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Open Source Usability — Joomla! Vs. WordPress
An anonymous reader writes "PlayingWithWire profiles two open source tools for Web development, comparing Joomla! and WordPress through the lens of usability. The article has apparently upset a few people at the Joomla! forum, but it does bring up a good point. Many open source projects are developed by engineers for engineers — should they focus more on usability? PlayingWithWire makes a bold analogy: 'If Joomla! is Linux, then WordPress is Mac OS X. WordPress might offer only 90% of the features of Joomla!, but in most cases WordPress is both easier to use and faster to get up and running.'" The article repeatedly stresses that blogging platform WordPress and CMS harness Joomla! occupy different levels of the content hierarchy. How fair is it to twit Joomla! on usability?
I'm a Linux Systems Admin. I write php code quite often, I know several other script languages and I know the basics of CSS.
I managed to install Joomla quite easily, but I must say that once it was installed, it was really hard to use. Modules wouldn't install properly and simple things were really hard to accomplish, like being able to upload files etc.
It was also really hard to brand the page, we wanted our company look of the page. Took a good while before we got to something that only looked ok.
Maybe I'm being harsh as this was a few versions back. But still...
This comparison reminds me of the difference between Joomla! and Drupal, with the latter being a lot more friendly to develop for as well as use.
at the moment, the link goes to a thread with 5 posts, none of which seem to have been written by an upset person.
He is comparing the usability of the two very different applications for a quite limited scenario, namely setting up very simple web sites with only a few static pages. For larger projects Wordpress simply won't do the job, but in that simple case, I agree that WordPress is a often much better choice. For my personal homepage I tried out lots of Open Source CMS, but finally got stuck with WordPress + some plugins. It does a surprisingly good job as CMS, but I would not recommend it for - say - my company's website.
Wow, this article is blatantly biased. Just look at the way he writes.
For the Joomla! examples, they feel the need to put quotations around everything. 'Control Panel', 'Title', and so on. Those same words (or similar words) in the WordPress section are for some reason easier to understand, so they don't warrant quotations.
Not to mention he described Joomla!'s processes as a technical writer would (loosely) and then described WordPress' processes as if casually telling a friend.
That alone stopped me from reading the article.
Disclaimer: I've used Joomla! once, and WordPress once. Both did their jobs admirably, but you can't compare apples and oranges - which is what this article is trying to do, with a heavy bias.
one windows user, a mac user and the other is just a troll with green fizzy hair and smelly cloths
to bad i had to logout to post but here OH well
should they focus more on usability?
Errr... yes?
How can you possibly answer "no" to that question? Do you want your stuff actually being, you know, used by people? There's a reason it's called "usability" and not bumblebee.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Different software appeals to different people. I like linux because it gives me flexibility. You like MacOS X because it is easy to use. I like Wordpress because it is simple. You like Joomla because it is adaptable.
You know what? That's fine. One-size-fits-all is not a relevant concept when it comes to software. Diversity is a good thing, and we should encourage it, not worry about it.
This game will waste your life. Don't clicky!
I've worked as a programmer (various languages and platforms, these days mostly Perl apps on Debian) for over a decade now. I tried to get comfortable with Joomla! for a few months, but it never really worked for me. For most sites that require a CMS, I just install WordPress, configure necessary plugins, and call it a day.
For any needs that exceed the capabilities of WordPress, I just wind up writing custom code anyhow. It's never been worth the effort to implement a decent-sized site in Joomla!.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
So do you think Joomla is hard ?
Try TYPO3...
And please remember the motto.
Right tool for right job...
A question we may ask if we really want 'normal users' to be web developers?
Sure, you need designers and content writers for sites, and usability is certainly a plus in these areas, but what about security and all the other technical parts of developing a website? I don't think it's a good evolution having ppl with no skills hosting sites not knowing wtf they're doing.
While an interesting comparison which draws conclusions I broadly agree with I feel that this is mostly unfair. They author states at the start that he has developed two solutions to the problems he commonly faces one based on Joomla the other on Word Press. Since Joomla is much harder to work with it must be bringing something to the party that Word Press isn't. Having said that I do feel that a lot of open source projects are far more complicated than they need to be because they are produced by developers for developers. Developers seem to have an unwritten language which is impenetrable to non-developers and describes how systems work. This is great for developers because it means we can sit down to just about any tool and know how to use it, to non-developers though it's an indication it's time to walk away.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Where I work we installed mediawiki. It is very hard to go wrong that way, though a few users have needed help.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Software is almost always a way to do something we would otherwise be able to do, but with much more effort. In that light, usability is the whole purpose of software.
Hi All,
If anyone is looking at Joomla etc. right now and trying to decide on which CMS to use, please take my advice:
If you're a competent programmer, appreciate good design, know PHP to some extent, etc. then use *Drupal*. It has taken me 6 painful months to learn how frustrating the other systems can be if you already have these skills.
