Why You Still Use Joomla?

[yop]

Hi,

I just want to make a conversation regarding this. I wonder, Joomla has been a while now. There are many other CMS to choose, and Joomla not even the most popular one (which is Wordpress is).

My question is, why you still use Joomla?

Everyone free to answer from their own perspective, might be a good insight for others and me.

[Webdongle]

Familiarity with the volunteers on the forum and the security of Joomla.
How about you @yop

[gsmela]

I keep getting requests to do WordPress sites and I resist.

I just turned dow a request to do a WP site after showing the potential client that even though WP is free all the required tools needed to do what he needed would cost several hundred $/year.

The best defense I've come across is this explanation from Nicholas Dionysopoulos (Akeeba developer). (For the full response look at his blog site: https://www.dionysopoulos.me/ for "The [* spam *] isn't greener on the other side." (This board blocks posting the exact URL.)

"Besides, there's the elephant in the root nobody talks about: there is no alternative to Joomla!. On one end of the spectrum we have WordPress, WiX, [spam] etc which allow people with minimal to no experience in web development to create visually compelling sites, with all the drawbacks I mentioned. On the other end of the scale we have Drupal, Laravel, Symfony etc which allow hardcore backend developers to create insanely powerful applications. However, most people belong in the middle. What's in the middle? Joomla!. It sits alone on the island of "good enough". It's good enough that people with a moderate skill set can use it to create visually compelling sites, and good enough that developers can use it to create fairly powerful applications. It's good enough that you can purchase off the shelf software and templates to create this kind of sites with a slightly steeper learning curve than a point-and-click page builder, but without having to be a hardcore developer writing reams of PHP code. This is what most site integrators need.

"And that's why I am sticking with Joomla! for my sites.

"My only concern about CMS in general is that younger people (Gen Z) don't seem interested in web development like us Gen X / Millenials used to (I was born in 1981, on the cusp of both generations, I could be called either). This is a threat not just to every CMS out there, but the web in general. If there's one thing we all ought to do is get younger people interested in web development, because that's humanity's best solution to the age-long quest of sharing knowledge.

"As we used to say in the old web, sorry for the long reply, here's a potato 🥔"

[yop]

"My only concern about CMS in general is that younger people (Gen Z) don't seem interested in web development like us Gen X / Millenials used to (I was born in 1981, on the cusp of both generations, I could be called either). This is a threat not just to every CMS out there, but the web in general. If there's one thing we all ought to do is get younger people interested in web development, because that's humanity's best solution to the age-long quest of sharing knowledge.

Gen Z busy scrolling on TikTok or Instagram Reels now. Your concern i think also include in Blog website or Blog section on many websites now feels like a dead ground. No more people read and then bother to put comment on your blog post anymore. Even we blog now using ChatGPT. I'm from 1986 anyway.

[yop]

Familiarity with the volunteers on the forum and the security of Joomla.
How about you @yop

I'll answer myself as well here. So i've been using Joomla since my very early career of being a freelance web designer, maybe 2009-2010. Why i still use it maybe because i just already get used to it. The environment too comfortable for me. I've tried others such Wordpress, man, too much 3rd party plugins for base stuffs i agree. And every time i upload a picture, WP auto generate about 4 other images maybe, this easily make the server full in only a moment. My bad i never try other CMS than Joomla and Wordpress. I just wish Joomla could have better dynamic content management such Elementor & Crocoblock does on WP.

[trogladyte]

I use JoomlaCK's PageBuilder product. Having never used Elementor I can't comment on the feature-set comparison, but I use PB for EVERY page nowadays, even simple ones. So easy to build pages and control them on various viewports. https://extensions.joomla.org/extension ... uilder-ck/

They also produce a very robust template creator that I use on every site. https://extensions.joomla.org/extension ... reator-ck/

[pe7er]

My question is, why you still use Joomla?

Because Joomla has been designed as Content Management System. It was not designed as blog software that evolved to a system to build website with. Just look at the database structure.

Database
Storing different kinds of functionality in the same database tables is not really a good database design.

WordPress uses the table wp_options to store all settings (hardcoded URLs, title, installed plugins)
Joomla uses the configuration.php file for site title etc, and #__extensions for all extensions (components, plugins, modules, templates, etc)

WordPress uses the table wp_posts to store all posts, revisions, pages, menu items.
Joomla stores that in separate #__content, history and #__menu items tables.

