WP is everywhere Topic is solved

[Webdongle]

Over the past 6 months or so I have noticed a large increase in WP sites. Often when I am looking at a site for local bars/grills, restaurants, various small businesses and clubs ... there are many that are wp sites. It is almost as if use of WP is being spread by word of mouth. Anyone have ideas about this?

[deleted user]

For me, this is an easy one to explain.

WordPress is focused on monopolization of the web. One of the recent interviews highlighted a goal of 85% market share, which essentially means Mullenweg owns the content publishing space with his software. That's a scary thought.

People are easily sold by the word of mouth marketing done by WordPress insiders. They give you the false sense of security in that you can put a site up and completely forget about it because of their automatic updates, neglecting to communicate that the scope of these automatic updates is presently limited (though if some have their way everything will soon be automatically updated no matter what). Some who are in their "core team" have even gone so far as to say showing a user an update prompt or a version number is disrespectful and that it is their job as the software vendor to update people's sites. I doubt many have thought through the ramifications of this mentality, even after a discussion to start auto-updating what might be considered abandonware sites for the sole purpose of padding their usage numbers to show a larger number of sites on current WordPress versions. Another scary aspect of WordPress is through their systems, the decision makers (Automattic) have the ability to force updates of anything on a WordPress site; imagine they started force pushing core WordPress updates then force pushing plugin and theme updates to fix breakages introduced by the core updates, giving no respect to the fact the user may have made customizations to anything in their WordPress site (some have even challenged that these forced updates may not be legal and could potentially be contradictory to the terms of the GPL).

Because of the way they market themselves, they have become a household term (people say they want a WordPress similar to how people say to Google something when they are referring to someone searching on the internet for something).

Because of the unchallenged growth, more people and companies jump on the WordPress train because you'd be pretty crazy to not follow the money. That results in more new business going into the WordPress ecosystem, which ultimately benefits Mullenweg and the investors in Automattic. And this is ultimately where the domino effect starts IMO.

So why is it everywhere? Because that's what Mullenweg wants, and thus far no software vendor nor litigator has challenged his aim for monopolizing the web in his vision.

[Webdongle]

Perhaps if Joomla offered automatic update then it might be more appealing? Not forced update but a setting that could be set by choice?

[deleted user]

I wouldn't advocate for it when comparing Joomla's release strategy to WordPress'. It works for them because what they ship in automatic updates aside from when they added their privacy package is literally nothing but security fixes and regressions introduced in that branch (meaning a bug introduced in 5.2.0 might be fixed in a 5.2.x automatic update but any bugs from 5.1 or earlier will wait for their next "major" update, which is a manual action). For comparison in Joomla terms, any 3.9.x releases would only be bugs introduced in 3.9.0 or later as well as security fixes, and any bug fixes for bugs from 3.8 or earlier would not be shipped until 3.10.

As long as there is no funded staff in Joomla to monitor the rollout of updates in the way that Mullenweg's staff does, I would not want more people in the Joomla ecosystem to be forced into donating more uncompensated volunteer time to the project for something that is an inherent high risk action (any software update is high risk no matter the scope of change, this isn't me saying "Joomla updates are bad"). Not to mention there is not that type of analytical reporting available within the Joomla project or software (WordPress has been under fire for years because of the level of telemetry data they collect and process, the data they collect contains enough information that their staff is able to contact a site owner on a failed update, that should say everything that needs to be said on the subject).

And, contrary to what those feeding the WordPress machine want you to believe, automatic software updates are not the end all be all of software security practices. I will always run a tight enough ship that software updates are manually applied by either myself or by an organization that is paid for a managed service; I don't want Automattic or Joomla or Bootstrap or MySQL or Jenkins or NodeJS or PHP or Docker or Apache or any one of the dozens of software providers whom I use to push their updates automatically to my systems unless someone from that organization is going to verify the update applied correctly and if necessary debug and potentially revert a failed update. And I guarantee you most organizations that use some form of automatic software updates are not providing that level of support.

[Webdongle]

If the user chose to have automatic updates then that scenario would not occur.

[ribo]

Perhaps if Joomla offered automatic update then it might be more appealing? Not forced update but a setting that could be set by choice?

I understand your point but i think that automatic update is a risk as joomla can break if a user will use forced update if an extension needs update too. Also i don t think that automatic update will bring more users in joomla. If joomla would have more good free extensions than wp plugins and more good free templates than good free wp themes, it could bring much more users. But this is another discussion.