Joomla et. al seem to be designed for people without a strong technical background. Drupal is a tool that speeds up the process of building sites for technical literate designers without constraining them too much.
RS.
Sure Wordpress can do the job as a CMS, but when you'll need a higher degree of customization you'll need to digg into the code, where Joomla! might have already that feature somewhere in the administrative panel...
p.s. I know it wasn't the best analogy, but still...
$god = null;
if($god) echo 'I believe!';
The idea isn't to have people hosting sites without knowing wtf they're doing. The idea is to have an admin who runs the servers and keeps software up to date, a designer who crafts the initial look and feel of a site, and content producers who create and publish content on the site.
A competent admin can easily manage a bunch of servers, and the designer is only needed when site-wide visual changes need to be made.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
GIMP is an excellent example. It is truly powerful but most of it is hidden away in a mish-mash of different menus and counter-intuitive locations. Likewise, much of Windows home use marketshare has been because of an easy to use GUI compared to Linux. It's still the same at the moment because although Linux distros have made quite massive strides towards addressing this, sadly many of the GUI administrative tools don't work or you have the laack of consistency with things like keyboard shortcuts.
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either. - Scott Adams
Their next article is on the usability of J2SE vs Safari:
"..they both render webpages but it took me 43 hours of crying to get my Netbeans app to render a webpage... In Safari I just typed the URL and - done! Conclusion: programming languages' usability sucks. Better to use, like, actual programs."
When we start building a site (for anything), the first question is - is it going to be run by tech staff or admin staff, if it's admin staff, it's wordpress, trying to teach admin staff about front page featured, order etc, their eyes just glaze over.
Been able to just tell them to "click on new post, put it in, and click on publish" makes life so much easier...
I'd say the comparison between Linux and MacOSX vs Joomla/Wordpress is wrong in one very important point: both Joomla as well as Wordpress are free. Linux is free. MacOSX is not. I see that the person who made the comparison is using a Mac so I see where he is coming from but that does not mean he should forget that one very important point. His favourite computing platform is proprietary, can not be shared between friends and family and will even land you in jail if you try to do so on a large scale. Share Linux, Joomla or Wordpress and its authors will cheer you on.
--frank[at]unternet.org
I intend to fight valiantly under the banner of e107. The admin panel is great and the modules are very easy to play with and customise.
I run about 3 sites with Joomla!
I totally agree that Joomla! has its weaknesses ...
The biggest problem of which is the modules/components/etc that are not core to Joomla! tend to 'suck'.
However ... despite this working with Joomla! ... especially 1.5.x is really a piece of cake. Not knowing css or php ... I learned how to write my own template in about 30 min, my own component in about the same ... and I have produced some very functional professional sites.
Anyways ... I have heard the Joomla! bashing lately and it's a little much. I think anyone using Joomla! will be extremely happy with it!
Hence, even if WordPress only offers 70% of the features of Joomla!, which I am pretty sure it does, their code is written much more efficiently.
Since when less lines of code is synonym of better software?!?!?!
I have administered (and currently administer) a number of sites for various clients across a wide range of publishing systems - flat html, php, various CMSes running on Linux, UNIX, and Windows servers.
I cannot find the words to convey the depth of the hatred and loathing I feel for Joomla. It embodies the worst of Open Source - as if it were written by a million angsty teenagers suffering from ADHD, with duplicated functionality across a hundred different modules, little or no sensible documentation, and the usability issues...! Most CMSes try and at least look like some thought has been given to how people in the real world will use them. Joomla feels and behaves like it was designed to be DELIBERATELY confusing, as if the author of any given module was sneering at his imaginary end user, thinking "it's perfectly obvious to ME what to do here, fuck you if you can't work it out, n00b".
Gah! Just thinking about Joomla makes me want to go and wash my hands.
Linux with a fountain pen.
While Linux is more feature packed, my fountain pen is easier to setup.
Therefore, fountain pens seem to be designed for "average Joe", and Linux is designed for engineers.
You're comparing a blogging software with a full featured CMS?
After looking at Drupal, Joomla and Spip, the clear winner IMHO in the PHP world is clearly Drupal.
I personally prefer Plone (written in Zope/Python), but whenever a PHP solution is mandated, Drupal is the way to go.
I'd agree that that Joomla 1.0.x wasn't exactly industrial strength. However, 1.5.x was completely rewritten, uses MVC, and is a solid OO framework. It's worth checking out. I think most of Joomla's mediocre reputation was gained during 1.0.x. It's been over a year since it's been completely redesigned.
Personally, I don't like Drupal's approach to their admin UI and when I tried it out, it was pretty buggy.
