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 ;-)

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.