Advice on which CMS to use?

[monaghan]

I think WP is probably easier for a fairly standard site, however, the power of a full CMS comes in when you want to do more with it. As for plugins and such like, WP is easy to write for as you can more or less do what you want (I wrote a simple plugin to process seed planting times for the wife's allotment), Joomla seems more locked into the API to do anything, but that carries the overhead of the system.

I guess you choose which is the best solution for your particular requirement rather than making 1 product do all applications.

[Brian Turner]

I think Joomla tries to do more, ie, including forums, and I think a directory module, and more - but my impression is that none of these features are particularly well done. The forums themselves appear based on phpbb, which has such a serios history of security problems that I would never touch it with a bargepole.

[monaghan]

Joomla will bridge into just about anything, there are VB, PHPBB and SMF that I know of from the top of my head. As with any open source product (and quite a number of commercial ones) the quality of the plugin will vary dependant on the quality of the programmer. Presently there are about 4.5K extensions listed at http://extensions.joomla.org/ so I would expect that you could make Joomla fit your needs.

There is, however, no single product that meets all requirements (unless you write your own), so take a look at what you want to do and then select your product choice based on your requirement NOT because you've used a particular product before or because "some bloke on a forum" says it is the best. WP will do a lot of most people's requirement, so will Joomla and most other CMS products, but the research must be done to ensure the correct tool is used. You could use vi to write letters, however, it is much easier to load Word.

Personally, I use WP and Joomla.

[mikael]

When I was looking for a CMS I have made a comparison between several products (Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal...) and finally I have chosen Drupal.

It is not the easyest to use and it is quite a long time (plan several days/weeks) before making your first website because it is necessary to get trained with a good book. That's what I've done. I have taken the time to learn how using Drupal, but at the end I think I have made the right choice . Good programming knowledge is necessary if you want for example make your own modules to suit exactly what you need, but it's a delight once you know how using Drupal to make websites.

It's my opinion, hope it can help.

[A4D]

Here is an example of a site

www.globalbuzz-sa.com

that is using everything

Wordpress - vBulletin - vBdrupal - Mediawiki

and a few other add-ons

News section

and the main focus of the site has been to achieve one login (vBulletin forums) while having the power of 4 or more software packages available

Cheers

A4D

[A4D]

Originally Posted by mikael

.................

Hi Mikael is your Rapid catalogues website achieved with Drupal, please?

[mikael]

Originally Posted by A4D

Hi Mikael is your Rapid catalogues website achieved with Drupal, please?

The documentation part of the website has been achieved with Drupal (doc.rapid-catalogues.com)

[JohnNightingale]

Without a doubt I would suggest joomla. The cms is robust. The ongoing support and community is established and growing. Enough free / low cost extensions are available and being developed to ensure the website is search engine friendly, content is easy to post, quick and easy to back up and maintain. The learning curve is not steep.

[lin robinson]

I'd disagree with that last sentence.
I did a site in joomla and found it to be a total pain in the neck. I did another one for a client who knew nothing about html, etc. and she got hysterical trying to use the anti-instinctual controls and Rube Goldberg media tools.
Final solution... the site in HTML and she learned how to edit simple codes to add info by herself.

From this point on I would never try to do that. It's just so much easier, quicker, better-supported (in English, not Geekese) more flexible and WAY simpler to use Wordpress. The more familiar I get with WP, the less I see the need for standard site design. Almost anything I come with that requires a straight html site, turns out there's some WP trick or widget or plug-in that can do it.

[lin robinson]

Wow A4D, that's a pretty impressive lash-up, there. Did you use all those CMS to solve certain problems, or just kind of for the fun and challenge of doing it that way?