All that said, Wordpress and Joomla are so different, it's a little weird to compare. Wordpress is so specific to blogging. It's kind of like comparing a fork to a swiss army knife. I can see comparing Joomla to Drupal and other "framework" (kitchen-sink) CMS.
http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.playingwithwire.com%2F2009%2F03%2Fopen-source-and-usability-joomla-vs-wordpress%2F
Google cached version.
A couple of years ago I was attracted to Joomla as a way to quickly produce some professional looking websites. However, the logo I wanted to use was a different size from the standard Joomla template.
Just making this simply and obvious change meant I had to open up parts of the Joomla code and hack it - in trial-and-error ways, due to a total lack of documentation.
It may be better now, or maybe even documented (although lack of written descriptions is OSS's single, biggest weakness), but I was completely put off by this initial experience, that I never touched it again.
While it might be a nice platform for some tech-heads to show off their prowess amongst their peers, for casual users who just want to GET STUFF DONE it sucks fatally.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No, of course not. Engineers should focus on engineering. Usability experts (sidenote: what a loaded term. First step, get a better name for the people who focus on usability) should focus on usability. Developers (who are often also the engineers) should coordinate with UI people and engineers to make the end result.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
If anyone actually wants to use this, in ways more complicated than point-click-publish, they will have to open it up, look desperately for any comments (which either don't exist, are wrong, or weren't changed when the code was updated) or other clues about how it works.
If you put any financial cost on your time, it's far cheaper to buy a commercial product to produce the equivalent website than to spend time trying to bend Joomla to fit what you want.
In that respect as "free" open source, it's a manifest failure.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I've been happily training hundreds of volunteers to run and manage joomla web sites over the last two years. One of the best of which is done entirely by an 80 year old pensioner with no prior computer experience.
Sure usability could be improved. When cant something be improved. I dont believe anyone in joomla is arrogant ennough to believe that it is perfect. Thats why it is constantly developed and improved upon.
Comparing joomla to drupal is like comparing red apples to green apples. Some people love one and hate the other. Other people love them both. At the end of the day they are similar but not the same. Comparing either joomla or drupal to wordpress is like comparing apples to pears. They are both fruit but thats where the similarity ends.
MODx > Drupal > Joomla
Successful free software projects focus on the needs of those likely to contribute to the projects.
This can obviously be other developers who contribute with patches, but it can also be businesses that contribute to Red Hat Linux by buying an enterprise version of Red Hat Linux, or ordinary net surfers who contribute to Mozilla by using the build-in Google search facilities.
If you want a free software project to become popular, you should try to find a way to make increased popularity turn into increased contributions, like Red Hat and Mozilla did. If not, the project will die out along with your passion for the project.
I don't know if it's still entirely free, but PHPNuke was always relatively simple to set up and always seemed to have the modules I wanted to do what I needed. Granted, this was before "blogging" but as editors we could always post entries (we used it for technology news, writing a quick summary and then posting a link to the story). So it's not apples to apples, but it was a CMS solution and would seem to be at least partly an alternative for either of the mentioned apps.
Bark less. Wag more.
"PlayingWithWire makes a bold analogy: 'If Joomla! is Linux, then WordPress is Mac OS X.'"
What's all this Linux and Mac OS X talk?! I'm a slashdotter! I DEMAND a car analogy to help better my understanding.
Thank you.
We've built our company website (Sceneric in CMS Made Simple which we thought had a good balance of Joomla features and functionality with Wordpress usability (i.e. the CEO could use it if need be). In addition, at the time Joomla insisted on a little bit of table layout in the presentation template and we wanted CSS layouts only (has this changed?)
Joomla's admin interface usability is poor in my opinion, though it does score a big win for shopping carts and eCommerce functionality - the modules that do this tend to be fairly easy to use, and include SEO plugins etc.
-- For evil to triumph it is enough that good men do nothing.
I just wrote a quick article on how Plone stacks up on the trivial tasks in the original article:
http://www.netsight.co.uk/blog/2009/3/3/open-source-and-usability:-plone
Short answer: Plone is just as easy to use as Wordpress, but with the power of a full CMS.
-Matt
The reason you are using a CMS is because your client can't edit HTML to save themselves. So bells and whistles of joomla/wordpress never made sense to me.
That's what I like about CushyCMS, usability is not even a question.
Granted, you can't host it yourself, but whatever, it's free.
Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try. -- Homer J. Simpson
Hello there,
I have had experience with Joomla since the Mambo days in 2003 and have tried many other cms's out there, like WP and Drupal and I have to say that Joomla is the best crap cms out there.
They are all garbage, but Joomla is the better one.
They all have lousy documentation and once you install them they grow a mind of their own. It's like - "well now that you managed to install me, try and figure me out SUCKER!"
They are all lousy in security and I could go on and on.
