Joomla! and Wordpress for the Micro ISV
Image by …-Wink-… via Flickr
Yesterday I released Home Document Manager to rapturous silence. A familiar phenomenon for micro ISVs
with little or no marketing budget. What interested me was the
difference between the two web sites (www.convert2xps and
www.homedocumentmanager.com). Convert2XPS is a Joomla! site, and Home Document Manager uses Wordpress.
Here’s a bit of a breakdown of the structure of both sites:
Convert2XPS
- Convert2XPS uses Joomla! v1.5.9, which is the latest release.
- I bought a commercial template from JoomlaShack for around $40. A very good company to deal with and a well designed template.
- I installed various boilerplate extensions to add some basic functionality, like Joomap, Linkr etc.
- I also bought a commercial support ticketing system called Billets, by Discouri for around $90 with 12 months of updates.
There’s no blog on the Convert2XPS site [insert headshaking], although there are blogging components available.
Home Document Manager
- Home Document Manager uses Wordpress 2.7.1, which is the latest release.
- Wordpress has an excellent pedigree in the templates division, and
I customised one of the inbuilt designs. Easy to do, although it’s
currently mangled in IE6. - I installed the usual suspects; All in one SEO pack, Google XML Sitemaps etc.
- In place of a support forum or ticketing system, I’ve decided to
give GetSatisfaction a whirl. I’m very impressed with what they’re
doing, and the site integration is good. The basic (free) version that
I’m using at the minute is probably a little too crippled for long term
use, but rather than install a forum plugin or ticketing system, I’m
giving it a try.
And as you would expect of any site based on Wordpress, there’s a blog.
Verdict
As
I’ve now been through the mill and produced two ‘OK’ sites, I’ve formed
a pretty good impression of both Joomla! and Wordpress. I think a good
way of summing up would be:
- Joomla! is a solid CMS with blogging capabilities.
- Wordpress is a blog with CMS capabilties.
A bit of a nonesense, but you know what I mean. For a typical micro ISV,
I personally think Wordpress is better suited as a lightweight CMS. As
you can set a page as the site home, and another page as your blog
home, getting it to function as a CMS is a breeze. I’ve found the back
end administration much more pleasant in Wordpress too. The “Turbo”
function (which caches scripts and CSS) is a good touch, and really demonstrates attention to detail.
Whenever you’re going to put your eggs in an Open Source basket, community matters. And I think Matt Mullenweg’s stances on what Open Source should mean have perplexed some, but have undoubtedly benefited to community as a whole.
Next time you build a web site, why not give Wordpress a try as your CMS?
I agree, I’d rather use Wordpress as a CMS than Joomla. While
Joomla has a ton of features and plugins, the user interface is
horrible.
I made the mistake of installing Joomla (and a couple of plugins)
for my sister in law. She had such a tough time using it that I ended
up being person she called whenever she needed content updated. Even
then I had trouble going into the right area sometimes (not mention
dealing with components vs. modules).
For my own site I’ve installed FrogCMS; I use it as a CMS and blog.
So far I’m extremely impressed at the user interface. Still, it’s
pretty young so it’s thin on features and plugins but worth looking at
when you have simple needs.