community of Joomla lovers. For more instant or interactive support, subscribe to its email list or join forum communications. You will also find 3rd party resources and volunteers who are dedicated to assisting on Joomla. Also, the extensive guide on the Joomla website is more than enough for beginners to get started with.

It might be slight complex to get a Joomla expert at an affordable cost, like in WordPress.

6. Security

WordPress – Compared to any other CMS platforms, WordPress sites will have more vulnerable security threats. Being the dominant CMS in the industry, those sites are highly targeted by hackers. Still, WordPress is built on a strong security code that can deal with those malware threats. Further, you can secure your WordPress websites with two-factor authentication, automated back-ups, firewalls, reliable hosting, etc.

Joomla – It is also capable of standing against illegal threat and malware attacks with its security vulnerability. You can follow the same security tactics to protect your Joomla sites from hacking as you do with WordPress websites.

7. Multi-Language Support

WordPress – With the help of certain plug-ins you can build multi-lingual sites with WordPress. In the WordPress admin area settings, you can add your new languages among 53 language choices available.

Joomla – By default, Joomla enables you to design multi-lingual websites with its Language Manager.

Final Words: WordPress vs Joomla

Both Joomla and WordPress are amazing CMS platforms trending these days. Joomla has more built-in features like extensions to manage your products and content all-in-place (for e-commerce sites), multi-lingual options, etc. that even WordPress lacks.

Still, WordPress leads with its ease-of-use, the high volume of themes and plug-ins, large community, responsiveness, and so on. Even non-technical having zero coding knowledge will find it beginner-friendly. I am not to nudge you; I am helping you with the real facts comparing WordPress vs Joomla.

Think about downloads, WordPress – more 140 Million and Joomla – around 75 million. Then, WordPress forms nearly 27% of total internet websites whereas Joomla around 3%. You will now understand which is the best CMS for you: WordPress vs Joomla.

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