IMO, the only thing that sets Joomla back is the people that run the show over there. They are the most arrogant people I have ever met in a community forum and their forum is run with one thing in mind. If you rag on Joomla they will ban you or delete your account. They take criticism very badly.
I witnessed the banning of a few gurus there, one of them got thrown out because something was said about Rochen web hosting.
It takes some reading until you know how to use Joomla. This has turned out to be an advantage for me, because I earn money by teaching Joomla and creating Websites as a part-time job. Sadly, most people making themes for Joomla want to make money too and I don't enjoy teaching. So I'm not sure if I stick with it.
Does anyone else wonder if kdawson is its own "anonymous reader"? The only 'upset people' are the Slashdot readers that constantly have to see this crap clog up the page.
kdawson, go away. Please. Seriously. Go back to digg or fark or where ever you came from. Just go.
~AA
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
Who uses Wordpress for Web development?
blogging: yes
Web development: me not
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
It's not just about usability. Joomla is just a very poorly written piece of software. From the inside it looks like a hack. Duplicated code is all over the place, various parts of the system are quite obviously written by different people using completely different styles. Etc...
This makes the system hard to use, hard to modify, and worst of all: insecure. Joomla has had so many security problems that I couldn't even list them all.
...and Mac OSX is a security nightmare
So by the original poster's analogy:
Joomla = Linux
Wordpress = Max OS X
Drupal = Windows?
I looked at both Joomla! and Drupal but settled on Wordpress as a basis for setting up some freelance web development jobs. It was much easier to build a custom template from scratch by backwards engineering the default and customizing everything.
And for those who think it is only for blogs needs to look around a little. For example http://autoshows.ford.com/ is Wordpress.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
Well, at least the summary is complete and utter rubbish. The article is slashdotted, but from what I can extract from the comments, the author doesn't know what he's talking about.
WP does not have '90%' of Joomlas features. That's nonsense.
I have used, deployed and administrated WP since the b2 days, before it became WP and have been using, deploying, adminstrating and developing Joomla since the Mambo 4 days. And - take it from someone who makes a living on this stuff (and is a member of the Joomla Bugsquad) - both are very sohpisticated webkits!
WP is basically a Blogging engine. Plain and simple. It's a very pimped out matured blogging engine and is used as the foundation for some very large sites and complex apps - which is totally ok - but it started of as a blogging engine called b2 and all it's workflows are derived from blogging workflows. Which explain it's simplicity and thus its notable ease of use.
Joomla is a full-blown web-cms. It gives backend controll over what functions the frontend has, it has 7 user groups by default (which you can't change or extend - one of the downsides compared to other systems like Typo3) and basically is a feature behemoth right off the bat compared to WP. The built in editing toolset dwarves that of WP. Contrary to that, Joomla is extremely easy to install and installation plays in the same leage as WP usability wise. I actually find Joomla 1.5 easyer to install than WP 2.7.
That aside, Joomlas featureset and philosophy required that you sit down and learn it!. WP will have you publishing 5 minutes after installation, while Joomla might take an hour until everything is halfway in place. And you still won't understand half of it. Which is entirely due to the wide range of options Joomla offers, compared to WP.
Likewise doing nifty things like moving the login and/or search widget aroud the layout to make room for a large bulletin with 3 or 4 clicks of a mouse is simply impossible in WP. With the upside that you don't have to know what Joomla modules and module-positions are.
I currently use a plugin-pimped WP for my everyday blog (which I share with another blogger) and I use Joomla in 4 different sites, which are all more complex than a online essay site - and both do a very fine job and are very usable. ... Aside from maybe the fact that WPs editor lacks the features I'm used to from Joomlas TinyMCE setup. But for people who'd rather screw up the layout when given to much power this would be a plus. So there's no wonder why WPs editor is slim by default.
Bottom line: Ignore the rubbish and choose the best tool for the job. Both Joomla and WP are well suited for the prime choice in their field.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
... try installing Slash. I found it very hard to do (admittedly many, many versions back).
At our company we have found Drupal to be more secure and easier to modify than Joomla. Especially the former. I don't know if Joomla is more popular so it gets hit harder or if Drupal is that much more secure - empirically the evidence just said to us we didn't get attacked as much with an up-to-date Drupal than with up-to-date Joomla.
A CMS, including Wordpress, pretty much provide all of that as long as the users keep their passwords reasonable and safe. There are a lot of small businesses and professionals out there that do not need all the backend of Joombla or Drupal. Wordpress is perfectly suited for those who want an accessible and slick looking site that easy to edit and maintain. There is even a great caching plugin that makes them very resistant if pegged by Digg etc.
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
Joomla Bugsquad here. Sorry but your post doesn't mention a single point in Joomla that you dislike or even a single point that may be flawed. It actually sounds like a little hissy-fit by someone teenager or early twen with ADHD - to use your own words.
