I’ve been a staunch Joomla user and a veteran for over 10 years now. I used it from the very beginning starting with the Joomla 1.0 all the way to latest version 3.5. Back in 2005, Joomla was one of the easiest and most customisable CMS (content management system) available on the net. Best of all … It was open source and free! We use it for all our websites including our very own.
Within only a few years, the number of Joomla users grew and now it is supported by a massive user base and a huge community. And it wasn’t long before large corporate companies also started using Joomla too.
But wait… What about WordPress? Weren’t they’re available in 2003, two years before Joomla. Well, yes … However, around that time, WordPress was more a platform for users who wanted a really simple blog. Its plugins were some what limited and the whole CMS in general offered limited customisation. Having said that, the WordPress user base was slowly growing, but was drawfed in comparison to Joomla. There were just more developers at that time on the Joomla camp than WordPress. That’s why I chose Joomla in the beginning.
Fast forward to 2016 … and it’s amazing how things have turned around. WordPress is now EVERYWHERE! The user base have now outgrown Joomla’s and there are more developers on their platform than ever before.
The simple fact is … WordPress is just so simple to install and use. When I was using Joomla, you kind of needed some basic programming knowledge like HTML or PHP for editing templates etc. With WordPress … You don’t. Just install WordPress and then choose your template and the huge selection of (might I say) powerful plugins and away you go. It’s a simple as that. What’s more, there is an official WordPress app for editing straight to your website, check your built-in stats, preview your articles and more. Take note Joomla community.
In an ever changing world of technology, everyone needs to change and adapt quickly. However, I feel that Joomla have kind of lost its way over the years. You can’t be thinking that everyone is a web developer anymore. Having said that, the Joomla community (as of now) is still pretty strong and the platform isn’t going anywhere anytime soon … So if you’re existing Joomla users, you’re ok 🙂
After a few weeks of encouragement from the team to migrate to WordPress, I reluctantly decided to give it a go. And to my surprise, it was easier than I initially thought! It took just a couple of clicks and all the data and content including menus, categories and user’s details were migrated over.
Ok, I’ve said enough…. Time to show how I migrated my Joomla site to WordPress in 3 easy steps!
2 comments
Thanks for your post! Very in depth and well-written. Importing Joomla to WordPress is really a big check, especially for those who have no programming experience. I made use of CMS2CMS service and all my website content was transferred to WordPress automatedly and precisely. There occurred some technical problems though (mainly because my Joomla site had a lot of customized things), but their guys helped me greatly. Anyway, the tool is cheap and fast.
…yes it was scary at first when we decided to go for WordPress. I’ve spent so many years on Joomla it took a little bit of research before we took the plunge.