Re: 5 reasons you should use joomla instead of wordpress

crazybear007 — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 22:25:19 -0000

I appreciate your thoughtful discussion about some of the items in my post. When I went back and read it (my original post) I was maybe a little too fired up. My experiences with Joomla have been F.I.N.E You know what it means when a woman says she is FINE:
Frustrated - Insecure - Neurotic and Emotional.

I am hoping for a web publishing world where unfortunately, you all lose your jobs because the software platform is that easy and fool-proof to use..

Here are some clarifications for newbies looking to make a good decision about there web-future:

Editors - I mentioned generic editors but my Preferred editor, Live Writer is far more I D 1 0 T proof then anything else I have used. After over 10 months I have found it to be about as stable as MS Word or Power Point which are 9s' on a scale of 1 to 10. For 99% of what I need Publishing using Live Writer does the job. I have only needed to resort to deep code changes outside of Writer maybe 3 times.

You mentioned spending an hour fixing a 3RD PARTY WordPress function not WordPress itself. Care should always be taken with new plug-ins including those developed for Joomla. They are only as good as the publisher. I generally stay away from any plug-in that require code changes to implement. Whether for WP or Joomla if the developer bdistributes something that doesn't install with one touch chances are it is NOT worth using. What about the day that I shorten an article in Joomla and it disrupted by entire site. FIVE hours later I finally got thing resorted after having to remove and re-publish 3 articles. Some times I want to tweak my Joomla site and a 5 minute job turns into 2 hours. I wanted to simply put 2 banners side by side and couldn't. I have to get a ninja plugin work around to do that and by the time I was done I have 4 hours invested. AAhhhh.

the Joomla proponents keep repeating that advancing passed simple blogging in WP and you will get an edge from Joomla. So what "Complex" thing can Joomla do better than WordPress? I thought shopping carts but I found a shopping cart component that rivals any shopping cart I have found for Joomla. News feeds are simpler, adding content from my affiliate partners is too. Same with multi-media slide shows or video. Give me an example?

I know that if you use IContact that you can integrate registrations between Joomla and SMF. I use a newsletter sign-up on joomla and I one touch import it to my SMF registration no problem. From there I can use the SMF newsletter function to distribute.

I am going to use a Joomla template from a 3rd party developer for a Apple Independent dealer's website. It was designed for a computer/tech application and I am confident that it is the write choice, but we will also have a WP Blog integrated in it for the "Simple" tasks, Like 99% of the publishing.

Good luck to all no matter which direction (WordPress!!) you choose.

Problems and challenges?

Re: 5 reasons you should use joomla instead of wordpress

crazybear007 — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:59:20 -0000

Joomla vs. WordPress, Ali vs. Norton, Barrie North vs. Da CRAZYBEAR007 and the Dinosaur vs. Early Man

These are all fitting headlines for the discussion you initiated Joomla vs. WordPress or, in your Words, The Five Reasons you should chose Joomla. I hope you will take this rebuttal you are about to receive like a Professional. After all I received a personal invite to this little debate and I read what you had to say.

The last thing before I start, I don’t have an ax to grind and, I do think websites built in Joomla have their place, just not in 90% of the situations. The reason I am writing this instead of the 1000 of other things I need to do is I want to save some of you out there the pain of what I went through it do something simple, create a nice, useful and productive web-presence. Small-ish businesses need to know the bottom line before they launch into a long term relationship. In today’s business world your web-site and web-presences is a long term relationship.

With all his development and template building experience, Mr. North is certainly an expert on Joomla. Let me share my credentials as a power user of both Joomla and WordPress. Six months ago I entered the world of Affiliate marketing for online Gaming. Armed with a Business Plan and the need for a website and Community Forum, I began researching the platforms for both. I also proceeded to gain approval from the top 20 and then top 40 largest poker/sportsbook and Casino portals on the internet. I have 10 years of previous experience in the software arena so I know the importance of picking the right platform. After careful consideration I chose Joomla for the website and phpBB3 for the forum. Little did I know that these decision would be the beginning of nearly two months of learning both and finding them to be cumbersome, difficult and lacking. Despite the fact that I purchased a nice template from Joomla Shack I had several instances where I was ready to throw in the website design towel. I felt as though I signed on to learn a few phrase of French and I was now learning Latin and Egyptian Hieroglyphics at the same time. Flash forward to 3 months later, my website is up and doing fairly well and I have just become certified as a Webmaster by two online gaming Associations. My forum opened June 6th. It would have been much sooner had I decided to FIRE the phpBB3 software and replace it with the Simple Machine Forum (SMF) software sooner. In six hours I was able to accomplish what I couldn’t with phpBB3 in 4 weeks.

