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.
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.
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.
Go read up on the arguments against the GoboLinux filesystem structure. (These Ubuntu folks have a bunch). There are some fairly passioned "screw the n00bs" rants out there. Does anybody honestly think that the traditional Unix filesystem heirarchy makes an ounce of sense in 2009?
Both vi and EMACS seem to have taken the "fuck the users" approach to heart. I suppose I might be of the wrong mindset to operate either application, though the developers could have at the very least taken the time to provide a decent set of documentation for their astonishingly-complex applications.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
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.
Both vi and EMACS seem to have taken the "fuck the users" approach to heart.
There is a difference between being easy-to-use-first-time and usable. You appear to be confusing the two.
My pics.
Really? Both Vi and Emacs have some of the best builtin help available. They are both modal editors so they aren't going to be easy to understand without reading the manual but is it really the fault of the programs's creator that you cannot do advanced editing without reading the manual? If you want easy there are are hundreds of other text editors that are easier to use although they can't do half as much.
Time makes more converts than reason
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
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.
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