Why Joomla?

If you’ve done any research into building a website you’ve no doubt heard that WordPress is the most popular platform on which to build your site. There is no denying that is true, but is it always the right solution for your website?

Way back in 2006 when I was first starting my business and was looking at all the different CMS (Content Management System) platforms I spent considerable time looking at both WordPress and Joomla (among others) to decide which path I would take.

Now as you would gather from this blog and the work we do at Mity, Joomla was the platform that I decided to stick with, and there are a few reasons for that.

To start with, WordPress had its roots as a blogging platform – and it’s great at doing that – but as businesses started to take the Internet seriously, and had the need for their own website, the short comings of the core WordPress setup became apparent with the reliance of plugins and 3rd party add-ons. While over the years the core WordPress platform has grown, there is still a heavy reliance on plugins to get a site off the ground.

I was recently reading an article that talked about all the alternatives to WordPress and this comment stuck with me:

“Joomla comes with all the things that WordPress can do, and then some more.”

This stuck with me because it’s true. If you look at both WordPress and Joomla and their “out of the box” installations Joomla by far is the more feature rich platform. Let’s just take SEO and the need to manage your sites meta data – without a plugin you can’t do that in WordPress – seems like a basic bit of functionality is missing, and there are many examples of this.

If you also look at managing content. In WordPress you have Pages and Post – but what’s the difference? The average user wouldn’t know. In Joomla you just have a piece of content (called an Article) and what you do with it is up to you, and there is a lot of flexibility in how you present that content.

I also have a strong view that any serious business owner/manager should be focused on what their website can do for their business, and work with their designer/developer to make that happen – at the end of the day, they shouldn’t be concerned with what the platform is.

Too many times I hear someone ask for a WordPress website, but when you ask why they specifically want WordPress they can’t answer, or it’s because a friend of their cousin said they need to use WordPress so that’s all they focus on, which is not the smartest approach because they shouldn’t be focused solely on the technology.

So why not just use WordPress you say? We’ll it comes down to believing in what you offer as a business and customers listening to your expertise. One of the people in the Melbourne Joomla community once said they respond to questions about why they don’t use WordPress with the following (paraphrasing):

“You’ve come to me because I build great websites so why would you compromise the end result buy asking me to change my workflow?”

So to answer the original question – Why Joomla?

1. I believe the platform gives businesses a more robust result

2. It’s a powerful foundation to build on in the future

3. It’s great to develop with

4. It fits well with our ethos of custom design (not using templates); and

5. It’s easy for the customer to manage.

It also comes down to working with clients that value your expertise and want to work together for the best possible outcome for their business.