Up until now I have only ever worked either with straight HTML or WordPress (we will forget about my days with Flash back in ’99!!!). Working with HTML really seems a bit backwards these days, it takes far to long to keep things organised, well compared to a Wordpress site anyway! However it is really easy to make it do exactly what you want, no doubt partly because of the number of WYSIWYG editors around (and yes I am still using Frontpage! Why? Well that was the tool I was given when I was the ‘Webmaster’ for a metals company and I have used it ever since). Editiing your themes for WordPress is generally much harder for somebody who is just starting out, PHP does not lend itself well to WYSIWYG style editiing.

So while I like WordPress I find it a tad annoying for none blog sites, it can be confgured to work as a normal website and I have done that a number of times but its a real pain in the ar*e much of the time when used that way. Its like you are fighting against what the software want to do, forcing it to do something it’s not happy with.

Now while Joomla could be used for a blog, I say could as I have not seen anybody using it as such, it is generally used as what they call a Content Management System. It allows you to provide just about anything you want to your users through its large number of components and modules. While some of these are covered by WordPress Widgets the majority are not.

There is more of a learning curve with Joomla, if you are just starting out WordPress is much easier as you really just click and type, you dont really have to put much thought in to your layouts (though it is good if you do!). Joomla requires you to plan your actions a bit, otherwise you are going to end up in a real mess!

So which to use? Well if you want a blog now, and only ever want a blog, then WordPress. However if you think you might want more, then while you could do some things in WordPress it is probably worth starting out with Joomla from the outset.

You could of course make a site in Joomla, and then talk about it in your WordPress blog…