Wordpress or Joomla Desicion

[Indy107]

I would like to create a community website, and I'm stuck wondering which would be the best format - Wordpress or Joomla. I've played with both - but nothing extensive. I would like the website to have alot of community involvement - so I need a forum, ability to have polls, a way to monetize it (adsense, sponsors, affiliates, whatever), and maybe a way to eventually turn some of the tasks over to others so i don't have to maintain the entire thing. I know Joomla can do all of this, but can Wordpress as well?

[da1prophet]

I'm fairly familiar with Wordpress and am starting to learn about Joomla. Wordpress is essentially just a blogging platform, so for what you want to do Joomla might be a better choice. I guess a lot of it depends on the type of content you have and the nature of that content. For my purposes Joomla just looks a little too "blocky" and corporate. For some websites that wouldn't be a problem, but I'm not sure how creative you can get with the layout and design. Then again, for what you're doing that may not be an issue.

For blogging IMO nothing beats WordPress

[icesar]

Well, taking this community as an example, I think WordPress is a perfectly good choice for building an audience and then a community. What we can learn from steve is that it matters less what technology we use and more how much value we provide and how well we execute.

Wordpress doesn't have an integrated forum module, but one can be added later, as Steve has done, when the readership and traffic of your site warrant it. And there are plenty of options; I personally like Get Vanilla! because you can integrate the look and feel better. But vBulletin is tried and true.

The bottom line is, the choice of technology is not that important, just go for it!

[Thomas Jensen]

Well, I agree with the argument that WordPress is more intuitive to use. With Joomla it can be time-consuming getting to grips with all the available functions (but of course rewarding later when once this has been mastered). I suppose it depends if you want to build in rolling news reports, in the style of an online newspaper. In this case a CMS would make sense. Otherwise, WordPress should suffice, and it won't take so long working it all out.

[da1prophet]

Originally Posted by icesar

Well, taking this community as an example, I think WordPress is a perfectly good choice for building an audience and then a community. What we can learn from steve is that it matters less what technology we use and more how much value we provide and how well we execute.

Wordpress doesn't have an integrated forum module, but one can be added later, as Steve has done, when the readership and traffic of your site warrant it. And there are plenty of options; I personally like Get Vanilla! because you can integrate the look and feel better. But vBulletin is tried and true.

The bottom line is, the choice of technology is not that important, just go for it!

Not to hump my webhost as I do so often, but Dreamhost has a one-click install process for both WordPress and PHPBB (a discussion forum platform similar to this one--it might even be the same one that Steve uses).

I checked out Vanilla--there's a lot to like about it but for the ease of set up a one click install of PHPBB is hard to beat ; )

[Dani]

If you want a fully fleged community site forget wordpress.

a week ago I would have been all over wordpress. But I sat down on the weekend and gave Joomla a go.

There are so many good plugins that you can create a myspace like portal in less than a day.

I have one that is almost finished and I hadn't used Joomla before last weekend.

Wordpress just doesn't have the guts to be a full on community site. Unless all you want is a blog and a forum. Even then you can clearly tell the difference between the forum and the blog, as they look completely different.

Indy, If you (or anyone else for that matter) want to see what you can build in less than a day PM me. I won't post the link as the site isn't finished or really ready for public traffic yet. I need time to put in the articles, the shop and find some people to provide content.

[dcldnl]

I guess the best solution is not to use joomla with plugins but using the best platform for every purpose.
Wordpress for blogging, phBB or similar for forum and so on..

[dor]

Thanks for posting this ...it looks promising -phpnuke was good for awhile but as with a lot of this stuff, unless you do deep customization, it looks all the same then again, steve runs a successful site with very little of a 'pavolinia look' so to speak - its pretty generic looking but people come here for the content not looks.

[Shaden]

Wordpress is easy to use, but is mainly blogging based and in that sense is a little less flexible. It really depends on exactly what you're intentions for your site are.

[Lucas]

I found MODx Content Management System | Home to be an awesome CMS. You need a little bit of knowledge, and their documentation isn't the best yet, but its a very versatile, powerful and transparent CMS.

[Phil Newton]

I think it really depends on what you're comfortable with. I tried Joomla for a site and I just couldn't get to grips with it. I'm sure in the right hands it's extremely powerful, but I couldn't get over the initiali barrier.

I've used WordPress for 4 different sites now, and I'm really impressed with how flexible it is. I'm pretty sure WordPress could do what you wanted, but because it wasn't explicitly designed for it Joomla might be a better option. There is a multi-user version of WP available though, which is what they use for WordPress.com.

[Indy107]

Thanks for all the replies.

I originally decided to go with Joomla. But ran into a brickwall. So I deleted my Joomla site (twice) and went with what I'm somewhat comfortable with - Wordpress.

The basic site is up - would love to here your comments. Especially any tips on SEO and Adsense.

forestgrovelive

[dor]

nice job very clean. Is that a template or did you customize?

[Indy107]

thanks -

its a customized template.