That is a fair point... and we do have customers with Joomla historically...Originally Posted by JJMcClure
It is an interesting debate in the context of MMO - I guess that there will be a number of choices / scenarios:
- cheap solution needed - quick turnaround / low cost / content is king approach - then something like Joomla / WP may be ideal
- longer term - high value website - system and process is as important as content - maybe a different approach is needed
Alasdair
Joomla vs. Wordpress is the classic conflict between flexibility and simplicity. Joomla has a more flexible architecture which allows developers to build sites that most closely conform to user specifications and needs. But this comes at a cost. The cost of developing (and finding developers who can do it) and the cost of migration from one version of Joomla to another. Sometimes these costs are prohibitive and often it is just better to build from scratch and forego the issue of version migration. Migration is often essential for security and support.
Wordpress on the other hand has a much more rigid structure which is made a bit more flexible by the enormous number of plugins that are available. But the Wordpress data model and data presentation model is pretty rigid which is why one can almost always tell a WordPress site when one sees it. The big benefits is low-cost development and maintenance and often seamless migration between old and new versions. A perfect solution when an organization does not want to spend a lot for ongoing support.
Clinton (March 27th, 2012)
Yeah I'd agree Joomla may be pretty flexible but that comes at the cost of a lot of necessary code and Joomla sites don't load as fast as they might. I tried Expression Engine once, that was a nightmare.
I've used Wordpress extensively and its great for getting a content site up and running, but I just wanted to mention Jekyll (and other static site generators like it) as an option as well .
The main disadvantage of Wordpress for me is the security aspect which necessitates what feels like constant updates, many of which manage to break some part of a theme or a plugin.
For small to medium content sites which are updated infrequently, I've been finding Jekyll ( or its easier to use off-shoot Octopress ) a good stand in for Wordpress. What Jekyll does is take a directory of articles, stored as text files rather than in a database, and generates a full HTML site from these which can be uploaded to your server, as compared to Wordpress which does this dynamically for each request.
Out of the box, Jekyll does stuff like generate blog style websites , create sitemaps and feeds and archive pages and so on as well having plugins to customize things. You get most of the features that people use Wordpress for, but with 1) better security as its just HTML and Javascript and 2) a speedier site as the static files are served faster. Also, as its just text files containing your posts, the setup is very easy to backup.
The main disadvantage of Jekyll is that it does require some technical knowledge and has a much steeper learning curve than the famously quick WP install and set up process - however as Jekyll is very popular amongst the developer community, theres a lot of resources out there to learn from. For me, this learning curve was more than compensated for by the fact that a Jekyll site, once created, can be pretty much left alone as far as any upgrade process is concerned.
Last edited by monty; April 6th, 2012 at 5:13 AM.
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