And as you are and "admin for various sites" (Links please) you might actually maybe have some substancial criticisim to add. I'll be glad to pass it on to the core team.
Otherwise please quit any aimless ranting and flailing. You get may modded +5 Interesting on slashdot (qed) - for whatever bizar reason that may be - but it really isn't much of a help and makes you look like an idiot.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
The article repeatedly stresses that blogging platform WordPress and CMS harness Joomla! occupy different levels of the content hierarchy.
Eh, yeah. That's pretty significant, as it completely invalidates the "Linux/MacOS" analogy. If Joomla is Linux, WordPress is OpenOffice (or Firefox, or Totem, or any other application).
Not that I'm a fanboy of Joomla! Or WordPress for that matter. I use both packages and, as has been pointed out, even by TFA itself, they're intended for different applications. Comparing their usability is like comparing the performance of a Ferrari and a John Deer tractor: Sure they're both motor-vehicles, but any comparison is meaningless
He who laughs last, thinks slowest.
by people who apparently dont know zit about what they are comparing. i like neither joomla, or wordpress, but i am a web developer by profession and mess with both occasionally. let me wrap it up :
joomla is basically a content management system that seeks to allow for many different functions through many different modules you can install. issues and problems are BOUND to happen, for you are installing many different modules coded by different people. it also has very diverse modules made for very diverse purposes other than just basically publishing articles.
wordpress is a codebase based on a BLOG first, and everything later. its capabilities are more limited than joomla is, because its initial goal and vision was narrower. therefore it can be made and is made simple to use. it also has less diverse modules performing less diverse spectrum of tasks.
therefore its kinda like comparing a family van to a utility truck. with one of them you can do the same thing you can do with the other one, but both are efficient in different areas.
Read radical news here
Blind, uninformed apple criticism gets modded troll.
my experience is that any kind of apple criticism gets modded troll regardless of the criticism's informedness standing.
Read radical news here
"usable" means you download a file, click on it, the complete package is installed and ready to use after a wizard guides you thru setup
someone will have the brains to put thiss together, and all these stupid, hard to use, badly designed packages like joomla and word press (their web sites are designed to imitimidate users) will die a deserved death
look at why steve jobs is succesfull: if your grandmother can't use it, it is to complicated
look at why DEC and Prime and Data general and Cray are gone: volume trumps sophistication and quality every time
This is essentially the same reason that Django is more favored by Guido Van Rossum (as well as many Python developers), Python's author, than Zope. He used to work for Zope Corp before going to Google btw. Guido Van Rossum: "I like it because it (Django) strikes a very Pythonic balance between theory and practice, and because the organization of the project is very similar to that of Python itself. The Django developers run an excellent open-source project, listening carefully to their users and contributors, without being distracted by âoefeature-itisâ." While Zope is the "granddaddy" of Python frameworks and a very capable and stable platform it is notorious for having horrendous documentation, a fractured community, little or no marketing and a dated, un-user-friendly portal (zope.org) that's been languishing for about a decade. I love Zope, but damn!
I've not used Joomla! so I can't compare it.
... in fact, it might've just been a single email address that blog-comments were emailed too rather than all admin users.
But, I have installed WordPress for a client of mine, and whilst I like that you can setup users with different roles (from memory they are Admin/Author/Editor... and maybe another one), it's *really* dumb that the person who gets sent emails regarding blog comments is the administrator. *I'm* the Administrator because I want to be able to configure the site, but I don't care at all about the blog posts or comment -- my client can handle that. But I found the WP would only send blog comments to Administrator users
Whatever - it seemed like a not clever bit of design. I can imagine it works for a lot of WP users since they're fully managed by one user, but if they've gone to the trouble of setting up user roles, why didn't someone think of this?!
End-Rant!
Otherwise... I do like Wordpress. It is very easy to setup and fairly easy to customise.
The real message is that joomla suffers from a lack of useability. The fact that a software component can perform complex tasks, does not require that the interface be confusing.
Comparing joomla to wordpress is silly as everyone else has noted...but it accomplished the author's goal of getting a lot of traffic....:)
I have to say that IMHO the Joomla developers would see an explosion of new users if they would just allow someone with useability experience to walk through the admin ui and suggest changes. It is repetitive. There are aspects that are not clear and thus confusing. In 2009, there really is no excuse for that.
Having said that, it is an excellent piece of software for catalogs, commerce sites, etc. I can think of none better in general...even considering drupal.
Just my opinion.
I'd say, even if you aren't any of those things, you should still go with Drupal.
Everything, from module installation, to template creation (which you have to do, even on the most basic site) is simpler and less technical in Drupal. The only thing that's better in Joomla! is a slightly more attractive admin area layout.