[smpleader]

WP is easier in usage, as my experience.
WP is easy for any newbiew, amateur or non-php developer, then it's easy to become popular.
WP over come Joomla since about 3-4 years, not 6 months ( look at google trend )
I don't think it's bad or good here, just try hard for Joomla community as a developer, and I am happy with what we are doing.

[gws]

An observation, in my day to day surfing the net I often come across references to WP,very rarely do I come across references to Joomla mentioned.

[Webdongle]

Yes wp has had the market share for a while but in the last few months its popularity has increased tremendously.

[infograf768]

Let's face the facts:
Joomla, until version 2.5, was still a CMS for anyone. "Power in Simplicity" was the Mambo slogan and Joomla did stick to that value.
Since then, a lot of water went under the bridges and Joomla is more and more a CMS for specialists.

[abernyte]

I think it is a critical mass thing. It has been sitting with a large share of the CMS market for a long time as the less technical users learn to use WP as a homonym for any CMS.
At some point - boom- vacuum cleaner becomes Hoover.
Its ease of use in its limited sphere also contributes to that success. "Do one thing well" was never a bad marketing strategy. The danger for Joomla as Automattic sucks the life blood out of the market is to be able to resist the lure of following. No one is going to out WP, WordPress, so success must lie in differentiation.

[waarnemer]

Well.... for one, I did not notice any significant increase in popularity..

But honestly, this is a discussion on a market share fishing in the same pond...
With Joomla! you can look at the big fish and do more deep sea fishing...

J! is enterprise ready out of the box.
- out of the box SEO/SEF
- extended ACL allows working in large teams or cross department on same site.
- Versioning
...amongst a lot more awesome features..

So, with WP, when a company grows and expands, one is stuck with this one man band website. It doesn't fit anymore. The website cannot grow alongside with the company. The technology fails and Open Source all of a sudden is bad. Mind this; site owners are not the same people as the ones creating them..
So instead of choosing a new open source solution companies jump to proprietary solutions.

In a way WP is bad for Open Source.

Also J! marketing can do some about the first impression.
On the joomla.org, the features should be brought to top. (above the fold)
The current announcements holds two version update messages... avoid confusion; make this one...
Also, I know this has been discussed somewhere before, marketing should include the site owners, the ones that actually pay to have sites created for their business... (the ones that do not add content but have employees to do so)

we need to fish there...

[ribo]

With Joomla! you can look at the big fish and do more deep sea fishing...

I agree totally. That s why i like joomla and not wp.

[BlackWoods]

Been using WP for almost a decade now, I can vouch for the mass usage is due to the easy to understand.
Linking things together is also quite easy, I would say it appeals to people that is both IT illiterate and literate.

[Webdongle]

Would slightly disagree. IT literate people tend not use simplified software because the simplification removes flexibility. Joomla is just is easy to learn as wp ... it is the extra flexibility that is more difficult. As wp does not have that flexibility it only appears to be easier.

[michaelcheng924]

I think it's because WordPress has such great name recognization. For whatever reason, Joomla seems to have a more niche connotation.

[darb]

WP best strategic decision was to pay professional designers for the overhaul of their UX/UI template design and that took them a very great step focusing on user "friendly" interoperability and "ease of use" as their mantra thereafter. They tell the world that WP is so easy to use,not true in my world, but of course if you learn it

Joomla nowadays still struggling to focus on what kind of people focus group should be target and what should be built for them ie what features should be or not in the core etc.

And Joomla still have to manage to get the same professional admin design in backend template with professional designers that are trained schooled designers with UX/UI experience. In Joomla world that’s not easy bcs our leadership structure bcs we are all in the same boat and captains.

I think we get there but it takes time and market conditions for publishing tools/solutions going fast now so maybe when we are ready the market is changing again with our not to update solution for the mass market of a "CMS" and we see other cloud players coming in the market now with Wix, Google , MS, Facebook etc too..

[wagner2010]

In my opinion WP is most popular because it is super user friendly. Most people, local businesses, who create websites are not THAT tech savvy. Wordpress makes everything super easy to understand. Also, Wordpress seems to have the most plugins, themes, etc in marketplaces. And as others have mentioned, the automatic updates are nice. Especially for people who don't get on their websites to update it regularly.

[waarnemer]

@wagner2010

the automatic updates are nice. Especially for people who don't get on their websites to update it regularly.

In that same sentence it is explained.. WP is a threat to the internet... it is a CMS for security ignorant people...

[darb]

In my opinion WP is most popular because it is super user friendly. Most people, local businesses, who create websites are not THAT tech savvy. Wordpress makes everything super easy to understand. Also, Wordpress seems to have the most plugins, themes, etc in marketplaces. And as others have mentioned, the automatic updates are nice. Especially for people who don't get on their websites to update it regularly.

