Joomla! has made my clients and I lots of money. Hell, I’ve even written an extension. But I can’t help but make a prediction: Unless the Joomla Development Team gets off their high-horse, it will be dead within 3 years.
A bit of history:
This very blog was originally started on my Google Blogger account, but I was ready to be self-hosted. About two years ago I discovered WordPress, and thought, “this is nice I’ll give it a go…”
My first impressions of WordPress: “wow this is slick…” BUT it left me wanting more. I was so used to Joomla!, that I found the lack of module positions difficult and frustrating.
Bring on the hacks
I am a tinker, I have to know how it all works. So I started playing with the inner workings of WP trying to make it act, MORE LIKE JOOMLA. Learning how to exclude pages from the menu, or exclude posts from certain pages was fun. I was starting to make WP do what I wanted it to…act more like Joomla!.
Enter WP 2.5
With the onset of WordPress 2.5 and the fact that I was feeling very comfortable with the core, I began designing my smaller “pamphlet sites” with it. It didn’t take anywhere near as long to setup a $300 client as the abundance of free themes cut my design time in half. Clients were happy because the WP back-end was easy to navigate.
What part did my clients love the most? The part where if you wanted to create a Page, click: “Add New Page”. No more EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THIS IN JOOMLA – which took 3 hours and two Excedrin.
The age old question
I always answered my clients (and anyone else who’d ask) what’s the difference between WordPress and Joomla?:
“Joomla! is a damn Sherman Tank, it’ll blow up the entire town if want it too…but it only goes 24 miles an hour. WordPress is like a Ferrari, it’s nimble and will get you there faster – but don’t expect massive firepower…”
WordPress has grown up
Finally with the onset of Hooks (as seen in Thesis) WordPress has come leaps and bounds from version 2.5. Template clubs will be the first to develop their own version of Hooks (AKA Module Positions), followed by the rest of the developer community. WordPress will then be another step closer to being an actual CMS.
The List
So, why did I leave Joomla!?
- Speed. It’s just fast. The code is not fat and slow.
- SEO out of the damn box!
- 99.9% of plug-ins are free and really powerful. AND keeping them up-to-date is easy – because WP tells you when new ones are available! (wow what a novel concept?!)
- It makes sense for non-web people. Add New Page = Add New Page.
- Freebies galore. The insane amounts of FREE themes and templates is astounding.
- Ignorant free? 2+ years on the WordPress forums, and NEVER has someone replied with a rude or snide comment. Just last week I posted something on the Joomla! forum about a Digg-Like extension, and got this as a reply: “Why, when you can just go to Digg.com…” *Slaps-Forehead.
- The “look” isn’t so obvious. I can visit a Joomla website and tell you within 2 seconds that it’s Joomla. I was SHOCKED when I learned Copyblogger.com was run on WordPress.
- Photo Gallery. THREE HOURS LATER… testing and trying Joomla photo gallery extensions – and none of them were as easy, slick, or intuitive as NextGen Gallery.
A Toyota Camry turned on the light bulb
Have you seen the Toyota Camry commercial where the guy says, “you see all these car companies comparing their car to a Camry…why wouldn’t I just buy a Camry?”
This was the straw that broke the camels back. A photo gallery. One of my clients (wdjr.com) wanted a simple photo gallery. The entire time I tested and tweaked I found myself trying to make JOOMLA WORK MORE LIKE WORDPRESS!
I’m exhausted. (mentally)
Here was the thought process on finding a photo gallery extension/plug in:
Joomla!
- Is it 1.5 native? Yes! Is it free? Yes, but it’s written in German. Start over.
- Is it 1.5 native? No. Screw that, I’m not turning on “Legacy Mode” – it’s slows down the core even more… Start over
- Is it 1.5 native? Yes and it’s free and it comes with a module AND plug-in supporting mambots! W00t! Install. Done. Crap! It’s in FREAKIN’ ALPHA STATUS and how am I going to explain EXPOSE 4 to a Radio DJ!??!?!
WordPress:
Is it free? Yes. Install. Wow, upload a zip file and it creates a gallery? So easy, even a radio DJ could do it! Thank you NextGen Gallery.
Final Goodbyes
So, Joomla!, as our 4 year journey comes to an end. I wish you the best. We’ve worked well together, and you haven’t changed much. I guess that’s why I’m leaving for a core that: 1.) gives a damn about us designers and the many intricacies that come with our jobs 2.) Not having to search once a month for updated extensions.
P.S.
