Last night and today has been a grand experiment with Joomla! the content management system (CMS) that I’ve been seeing more and more of lately. [To clarify my geekspeak: WordPress is a CMS that bloggers use. So is LiveJournal, MySpace, FaceBook and other online services. The difference is that WordPress and Joomla! are things that are installed on MY server, whereas the online stuff is, well, ONLINE. And Joomla! positions itself as a business CMS more than a blog one.]
To start, the installer is completely fubar. Doesn’t work. And it’s been this way for a couple of updates. It took several hours of futzing, calling ITX (my hosting co.) for help then Nick trolling the Joomla! support forums to find out what was wrong. Then as I trolled around today, looking for templates, I realise there are no templates worth a shit for this thing. And the ones that are out there are worse to tweak than my good ole Cutline (WP template) I use here.
On top of all these usability issues, the app is pretty hackable. Granted, this is normal for an open source application when it’s new, but with all its problems, I just can’t believe people are using this application for businesses. It’s NOT ready for that. Not even close!
I think that WordPress is still the best CMS all ’round. Nick just put up a restaurant site with it and it works brilliantly!
So if you have been contemplating a CMS for a blog or small business, I encourage you to look into WordPress and SKIP Joomla! for now. It’s still too young and untested.
Been exploring Joomla! meself for possible things…thanks for the details on your journey…trying to get all the info I can get…
Any thoughts/input on Drupal? Have had other web pro friends make great use of it and even convert a lot of their stuff over….plus also used by NASA, Fed Ex, The Onion, and others….
Addendum:
Looking at WordPress as well of course ;)
Drupal, eh? I’ll look into that one, too. Let me know if you test it, would you? I <3 my WP, but I try to stay at least half way informed about other stuff, too. :-)