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?

Comments

Quite fair

[rallymatte]

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...

Re:Quite fair

[Anonymous Coward]

I develop with Joomla daily, and you do certainly need skills in PHP to be able to get it work - a non-programmer would be unable to get the most out of the package and modules. Saying that I've only been developing PHP for 6 years, and it took me about three days to be able to work and build complex e-commerce solutions with Joomla. I was able to create good sites for customers after a couple of days and didn't experience the probelms you mentioned.

In terms of usability it is quite poor though. In previous jobs I've had to present clients with several CMSs (open source and propriatary) and they never once chose Joomla.

I've come to like the flexibility and massive choice offered by Joomla, but think you should use the best tool for the job, and Joomla is simply overkill for the majority of sites we develop, and it is overly complex and badly designed in terms of usability for simple sites.

Different software appeals to different peopl

[gravos]

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.

Re:Different software appeals to different peopl

[soliptic]

Have you used any adobe programs lately? the UI is an abomination (especially on the Mac!). Check this website number sometime. I dropped major cash for Adobe CS3 Master Suite for OS X last year. Major mistake. The UI doesn't look or feel native, is slow, full of quirks, and hard to use.

I'm lacking mod points atm so I'm going to quote this with my fancy pants +1 karma bonus, because it deserves to be seen. That website is utterly hilarious as well as totally spot on. Even if you don't care in the least about Adobe interfaces, give it a read for the comedy value alone.

I've got CS3 here (on Win), a new colleague recently started in my team and they don't sell CS3 licenses anymore so they ended up with CS4. I can't show them how to use anything based on my knowledge of CS3, because everything has been changed around for no apparent reason. I can't show them how to use stuff based on an educated guess of how Windows apps usually work, because it looks and works nothing like that. Well, in a lot of ways, they never did behave quite like native Win apps (what with the Mac heritage), but now even less so. And nowhere near native Mac either. It just looks like - bleh. Words fail me really. It's some bizarro dark grey explosion-in-a-flash-factory disaster. It's a total clusterfuck.

Re:Different software appeals to different peopl

[jvervloet]

Yes, Linux is a great OS, but it simply doesn't have photoshop or anything that compares to it. GIMP is a clumsy hack and is frankly like Paint in comparison.

Compared to Photoshop, Gimp might be like Paint, but compared to Paint, Gimp really is like Photoshop :-)

Gnome, KDE and Explorer have nothing on the frankly revolutionary changes Mac has seamlessly implemented in the last few years. There are a lot of poorly implemented whizbang features like Time Machine's GUI or Safari 4's Top Pages, but there are also features like Spotlight, Expose, the new stacks in the Dock, and Quick Look.

Maybe you can check out

• Beagle
• Compiz
• Cairo-Dock
• gloobus

Call me back when Linux works with my hardware out of the box

Call me back when you buy hardware that works with Linux. :-)

Considering a CMS? Read this!

[randomsearch]

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.

Re:not a question

[DaleGlass]

Does anybody honestly think that the traditional Unix filesystem heirarchy makes an ounce of sense in 2009?

Yes.

In Linux you install things with a package manager. This means that for 99% of users, it doesn't matter whether it's called /usr or /Programs, they're not going to go there anyway. You're not going to install things in Linux in drag and drop style by dropping stuff into /Programs, because it's most likely not writable by normal users (never used Gobo though), and because the vast majority of applications are dynamically linked and won't work without the dependencies in place.

This just seems a pointless waste of time. As a sysadmin, this sort of thing means I have to learn where everything on this system is, and when something breaks it'll take extra effort to fix.I much prefer consistency, so this won't be the distro I'll be going with. The existence of a kernel module to keep compatibility is annoying and limiting. And this won't end there, I'm sure some other distro will think that it should be /Applications instead of /Programs. I'd rather stay with the normal layout, thanks.

As an user, everything outside of /home might as well not exist, so it doesn't matter what they call it, I don't care or notice any benefit from it. So it's a waste of time as well. Also it doesn't really make anything more intuitive, it simply moves things around. /System/Settings/passwd isn't any more intuitive than /etc/passwd: It's still the same file, with the same weird formatting and editing requirements (keeping shadow in sync)

Complete and utter rubbish. All of it.

[Qbertino]

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.

Re:Who uses Wordpress for Web development???

[MazzThePianoman]

http://autoshows.ford.com/ http://psiurpi.com/ http://www.rannieturingan.com/ http://lonnroth.info/ http://www.friskdesign.com/ ...