Joomla to WordPress
Are you thinking about converting your Joomla website to WordPress? While they are both CMS software platforms, comparing Joomla to WordPress is like comparing apples to oranges. I’ve worked on both platforms, but exclusively use WordPress in all website development jobs I am hired to build.
In terms of ease of use, flexibility and user community there is no comparison. The last website I built with Joomla was in 2011.
Reasons to Move to WordPress (WP)
My top reasons to use WP over Joomla:
- It’s the most popular CMS in the world. (for good reason)
- WordPress is easier to learn and more user friendly than Joomla.
- WordPress has a huge user community and lots of developers if you need help.
- Joomla is “dying”. It has a fraction of the number of plugins and premade themes to rapidly develop with.
Look at these charts. Comparing Joomla to WordPress usage is like comparing Yahoo to Google. No doubt its well known, but people prefer Google over Yahoo. It just works better. 40.6% of websites are using a CMS. Of that 64.6% of those sites use WordPress, while 3.3% are using Joomla.
I’m not saying anything is wrong with Joomla. It’s just geared more toward developers. I think the learning curve is a big factor to why it has not been able to compete with WordPress. When building a website, I consider level of effort for me to build it, but also after a website is complete, how easy it will be for my client to be able to manage it.
Migrating your Website
You probably have seen blog posts of “How to easily move your site from Joomla to WordPress in a few simple steps”. If you are a web developer with experience working with both Joomla and WP then yes, I would say it’s not too hard. If you are a small business website owner trying to DIY, then you will be up for a challenge.
Migrating to a new software platform is more work than copy and pasting web pages into the new system. When you convert a Joomla database to WordPress, that is half of the project. Properly configuring and securing WordPress is extremely important for your long term website health. When I migrate your site, everything is moved over for you. Your new site is properly installed and configured for security, performance and search engines.
If you are looking to hire a web developer to migrate your website to WordPress, get in touch.
