Want to learn Plugin/Template Development. Wordpress or Joomla?s

Question

i seem to be getting the impression that Wordpress is more popular than joomla nowadays. but i also get the impression joomla is more powerful.

so which shld do u think will give better prospects if i were to want to learn to develop for one.

Answer 1

Wordpress is popular I agree but it has Millions of plugins out there. So choosing a platform based on the popularity may not be a good idea. If you think you have a better idea for a wordpress plugin then learn and develop one.

My person choice would be wordpress.

Answer 2

I always find it best to develop your own module that you are missing. E.g. if you find that for your needs there is not yet the right image gallery script in Wordpress / Joomla then I would start developping that. This ensures both that I have a specific goal and a reason to go on when some obstacles appear. In the end, I have learned something about the module system of that CMS / blog system.

I would not think so much in terms of "what is more popular?" but in terms of "what do I want to use?" and "what is missing?".

Answer 3

I think you should try to program extensions in both. A simple one, the classic "Hello World" to understand each cms concepts and see which one is better for you. Some may fit better than the other based in your requirements.

This is my personal POV: I've created extensions to both of them and I think Joomla's way of structuring extensions is more complicated. I think the Wordpress documentation is better too. Just a simple comparison:

In Wordpress, you just write a bunch of php files inside a folder, use some action hookers to common actions in wordpress and you're done. You have an extension.

In Joomla, at first you need to understand their extension structure, divided by "components", "modules" and "plugins" to see in which category your extension fits. To create a module, you have to create a folder in a specific structure, and write a descriptive xml of your component, including all files that you use in it. Joomla is following the MVC principle for it's extensions, but since it's documentation is not that good, I have to look at the source code of official components to try to create everything right and in the best way, but each one is done differently. (I'm using 1.5.14 version, 1.6 is in development and promises a lot of improvements).

Wordpress is a Blog System. Period. But it's approach of "static pages" is great to create a website too. So you can create a lot of different structures since you have this freedom.

Joomla is a CMS, but has it's own way of structuring things, nowadays it obliges you that to every article (post) you wrote, you need to associate a section and a category to it - even if you want to "uncategorize" an article you need to explicity select "Uncategorized".

My advice is: if you want a simple website but with a good cms to edit it's pages, use Wordpress. Want a "Big Portal", with a lot of predefined sections and categories, use Joomla.

Answer 4

This is an easy to follow explaination of creating a Joomla component component