Joomla is super easy friendly too and for me Joomla is superior to Wordpress if you start having something more than a blog where you should use your system for blogging with a one man show system. As soon you start getting into a more demanding system Joomla is superior super easy compared to Wordpress.

And you don’t need to be techy savvy as you say to login and create articles blogs easy in Joomla.

With Joomla you can get a real content management system and a blog that will grow with your demands in future and that’s bcs Joomla from the beginning was built to do just that.

Joomla is a secure, easy to set up system built with latest MVC technology for companies, organisations and people that want to control and set up a real structure with control. Joomla have even its own framework system where you can built amazing stuff like this example here in Joomla world; https://issues.joomla.org/

So non savvy teach people that start using Joomla and have a good implementer support will be very happy that they make Joomla their publishing system that can make them feel secure and comfortable to deliver their needs in future.

Joomla have all the extra add-on extensions plugins that you need and they are also more updated than Wordpress that have a lot of outdated plugins where WP geeks have left the support unfortunately.

Joomla updates for the extension extra add-on’s you have and Joomla core itself is a one button update and you get that info in the backend info panel so you have control of everything there is you want and you can make installations with a button click and take 20 seconds to do!

Isn’t that easy and user-friendly for non-techy savvies too??

If you want to built things fast you can have a look at free extension Joomla Component Builder JCB that doing things so smarter than Wordpress https://www.joomlacomponentbuilder.com/

[darb]

Example my wife working at an embassy and I have to take care of there so "easy" Wordpress problem with complexity if publishing content that take ages to publish as soon there are different kind of content items and set ups - not even the company that set up the structure have clue what they are doing

Get so fk tired of this nonsense of that WP is easy to use!

[darb]

80% of all websites are WP based. It has an easy explanation. WP is easy to use without any coding skills. Most of these websites are blogs.

Jepp thats bcs every blogg that starts up in WP world is counting as a webpage even its a one blog page of a 7 years old.

And many Joomla sites hiding their counting numbers for these statitics so its not really 100% accurate.

For example this site do you know its a Joomla site? https://www.nintendo.se/ The spiders cant track these sites so they never come into the statitics but a small one page blog does and have the same value.

[Webdongle]

Where do you get the 80% figure from?

[Webdongle]

...

For example this site do you know its a Joomla site? https://www.nintendo.se/ The spiders cant track these sites so they never come into the statitics but a small one page blog does and have the same value.

Quick guess built using UIkit?

[darb]

...

For example this site do you know its a Joomla site? https://www.nintendo.se/ The spiders cant track these sites so they never come into the statitics but a small one page blog does and have the same value.

Quick guess built using UIkit?

If thats what your wappalyzer says...

[sozzled]

Wappalyzer doesn't always get it right. Sometimes, when I'm looking at one of my J! sites, Wappalyzer "thinks" the site was not based on J!. Wappalyzer is a good guide but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.

[Webdongle]

Yep that is why I used the word 'guess'

[sailom]

I think I could be because of the simplicity of Wordpress. But I prefer Joomla over Wordpress for various reasons such as customization.

[darb]

...

For example this site do you know its a Joomla site? https://www.nintendo.se/ The spiders cant track these sites so they never come into the statitics but a small one page blog does and have the same value.

Quick guess built using UIkit?

@ sailom the simplicity is just a smart WP gimick bcs the user and we all want everything to be easy and
the simple. You still have to learn the WP way on how to do things. There was a competition between Drupal, Joomla and WP where they did real world test of which CMS was the fastest and best to create a site from scratch. When that test didnt go WP Drupal way they took that test away..

Yes and they are not in the Joomla statistics here is another example https://kabolka-shop.ru/ do you think its in the statitics. No.

[darb]

Because finding people that can customize wordpress or do some minor PHP scripting is easy, and long term maintenance is how they make their money. They aren't in it for cool technology, they make money by solving business problems and wordpress is an incredibly cost effective way of doing it. Plus, wordpress is open source and so it can't die.

"Plus, wordpress is open source and so it can't die."

Yes it cant "die" but it can be sold as it smart have been "done" bcs everybody that works and develop code for Wordpress is increasing the value for Automattic - Matt Mullenweg and Co owners.

Its smart like Google does, let people work for "free" in "Open Source" coding/project increasing the value for them for... nothing.

Joomla is owned controlled by everyone https://www.opensourcematters.org/organisation.html that contribute and can not be sold by anyone like for example MySQL one time was sold to Sun and ended up in its largest competitor Oracle when Oracle bought Sun.