Joomla vs. Wordpress- Which would be best with Rockettheme?
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- brandall
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 46
- Thanks: 5
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I used to use Joomla, up until the 2.5 update. I've since been a huge Wordpress guy, and most commercial plugins I have are Wordpress. I've subscribed in the past to the Wordpress club, and I'm thinking of renewing finally.
But Joomla seems to have come a long ways. So I'm curious on whether or not a Joomla membership would be beneficial to me, or just stick with Wordpress? What differences will there be in terms of available plugins, theme functionality, etc.(not CMS functionality, as I'm pretty familiar with those differences)?
It seems like Rockettheme still focuses a bit more on their Joomla club, so is the benefit that much greater? I can't afford to subscribe to both, unfortunately.
In general, do you find that Joomla and Wordpress have similar performance? I very finely tune my Wordpress sites to load fast and be SEO friendly. Is Joomla better these days in that area?
Any and all thoughts on the matter are appreciated. Thanks!
Brent
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
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Joomla is on sort of an odd release system with STS (Short Term Releases) and LTS (Long Term Releases). What's been happening is the short term releases have been buggy and are more like alpha and beta versions, so its a use with caution issue.
Yes, we do design for Joomla first so all new designs you will see then hit that club first and then trickle down to the others.
Gantry will be similar for both Joomla and Wordpress, so you shouldn't have too much of an issue between those if you're already familiar with each CMS.
SEO can be fine for both as well as fast page loading.
I know that all still kind of hits the middle of the road for you, so I say go with what you are comfortable with. If you've found that Wordpress leaves you wanting some features Joomla has, then maybe its a time to make a jump, but if you've had everything you need and customize the themes, then maybe sticking with the one you're used to is best.
Both are strong platforms...maybe flip a coin?
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- brandall
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 46
- Thanks: 5
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Thanks Ben! I had left Joomla a few years ago(when 2.5 was still in beta) because it seemed overly clunky to me. I did test their backend demo of the recent releases, and it's definitely cleaned up a bit. But it's hard to really tell without doing some real tests, which take time, especially when it comes to SEO and speed tests.
I do love Wordpress, and am more familiar with it by far, all the way up to specific htaccess rules that do wonders with it. I'm also very comfortable with it's theme and plugin structure, and customizing the CMS.
I guess I am just having a "grass is greener" moment, wanting to make sure I'm offering my clients the best without sacrificing workflow on my end. I was just worried that maybe there was more to offer in the Joomla themes. I'm really impressed in how the Rockettheme themes have improved, especially in terms of responsiveness and efficiency/speed. I had stopped using RT themes for a while because earlier versions of Gantry seemed a little heavy to me. Now it is MUCH better. So I want to subscribe again, but just didn't know which club to join.
I noticed, for instance, that one of the newer Joomla themes had pricing tables already styled out. Will that feature be in the Wordpress version of the theme when it's released as well? Or is it a plugin that is only available for Joomla? Are there any other plugins that are available for one but not the other?
Thanks for your help!
Brent
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
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- Thanks: 42
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So sounds like the big question is if you want to deal with learning the tricks and tips of a new system or not.
As far as plugins, they're pretty comparable:
http://www.rockettheme.com/extensions-joomla
http://www.rockettheme.com/wordpress-plugins
You'll see the RokFeatureTable is listed for both systems, so you're good there.
Unless there is a large component that absolutely need from Joomla, I might stick with Wordpress if I were you.
There is more flexibility with Joomla as far as design goes as its developed more for those purposes instead of initially being just a blogging tool, but both have come along far enough that I'd stick with what you are comfortable with.
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- brandall
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 46
- Thanks: 5
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Ben Lee wrote:
So sounds like the big question is if you want to deal with learning the tricks and tips of a new system or not.Thanks Ben! Sounds like I'll probably stick with Wordpress then. I can't access the club plugin page for Wordpress, so I didn't know what was included.
As far as plugins, they're pretty comparable:
http://www.rockettheme.com/extensions-joomla
http://www.rockettheme.com/wordpress-plugins
You'll see the RokFeatureTable is listed for both systems, so you're good there.
Unless there is a large component that absolutely need from Joomla, I might stick with Wordpress if I were you.
There is more flexibility with Joomla as far as design goes as its developed more for those purposes instead of initially being just a blogging tool, but both have come along far enough that I'd stick with what you are comfortable with.
I don't have anything that I know I NEED Joomla for. It's more just taking a look at the landscape again as it's been a while. I'm pretty confident in the abilities of Wordpress, so I'll start with that. I will probably get back up to speed on Joomla on some test sites for now, and maybe jump in to that membership down the road if it's needed.
Thanks for your help!
Brent
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
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If you do want to mess with Joomla a little bit, a lot of us here like working with the Afterburner2 template which is a free one.
http://demo.rockettheme.com/joomla/afterburner2/
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- brandall
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 46
- Thanks: 5
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Thanks! That's kind of what I had in mind to do. I figured I would subscribe to the Wordpress club, and use the Gantry framework/Afterburner2 to get up to speed on the newer versions of Joomla. I would love to offer Joomla services in addition to the large amount of Wordpress services I offer to clients.
One other question that comes to mind is SEO. Wordpress is great for it, which is one reason I've gone so far with using it. Joomla used to be horrible for SEO, but has it improved now? Plugins are fine if that's what is needed to make it better, but I would love the core to be better at being SEO friendly as well. Just curious, thanks!
Brent
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- Ben Lee
- Elite Rocketeer
- Posts: 4193
- Thanks: 42
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I think Joomla is fine with SEO. I think since version 1.5 its been fine actually. In fact, RocketTheme uses the core Joomla set up and has really good ratings with search engines.
My rant:
Worry about content first and set up your system as it should be. Don't try to force too much just for what might be a good SEO rule at the time. I personally don't like Wordpress for urls and a few other things and prefer Joomla's way.
In Reality:
There are a couple things that can be done to help out, but in general Joomla is set up just fine for SEO. Its more a matter of just making sure you include things where they need to be included. If you have a blog layout, then you'll notice your article titles as "h2", which they should be because there might be multiple. You can set a "Page Title" and it will be "h1". Most people don't realize this and do a lot of work to see that "h1" there.
In short, if you use the core set up the right way, you'll do just as well as with anything else.
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- brandall
- Jr. Rocketeer
- Posts: 46
- Thanks: 5
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Thanks Ben. Don't get me wrong, content ALWAYS comes first. But I just know that in the past, Joomla was a little less SEO friendly than Wordpress. We're talking a long time ago though, and considering that you could mostly fix things in both systems with a simple plugin, it's not a huge deal.
But I'm happy to know that Joomla has improved in this area. As one of the services I offer is SEO optimization for Wordpress sites, I just wasn't familiar with the options available for Joomla. So your tips are more than appreciated!
I really just need to sit down and mess around with the newer Joomla versions and see what happens. You never know, I might just fall in love with it!
I appreciate your help very much!
Brent
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