WordPress uses the table wp_terms to store all categories, menus and tags.
Joomla stores that in separate #__categories, #__menus and #__tags tables.

Functionality
The Joomla and WordPress core are both stable and secure.

Joomla has a lot of functionality in the core, e.g.:

• flexible user management
• multilingual
• custom fields

With WordPress you need to install 3rd party plugins. The quality (and thus safety) of 3rd party extensions differs a lot.

I prefer Joomla, even though it ranks as the second most popular CMS in the world. Popularity doesn’t always reflect quality.

Anyway, both CMS platforms have many advantages over SaaS solutions: you are not dependent on those services but you have everything (platform + data) in your own control. Furthermore Joomla and WordPress are both open source, they are backed by a large community, easily extendable with plugins, and make it possible to create dynamic websites for low costs.

[trogladyte]

My question is, why you still use Joomla?

I prefer Joomla, even though it ranks as the second most popular CMS in the world. Popularity doesn’t always reflect quality.

Totally agree Pe7er. I used to be an architectural designer and used a program called Spirit. Compared to the 800lb gorilla AutoCAD, it had a very small market share. Percentage-wise it had a MUCH smaller market share compared to AutoCAD than Joomla compared to WP. However, in terms of drawing houses/buildings it could blow AutoCAD out of the water in its sleep.

I've used Joomla since around 2007, and have yet to find something that it doesn't do. Yes, there are some things it could do better - as mentioned above, media management, and also blogging could be enhanced (without having to add paid add-ons). I have tried WP a number of times and fins it terribly illogical in its way of doing things. But that could also be because I know Joomla so well.

[Webdongle]

...
Functionality
The Joomla and WordPress core are both stable and secure.
...

I have read some 'experts' say that wp's insistence of placing backward compatibility over development of code makes wp core less stable.

[evrimsel]

After mambo in 2005, I met Joomla. I made all my websites with Joomla during those years when I received web design education and earned money professionally. The year was 2006-2008. In those years, Wordpress was a very ordinary blog site structure. There were many developers and plugins for Joomla. At that time, it was said that WordPress was more reliable, which was true because there were serious gaps in Joomla sites due to 3rd party Joomla plugins. After that, WordPress developers increased incredibly rapidly. Unfortunately, I did not follow Joomla after that date. I do not know what developments happened after that.

[pe7er]

I made all my websites with Joomla during those years when I received web design education and earned money professionally. The year was 2006-2008. [..] I do not know what developments happened after that.

Joomla has evolved a lot since 2008. Give Joomla 5.2 a try, and you'll see just how much it has improved!

[Djuks]

Because it was installed by the previous developer and nobody phased it out

[axtolf]

I'm going against the grain so don't hit me too hard :-)

I'm using Joomla! on two sites since 2010 after a few years' experience with Drupal. At the moment the reason why I'm still using it is because I haven't finished studying Wordpress and organizing the migration yet.

I have always been delighted to use Joomla! but in recent years I have had many problems that have made me change my mind.

To begin with, the migration to 4.x was simply a nightmare, it took me weeks to have a successful migration and I don't think I have the most complicated sites in the world. But let's say that migrations of this type happen infrequently. What made me decide to change is the fact that the majority of the extensions and templates I'm using are ceasing support or simply disappearing into thin air. The majority of them are paid products. The latest of these for example is the Unite Slider, which I think is quite popular. He simply disappeared into thin air. The developer of one of the two templates I use (best seller on Themeforest) disappeared for a year without updating or explaining.
And I have a very hard time finding alternatives that have a minimum of supportability.

The reason I switched from Drupal to Joomla was mainly because I didn't want to invest time in writing code or fixing existing code. With the absence of many extensions, I am in the same situation, which will obviously get worse with version 5 as many extensions will not be migrated.

I keepan eye also on the market trends and when I started using Joomla! it was somehting around 10% now it's 2.3% (https://w3techs.com/technologies/histor ... ement/ms/y).
For my needs Joomal! unfortunately it is no longer the right product.

[Webdongle]

Perhaps Joomla is a victim of it's own success? It is so much more advanced than wp that the ordinary users (which are the majority of people creating their own websites) can't keep up.

[yop]

Looking at the marketshare number, i cant blame many quality developer dont want to spend much time on Joomla... This community is not growing, most of us just the same old person from 15-20 years ago.

[Webdongle]

... This community is not growing, most of us just the same old person from 15-20 years ago.

And some only post an average of twice a year with the majority of their posts unrelated to actual problems (without learning the forum rules).