Slashdot Mirror
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...
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.
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!
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.
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 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.
I do and on a daily basis. When you go back to Joomla! and the like, you suddenly feel like it is quite simple :-). I can't imagine the reaction of this guy in front of it :-)
Some of the problems of Typo3 is its legacy. Typo3 has been created in the nineties if I remind well at a time where Object oriented PHP programming wasn't possible.
Typo3 developers used a pseudo object oriented framework heavily based on hash tables. Which is truly ugly but well it works. If you've got a real Object oriented background, you feel sick in front of it. The real problem is that they kept this approach until today and when you read their developers mailing list, most have no desire to change it.
Another problem is really ridiculous but well the real problem is its repetition : naming convention. All "core api" classes have funny names. Imagine simple System.Console would become in typo3 Sys.csl a writeln would become wtln
Why? Don't ask. Maybe they want to look smart, I don't know.
If they can make an abreviation (let's say saving just one letter), they will! It could as stupid as objc witch is object or more important stuff like pi wich is plugin, and all. While reading their code, you can't understand it, you need google and dozens of different sources simply to understand what this variable or object stands for. They might save one nanosecond while typing it but newbies lose hours (and most leave the environement entirely).
Another problem is their fragmented documentations. Their documentation are heavily based on their abbreviations. Extremely important stuff like TCA...Means err nothing until you found another documentation describing this abbreviation. It is really frustrating.
They are also keen at "creating" new name for things you know for years...And it becomes even more frustrating to a point that you can understand the inner logic behind it.
Typoscript has been "designed" by a non developer IMHO. I feel like he thought that he could play with syntax as much as he wish. And you end up with a "configuration language" using = or < with a total different meaning than in any other computer languages.
So the learning curve is extremely important (and they seem proud of that fact...Again don't ask). A large part of your technical experiences will be useless in front of typo3. These are the cons, I found a lot of "pros" that counterbalance them. Its extreme flexibility is the first. The second is that there are a lot of companies requiring it (in Europe at least) and very few developers ready to spend hours in this messy environment :-). I make now a good part of my revenues out of it.
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
http://autoshows.ford.com/ http://psiurpi.com/ http://www.rannieturingan.com/ http://lonnroth.info/ http://www.friskdesign.com/ ...
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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)
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.
Lots more modules. Free. Works. I don't like Joomla at all. Everything cool has a big price tag on it.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.