The idea that Joomla! is somehow more newbie-friendly, is a myth.
Can someone tag this item 'troll'?
To mention Wordpress and Joomla without Drupal is either ignorant or deliberately inflammatory.
Public relations, Joomla style.
I rest my case.
Create a new entry in Joomla. Where does it live? Does it even exist other than in the db table? Is it a page? No. Is it a blog entry? Maybe, if the system is set up that way. What kind of entry is it? Try explaining the difference to a non-technical user.
Choose the category you want. Oh, you need a new section. Forget about making a menu link to the entry and create a new section, then a new category. At this point it's actually easier to delete the original entry and post it again.
Now create a menu item. Which menu? If the site is complicated at all that's a legitimate question. Once you've created the menu item, then go back and find the created entry and attach it to the menu item. Okay, your new page is live. Whew.
The system is certainly flexible when it comes to creating a complex site, but for small sites and non-technical users it's both confusing and a lot of work.
Now you need to change something on one of the pages. Is it a component? Maybe it's a article. Oh, it's a module. No... Give up and call the IT guy.
I agree with the previous poster, if you want a robust, modular, secure environment then look beyond Joomla. In addition to Drupal please take a look at Zikula (http://www.zikula.org). It has an abstracted database layer, has a theme system that Drupal 6.2 doesn't have yet.
I reviewed about a dozen Web CMS systems for a project for my company. We wanted something that we could just release to our content providers and let them submit their content. We didn't want to get heavily invested in the engineering, or have to deal with a lot of background maintenance just to keep it going. Wordpress was far easier to set-up and get our users working, than anything else we tested, including Joomla. Wordpress may not be as flexible and expandable as some of the others, but it also doesn't take nearly as much tweaking and plug-in hunting. It met our needs with only a couple of plug-ins, and was a no-brainer to install. As always- YMMV.
Public relations, Joomla style. I rest my case.
Idiot. Slashdot style. I rest my case.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Sorry, that was suposed to be: 867-5309
Now all we need to do is wait for one of you to compare the other to Hitler an my Slashdot Experience will be complete!
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
Create a new entry in Joomla. Where does it live? Does it even exist other than in the db table? Is it a page? No. Is it a blog entry? Maybe, if the system is set up that way. What kind of entry is it? Try explaining the difference to a non-technical user.
It's a content item. It has enough meta-data to be rendered as a blog entry, if you wish, as it has publishing and 'go offline' dates and tons of other stuff. How it is rendered you can choose once you build a menu item that leads to its category,section or to the item itself. Menu entries carry their rendering options for their targets with them. Confusing at first, but very reasonable once you've understoof the concept. ...
If anything the item lives in its section and category.
If its unpublished, it lives in the space of the unpublished items. If its in the Section "Foo", Category "Bar" it lives in the space of FooBar.
I know that you tread water when in the content overviews at first, but Joomla is that flexible it actually leaves you with little much more than a sophisticated overview of the content objects and their attributes. Which is pretty much. And all you need. If you want to shoehorn your content, make sections and categories. That's what they're there for.
Choose the category you want. Oh, you need a new section. Forget about making a menu link to the entry and create a new section, then a new category. At this point it's actually easier to delete the original entry and post it again.
Bingo. Valid point. If you don't know and/or follow the generic Joomla workflow you run into that bump 2 minutes after your first login. However, if you *do* know the workflow and live by it, it's as easy as breathing. Just like in non-trivial programming, where the first thing you do is not writing the concept file but making a versioning repository/project.
Once you've built your sections and categories this isn't a problem anymore - its actually the typical initial Joomla setup problem. They could actually add the option to add section/categories in the editing/creation view. Using Ajax or something, to do the roundtrip without shedding the actual content item.
I've had this problem myself. But admit it, it is a minor issue in comparsion.
Now create a menu item. Which menu? If the site is complicated at all that's a legitimate question. Once you've created the menu item, then go back and find the created entry and attach it to the menu item. Okay, your new page is live. Whew.
Yet another workflow thing. Not so much of a problem if you know how many levels of abstraction Joomla offers. And yes, building a complex website does require planning ahead. And if you use Joomla to do so, you're best of following their philosophy. That is: Plan your pageflow and your menu display beforehand - that will limit the issue above to deliberately trying out different menu options and renderings.
The system is certainly flexible when it comes to creating a complex site, but for small sites and non-technical users it's both confusing and a lot of work.
Newsflash: Airplanes are more difficult than tricycles. Film at eleven. :-)
Right on. If you just want a blog and don't want to learn about Joomla, use WP. Or blogger.com, for that matter.
Now you need to change something on one of the pages. Is it a component? Maybe it's a article. Oh, it's a module. No... Give up and call the IT guy.
