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Open Source Usability — Joomla! Vs. WordPress

Posted by kdawson on from the apples-and-orange-trees dept.

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?

2 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Quite fair by rallymatte · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  2. Considering a CMS? Read this! by randomsearch · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.