Why Joomla or Wordpress

Some of you may be old enough to remember what a BBS was.  Dial up modems and telnet accounts that made up the infant stages of what has grown into what the Internet is today.  I have spent the last two decades fascinated by ability to make network connections across town and across the world.  The World Wide Web.  Back then it was almost synonymous with the Wild Wild West.  The future was coming and everything was possible.  Who would have thought the internet would be were it is today.  Well, here we are and I want to explain why two Open Source Content Management Systems are the key to returning visitors and potential exposure.  

Flash... I love you, but for the duration of this article you are your own worst enemy.  We all have seen cool flash apps, flash games, flash animations and cool designs.  Flash helped revolutionize the plain and boring internet into some of the greatest things we have ever seen from the comfort of our desktop.  However, we are becoming more and more removed from the desktop as a whole.  Three years ago I had two desktops.  Today only have a smartphone and a laptop.  A good laptop really can provide much of the day-to-day stuff and currently the only need for a desktop is for rendering my cheesy GoPro videos on a timeline.  Flash on a Laptop.  Perfectly fine.  But what about my smartphone?  I run Android and have the updates, and Flash runs pretty well most of the time.  Then again, when I am on the smartphone the last thing I want to do is wait extra time to get the information I need.  If I was an iSomething device, I would be completely out of luck.  Sure, there are 3rd party apps to make Flash work, but it has to be the most painfully slow loading experience ever.  So this leaves me with a pretty clear message,  'Stay away from Flash'.  If you want to design something for the desktop or laptop user that compliments your main information site, I could appreciate the artistic creativity and execution.  The last thing you want to do is create your entire website in Flash.  More so if you're a small-to-medium sized business who uses the web-space everyday to acquire new clients.  Over the last 5 years I have fallen in love with Wordpress and Joomla for those reasons.

Granted when they first began, Joomla and Wordpress were a little plain compared to all the flashy sites.  People spent hours customizing and painstakingly trying to make the basic PHP/HTML code to come to life with cool effects, catchy colors and moving menus.  However, they both came along pretty fast and have a huge community sharing new templates, CSS menus and thousands of plugins.  Today, you can run the most up-to-date versions of either Joomla and Wordpress in conjunction with Open Source template Frameworks and deliver clean HTML5, CSS3 as well as accompanying themes optimized for mobile.  This gives you the best of both worlds.  A clean and professional look to your computer users and an optimized collection of information for your mobile users.  In this post PC era, how can you afford to have your website fail to load or load poorly for any client?  Some kids may never own a desktop or laptop.  They will grow up accustomed to accessing websites and information exclusively from phones or tablet devices.  You need to make sure you can be seen from any device.  This is the reason why web standards exist and HTML5 is on the right track.  

So, what is Joomla and Wordpress?  They are both categorized as Open Source Content Management Systems(CMS).  In the 'average joe'  terms, that would mean "Free Organized Websites".  They both work with PHP and CSS to convert raw data into consistent HTML output from page to page.  The raw data is stored in a MySQL database.  MySQL is a pretty straight forward database that offers extremely powerful output.  That is why Facebook, Google and many other top-ranking websites run with MySQL.  All of the user fields you have in your Facebook profile, the "Likes" or "About Me" areas, are all stored in a database field with no HTML coding or styling whatsoever.  That is how you can change templates on a website instantly as well as a couple to among thousands of pages in the 'click of a button'.  It is also how Facebook changes their look from time to time without changing your data.  Each time a page loads: the MySQL data is asked for, it is delivered through some sort of PHP filter page and then outputs the HTML that the end user views.  Since HTML5 and CSS3 are still ascii based code, PHP didn't need any major overhaul to produce to the new standards.  Hence, it is the perfect time to use a PHP/MySQL based website.  

Which one of these sites is the right site for me?  Well, there isn't an exact right or wrong answer to that question.  Often times, you can make each site look almost identical to the other.  I tell most people that Wordpress is great for Blog style or simple websites, and Joomla is best used for the larger content sites.  Not that that means Wordpress can't handle multi-user administration and content submission or large amounts of content.  I just find Joomla to be better geared for larger content sites.  Wordpress is a little easier to use on the back end.  Both sites have thousands of free and premium plugings that help further set your website apart from others.  You can't go wrong with either.  

Another huge advantage of either CMS site is the Social Networking integration.  Both were developed with RSS in mind and have since expanded to auto-pushing new articles and posts directly to our favorite social network sites.  'One button posting' feeds Facebook and Twitter.  This kind of workflow is great for SEO purposes, because your main article on your website  links to multiple sites before anyone even reads it for the first time.  

There are many advantages to using either Joomla or Wordpress and I'm happy to set up or customize a site for you.  If you wish to get started on your own however, follow these links and download either one or both today.  

www.joomla.org

www.wordpress.org