Open Source Usability

Asides

Open Source Usability — Joomla! Vs. WordPress. We’re on Slashdot again, with of course the predictable comments somehow ending up in an argument about Vim and Emacs. 🙂

15 thoughts on “Open Source Usability”

    1. Not only horrible, it’s so funny comparison.

      WordPress might offer only 90% of the features of Joomla ?

      I don’t think so if the summary came from ecommerce feature and level of permission.

      WordPress has really been developed by the KISS-principle, while Joomla! appears to have been developed to solve every problem on Earth (by engineers, for engineers)

      So Matt, did you developed the WordPress with KISS principle or does it looks like end user perception ? 🙂

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      1. Interestingly the difference between KISS and “by engineers for engineers” is itself matter of perception … The Whole Elephant problem.

        Everyone looking at it sees their “simple” view and everyone else’s “complex” view beyond – whether you are a traditional engineer or an open-source “just do it” whizz-kidd. It’s good to talk.

  5. Interesting comments, even as both projects have different objectives. It’s sure that WordPress developers have used much of time to create as usable interface as possible, but there will be always some things lacking in all different software packages. It’s not about what is best for all things, it’s about what is best for the usage it’s being implemented for.

    I’m sure both WordPress and Joomla have something to learn from each other (while the actual ways of implementation might differ in large ways). People are using both for many different kind of usages and it’s important that both would have good support for extensions and customization.

    There should be more work in both projects to create clean coding standards and fix possible security problems as soon as possible (preferably before releasing). Usability is very important, but it shouldn’t be just interface, usability of code is also important as clean and well-documented code is much more usable. 😉

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  6. I’ve always found Vi(m) to suit my needs just fine. It’s clean and lightweight and works the way I need it to. The only annoyance I ever had was using it on my PPC6800 (before I had an iPhone). There was no escape key! Made things rather difficult in Vim.

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  7. Hmm, I’d say Joomla vs WordPress reminds me more of the X-box vs Wii spot that was popular on Youtube a while back.

    I’m having to convert my school’s website over from Joomla just because the non-geek volunteers (ie, every mom but me) and office people can’t figure out how to use it. WordPress is as easy as sending an email, and we won’t be sacrificing anything we were actually using.

    WordPress vs Nucleus on the other hand? That was a difficult jump for me to want to make with my own site. Still, WordPress is definitely more feature rich, and probably easier for non-geeks to use when the interface stays put. I’m wordpress all the way now though, and I’m glad for it 🙂

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  10. Well, WordPress is indeed used as a blog platform for almost every installation.

    Joomla is not important. Very few developers support the core, and it was never designed with a long term future in mind. It’s irrelevant.

    However, Drupal is beginning to rock the world of WordPress and Open Source CMS/Blogging apps in general. With the backing of large VC investments, it is fast becoming WordPress’ major competitor. ( http://acquia.com/ )

    Drupal is harder to figure out at first, but by far is more capable than anything else in this space. That’s why it’s being used by large corporations on much larger projects than any of WordPress installations. (i.e. Sony with hundreds of sites for different artists, MAJOR newspapers for their MAIN site, Amnesty International, Google,… and list goes on)

    Multi-User sites are growing everyday, where Drupal shines and WordPress lacks the foundation to support it in larger installations.

    The User Interface is much easier to change (as we have seen WordPress do more than often), but changing the Application’s Core may take years.

    Bottom line; Joomla is irrelevant, and WordPress needs to grow up quickly in order to stay relevant in near future. As we’ve seen with MySpace, the shear number of users would allow you to stay in the game, but if you don’t make changes you would disappear sooner or later.

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