The terminology is synthetic and bolted-on at times. And may lack distinctivenes, yes indeed. But in this case it's actually quite easy: Change content? --> Article. Change overall treatment and handling of items in the frontend? --> Component. Programm your own at will - Joomla is a framework too. Want to quickly change position of rendering in layout or add a little widget with custom stuff? Like a permanent comment, custom permanent ad, or something? --> Module. Modules are like teensy side-components in that respect, if you will. Of cource you can have
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Seriously, what would you recommend?
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/How-to-Choose-Between-Joomla-Drupal-and-Wordpress.html
I've been using Joomla for many websites I've setup for myself and others for a few years now and I must admit that while it is easy to install, it is absolutely unusable by an untrained user. The way content sections and categories and modules and components are setup is completely unintuitive. It does make Joomla a very powerful CMS for a web administrator, but it fails completely when it comes to the primary task of CMS - making web content management easy for an average website publisher.
Bow before me, for I am root.
Joomla and WP comparison is similar to comparing Joomla with Java.
I spent 4 month building my website on Java and went no where. Then I installed Joomla and my site was up and running in 4 days. I did not have any prior experience of PHP and MySQL.
Therefore Joomla is better for usability and Java sucks on every front for web development.
Actually he was pretty clear that he just didn't like the entire design philosophy of Joomla.
The point of the comment wasn't to help you improve your product, but to share his usage experience with other potential administrators.
Please attempt to understand that you may not always be the intended audience of every comment about the product you help support.
I've deployed multiple sites on both Wordpress and Joomla. Currently our content portal uses both. Joomla for CMS and then Wordpress for blogging. My problem with both of them is that they take up a bit of time to maintain security updates. They are the favourite platform of script kiddies from Turkey and asian spammers.
Drupal is arguabely a more powerful platform than either, but you need a technical person to admin the damn thing. Trying to explain the concept of content nodes to the average person who just needs to update pages.
Recently I came across concrete5 (concrete5.org). It is certainly not a blogging platform. But if you have sites that maybe need updates once a week or month and needs to be maintained by none web people, it is by far the most easy to use, easy to understand CMS I've ever seen. What is lacking is a lot of "features" that will come in time. But if you have a developer, the framework is easy enough to figure out.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Seriously, what a strange focus for an article. It's phrased like a knock on Joomla, when one could just as easily say that WordPress is an admirable example of an open source project that has put a lot of effort into usability, and leave it at that.
I run a WordPress site, and the ease of use, flexibility, and attention to detail of the WordPress developers have really impressed me. And I don't say that often. SO SCREW JOOMLA!!!!
Breakfast served all day!
Usability is certainly undervalued within most Open Source project teams. In fact, its generally hard to find any projects which actually have a dedicated team of members just looking at usability issues.
There's a bunch of reasons for this oversight - yes, they may be related to the core development teams of projects like Joomla coming from a pretty hardcore coding background... of course rapid development cycles don't help developers feel they have the time to themselves think about usability for too long (or better).
However, what I think is exciting is how this is all changing from a more grassroots level - as projects like Joomla grow in userbase and functional ability, more people from more diverse backgrounds are twigging onto shortcomings of the software. Those people are also more able than ever before to alter the code in sustainable ways to affect its usability.
The cited article @ http://www.playingwithwire.com/ pits Joomla and Wordpress together assuming that Joomla's admin side cannot be changed - from an interface standpoint. This isn't true and I think we'll see some re-workings of the Joomla administrative login become available, perhaps not from the core Joomla team though, soon.
In fact, with the aim of making using Joomla simpler, we've recently launched 'Seeding' (http://www.plantseedling.com) - a distribution label which has released a pre-packaged and configured Joomla distro that comes loaded with a slightly simpler admin interface.
Our first release of the Seedling distribution of Joomla wasn't aimed at redesigning the admin work-flow of Joomla but we've laid some groundwork for the next release which will see a complete re-organisation of the control panel and some admin features of Joomla! Stay tuned to our blog @ http://www.plantseedling.com/blog
Cheers,
Qasim
(Principal @designguru.org)
Here's some substance:
It is unclear how, when, and where a snippet of screen real estate resides.
Is it in the menu? Is it in the module? Maybe it's in the template?
The concept of embedding the type of category (i.e. blog style, bullet list, ect) in the menu is really counter intuitive.
Actually, I would describe Joomla in three words:
Powerful. Counter intuitive.
I recently trashed my joomla install for wordpress and never looked back. I knew within 10 minutes of using the software that I had been making a big mistake for two years.
I'm not saying don't use it. If tinkering with web technologies is fun to you, try it out. If maintaining a website is your MO, then try something else.
the reason joomla feels like a teenage web tool is because it is. The reason wordpress feels like a blogging tool is because it is. Seriously, if you're building a real website with more than an afternoon of thought given to content architecture, content reuse and the true separation of presentation of content and presentation, neither of these is the tool for the job. The list of real CMS options is pretty long and doesn't include either of these products.
