Question: I’m torn between two content management systems (CMS). Should I choose Joomla or Wordpress?

Answer: There are hundreds of content management systems and tens of really good ones, but two very popular ones: Joomla and Wordpress, are often highlighted. The truth of the matter is that there are benefits and drawbacks of both, and the one that will work best for you mostly depends on your needs and preferences.

Joomla is a large multi-functional CMS that is highly extensible and very customizable. Your website could be anything from a storefront with an ecommerce shopping cart to photography portfolio featuring a gallery of your work. The frontend, templates, and arrangement of modules are all subject to your imagination. It can also function as a blog or news magazine, but in that category it is a sloppy second to Wordpress.

Wordpress was primarily created as a blogging application. Since then, however, it has grown into a full-featured news creation and management tool. With it you can have a single user blog or a multi-user site complete with user bios, advertisements, etc., all extended through the plugin interface. Installation, setup, and extending of Wordpress has become very easy, arguably easier than Joomla, and Wordpress suits those who do not need all of the extra bells and whistles of Joomla.

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In a previous post, we learned about dynamic websites. One of the drawbacks of dynamic websites that we did not mention was the incomprehensibly long URLs that often result. The URL to a page might looks something like: yourdomain.com/indep.php?reallylongname&somethingelse&sid003234.

Content management systems like Joomla, provide a solution that works fairly well. Relying on Apache’s mod_rewrite feature, the web server will translate your long URL into something simple that looks like a traditional HTML URL. The SEO theory is that these URLs are friendly to search engines and improve rankings.

Aside from that, a URL that looks like yourdomain.com/somethingelse.html is much more appealing to users, particularly if they want to find that page again and forget to bookmark it. It adds the appearance of permanence to your dynamic pages and will improve your site’s user experience.

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One feature some consumers forget to look over before signing up for a hosting package is the number of MySQL databases offered. The most common type of database, MySQL is required to use any of the most popular blogging or CMS platforms.

One clever trick hosts use to keep usage down is limit the number of MySQL databases a customer can use. It’s not uncommon for entry-level hosting plans to have only one or possibly no databases. Because each CMS or blog installation requires a separate database, a limit on MySQL limits the number of sites you can run. Hosts may also achieve the same effect by restricting the number of domain names that can be added to an account.

Before signing up for a hosting package, make sure you have enough databases. Higher-end plans will give you at least 10. Of course, you can always use static HTML instead to get around a MySQL limit, but most hosters these days prefer the ease of use offered by a CMS.

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