Now what about WordPress Experience? I started looking at WordPress six months ago too? Why? Just about every time I ran across a page on the Internet that I liked, it was WordPress driven. At the time I was ready for a website I didn’t think WordPress could do everything I need to have done. At the beginning of July we were ready to begin Phase II of our business plan and add websites that covered other Affiliate related topics. We chose WordPress for Multiple Users (MU) as our platform. Enough about setting the stage in a Michener like way Let me tell you why WordPress gets the heads up over Joomla by a WIDE margin:

For me, Web-blogs (Or Super Blogs to use a term I coined) are the reinvention of the website. Super-Blogs are superior to websites in the following areas:
1. A Super-Blog can almost do everything a website can but in less time with less headache. They are capable of using custom domains, accommodating all types of pictures, picture albums audio and video media from common services including YouTube or more commercially used formats like flash.
2. Blogs are easier to make graphically rich - You can use the best of Tinymce Editors, plug-ins and graphics. My personal favorite, Live Writer using all the major plug-ins and Zemanta for Internet related graphics. I could say more but in this case one picture (or Super-Blog) are worth 1000 Joomla words.
3. WordPress Super-Blogs are simpler to use, to update and customize,. They also have built in tools and add-ons to assist with Search Engine Placement (SEP) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
4. They require little or no programming knowledge to keep them running and up-to-date,
5. Blogs by their nature are built to be interactive with customers, your social network and the larger community too. WordPress is integrated with ALL of the top social networking tools such as Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo, Windows Live, Intant Messenger, Skype and the list goes on.
6. Blogs are immediate, just like any WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get). You write it and publish to the web in minutes and not hours or days!
7. Did I say networking is key to the success of any business. WordPress have been integrated with nearly every social and professional networking system there is.

A few parting thoughts about Joomla and why you need to really do some soul searching before traveling down that road.
(Quote-Barrie North) – Joomla is more powerful

Tractor brand and Cunnings Diesel powered tractors have over 1000 horsepower and can run anything over, pull and push and generally get the job done if you are into construction or cross country transportation. Then there are Porsches, we all know what they can do. They are even featured in one of Barrie’s examples. Most models have fewer than 240 horsepower. If I want to win the 24 hours of Le Mans or drive to Las Vegas for a Poker Tournament with your hot new babe friend, which is going to serve me better? Unless my company needs to hall widgets cross country a few time per week I am going to use the less powerful but more comfortable and user friendly Porsche.

Joomla (has) more sophisticated templating
Do NOT mistake Sophisticated with more useful or more functional. In the case of Joomla it translates to complicated and cumbersome; If you doubt me try the structure of Sections, Categories and Articles, throw in components, Modules, plug-ins, add-ons and dynamic vs. static content, what do you have, Joomla, a website by committee.

Joomla, easier to customize? NOT!
Let’s start with the 1st thing everyone wants to do with their website, change the header, which typically includes a Company Slogan and Logo. In Joomla you buy (30 day trails are nice but don’t cut it in the Business world) a sophisticated graphics program like Adobe Fireworks, take a crash course in its use, mess with it for awhile, watch tutorials and guess at what you are doing. If you are lucky in 2 or 3 hours you have a different logo and look. With WordPress You change the Heading in the Control Panel (did I mention that WordPress has all the tools now to be a Content Management System (CMS)). Pick background colors and perhaps a font, select your logo like uploading a picture in any internet program, and publish it. Don’t like it or need to tweak it no problem. Advantage WordPress, and that is just the tip of the ice berg.

I could go on and on but I think you get the picture. If not I will leave you with this; my 1st website took about 15 days to complete and I still spend 2 or 3 hours a week trying to get the last of it where I want it. Granted I was a little more prepared but I set up the following Super-blog in about 6 hours.

A SUPER-BLOG EXAMPLE
Our most ambitious Blog Project to date is a WordPress for Multiple Users (MU) Platform Super-Bog. If you are reading this online you are in one of the Blogs! This is an in-house project for Dee Enterprises that currently consists of 6 related blogs and 2 blogs on completely different subjects. You can see one of the blogs that is nearly complete at the following link:

http://bankrollbuilding.pok...

The Parent blog which is about 60% complete can be viewed by going to:

http://www.PokerProfitOnlin...
This Super-Blog is providing specialized information as stand alone websites, content resources and in support of a Parent Website and Community Forum.

All I can say is Barrie, dinosaurs once ruled the world, but early man took them down, Joomla vs. WordPress? I rest my case.

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Re: 5 reasons you should use joomla instead of wordpress

Re: 5 reasons you should use joomla instead of wordpress