Well, I can see it ruffling a few feathers, but it's hardly news and I can't believe anyone, contributor or user, would seriously contest it. Usability is a problem on Open Source and on Linux. There, I said it.
Linux is really an ever-evolving work in progress, and it is never "done", and never done in a way that, say, XP or PalmOS don't experience. They pause for a while and let the world catch it's breath, developing as a more holistic whole. New documentation can be written as the next point upgrade is written, and tech blogs can write support as things come up in the user's experience.
Not so with Linux. Not only does nobody want to do the job in the first place, but nobody can keep up even if they are crazy enough to want to do it. Everything is in a constant state of (mostly useful, mostly working) flux.
It's much the same for the "usability" issue. To even start exploring usability with an Open Source app is to say it's "almost done", if not "done, period". That's a state that is rare indeed. "Why work on menus when the guts need work and it will all be different in the next release and besides I have this great idea to ... " well, you get the point.
Linux really needs non-geeks to write and maintain that aspect of it, and it really needs non-geeks to say to developers, "no, that shouldn't be there, it should be here" and "if you do it that way, everyone will be confused" and so on. That kind of feedback should probably be happening in tandem with the underpinnings and code being written and rewritten.
But, there is no mechanism to pair the unsophisticated user with the code contributor and project manager, and I'm not even sure that if there was, they would still be talking to each other after a few months of collaboration. It definitely would slow things down a bit, and that alone might be enough to kill the idea with the traditional contributors.
Until then (and I'm betting on that being a word something like "never") Open Source tools will always be geeky and defiantly quirky, which leads to confusion and frustration at least some of the time. I really wish there was a way to change that, because all it really takes is that first 3 months and many people are hooked on Open Source, yes, even as an "only" desktop with no Commercial OS "safety net" to fall back on.
But it's damn hard to get over the hurdles of that first install, and although everyone loves to help, no-one wants to be a full-time free support person for your buddy. I can imagine wives of Open Source users who happily run OOo on Linux all day going out and buying a copy of Vista right after the divorce.
What choice do they really have? You can either have decent hand-holding documentation or you have intuitive software. Some dare to try for both. Some Open Source projects seem bent on having neither, and in a very real sense, it may not even be possible because Linux and Open Source never really just sits in one place to begin with.
Look on almost every wordpress powered blog. Go to this url or any like it, but for my example, I will use a well known blogger: http://johnchow.com/wp-settings.php Only the developers and a few bloggers don't have this exploit. There are many just like this and it has been known for quite some time. There was a solution, but it required many edits as many files have this problem, but the newer versions prevented it as stuff won't work. That is my 2 cents. Besides that, I love it.
It would make more sence to compare Joomla vs Typo3. And I wonder if the authors have used Linux recently...
Usability is inversely proportional to the number of mouse clicks.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
As of today Browsers, Cell Phones and ATM (Automatic Teller Machines) are very easy for a LAYMAN to use.
Hence I'd suggest FLOSS community to follow the USABILITY principles of Browsers, ATMs and Cell Phones.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
drupal does not work well in real corporate envirorments - we have used it, if fails miserably and we had to write our own php code from scratch .. it get a good CMS
Idiot. Slashdot style. I rest my case.
Hrm. You lost your case, I'd say.
(Seeing as you're battling it out in public, and thus for the public to judge, I can tell you that you make a very poor case indeed. If your objective was to demonstrate how arrogant you can be - and unable to deal with a person whom you consider to be less smart than yourself - then you have succeeded. I can only hope that you don't imagine that your behavior will in any way whatsoever cast any positive light on the Joomla! project. Just to be clear: It didn't. The perfect response from you would now be to clearly state how you don't give a shit, and thus proving my point for me.)
You failed using Drupal because you probably did not take the time to learn what Drupal really is. It's a framework, not a CMS. Though it includes CMS-like functionallity on basic level. Learning it takes some time not everyone can or want to spend for.
Using the Drupal API you are able to implement business logic as in any other way - just faster and in a clear manner (as it is true for most frameworks once you know them).
Writing your own code (probably poorly tested/documented because development itself took most of the budget) sounds like the World of Frameworks aka helpful functions did not touch you yet.
The Theme system in Drupal is existing and working very well. A database abstraction layer is in work for the coming version 7 - in case you ever need one.
just use Drupal. forget about everything else.
There's a discussion that is similar to this on osdev.org @ http://forum.osdev.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19353&p=151513
Joomla! vs Drupal vs Wordpress
vi and Emacs versus a not mentioned user friendly editor that can do the same - ROFL
Linux vs MacOS X
I just love holy wars!