I hope the Joomla! developers and community read this and take a long look in the mirror. Y’all became too big for your britches AND asses on the forums.
It’s no wonder web developers are leaving in droves. Either speed-up the core, make the back-end more intuitive or you fail. Seriously, in the amount of time you’ve been @ v1.5; Ubuntu has released 8 new versions, pirates have returned to the seas, people now ‘tweet’ about nothing.
Joomla is still running on the MAMBO CORE! Now do you agree with my Sherman tank reference?
Funny a lot of what you’ve said 9 months ago holds true to this day …
I’ve used Joomla for 2.5 years and WordPress for 3 – I have to agree on almost all points, especially SEO, speed, and community. I’d only argue that BOTH can suffer from looks-like-the-framework-itis, but I think that’s more a matter of experience, time and design that set the real heavy customs apart from the easy builds (You’re going to get it with any CMS to some extent).
I was a 4-year PHP vet when I got thrown into Joomla, and it was still almost discouraging to get the hang of at first. In my case I had to learn it, so through baptism by fire I came to love, hate, and hack the life out of it …out of necessity.
And I had to go it alone as I, too, struggled to find decent solutions in the community.
I still justify a need for it in specific circumstances, but honestly it’s *much too much* for typical builds. Building WordPress as a CMS solves 95% of my client’s problems with less bloat and 1000% better trainability. You don’t need to give someone something that “can do everything” when all they need is an easy way to control their little SOMETHING … and when you know how to take advantage of the core to extend it beyond the out-the-box blog feel – add to that good people and strong support – Well, I say that’s all you really need.
I kinda felt the same about Drupal after a client offered me $$$ to do a WordPress project when there were no $$$ for a Drupal project for me at the time. After a little time mourning the loss of CCK and a few other things I realized I actually enjoyed coding for WordPress (something I couldn’t say about Drupal) and I’ve never looked back. Now that WordPress has Custom Post Types, I don’t even have to mourn the loss of anything Drupal anymore…
I sort of think same about Spip, even if it’s still better than WP in terms of performance (1 WP request exhausts a server as 100 of Spip’s).
You will become a code-prophet! Lol…and you are absolutely right on all points. I’ve been using WordPress now for almost 4 years, am no code-guru, but have managed to set-up, build, and modify my own WordPress-based websites–I even taught my 13-year-old niece the WordPress ropes and SHE built her own little nifty “web-apartment”–all by herself–using WordPress!
I’m STILL trying to figure-out Joomla! Well, I WAS until not too long ago. Just gave it up. Even if I were some silver spoon trust-fund dude with nothing but time on his hands (which I’m not) I still wouldn’t waste the time it takes to learn Joomla’s complicated designing construct. Even to this day I have no idea how to create a page using Joomla; however; I’ve created thousands using WordPress ;-)
Doeas anyone know who to contact if I wish to leave Joomala? The site was set up by someone else , I inherited and I am ending up paying a massive annual fee. Thanks for help
I can help you out migrating your website from Joomla to WordPress. I will first need to evaluate the website and its functionality to find out how much time it will take. If it has some kind of components or modules in Joomla which is not readily available in WP you will need to custom develop those plugins. My e-mail is saminternetmarketing@yahoo.com.
Where is Joomla today? (11/11/2010)
Is it still on the downward spin?
I am technically inclined so whats the best CMS out there today?
Joomla now has less than 0.50% of the CMS market, while WordPress has over 6%. http://trends.builtwith.com/cms
Joomla! is dead, OMG i have to resurrect a 2010 joomla shopping cart fiasco, and there is no upgrade path. virtuemart doesn’t even support it on its own web site.
Joomla~! IS INDEED DEAD.
BLECH, THE STENCH
There is one comment up there that did it for me as well.
“The part where if you wanted to create a Page, click: “Add New Page”. No more EXPLAINING HOW TO DO THIS IN JOOMLA – which took 3 hours and two Excedrin.”
That’s exactly what did it for me. It seemed like I could never fully hand someone a site. Never ending phone calls on how do I do this? Limiting their options and not even bothering to tell them you have to go make a module , put it in a position that doesn’t exist and then make a page and insert the module by id, it’s that simple to put a gallery on your new page. You should have it in a week or two. Then after hour 3 and the last Excedrin you just jump in there and do it yourself. 50-60 times of doing this while thinking, you know none of my WP clients call me asking how to insert a gallery?…… hmmm. In the end, I changed my own site to WP because now most of my work comes from there. Farewell joomla!