Wordpress + Joomla = ?

Written by Wilco Jansen Sunday, 14 December 2008 17:00

Wordpress is without any doubt the biggest (open source) blogging platform. Well known for it's ease of installation, ease of use and of course the incredible amount of extensions that are available. Joomla! on the other hand is a very powerfull system made out of a fully object oriented (and pattern based) application framework, and on top of that the well known CMS. Joomla! is extremely extensible, thousands of templates and extensions are available. And while it is perfectly possible to create a blogging site (JFoobar is just an example of that), Wordpress is without any discussion easier to set up and use as blogging solution. It holds way more features by default for blogging then Joomla! In short, it is more difficult to create a blogging solution in Joomla! (although far from impossible).

Past week I joined twitter...not really certain how it works, but I must admit I have found some interesting information there so for now it seems worth while the effort. Today a post about combining Joomla! and Wordpress was posted on the corephp website.

Shortly after the creation of the Joomla! project the first core team used a Wordpress bridge for blogging, so the concept is certainly not new. In the mean while the core team blogs have moved to the leadership area on the community site using a very basic Joomla! installation and a professional commenting solution. The question is why you would use the Wordpress platform and an extension to bridge between the two?

Of course you can say "Why not combine best of both worlds?". My suggestion would be to take a good look at JPress that is being worked at by a community team. Recently I have written a blog about the upcomming features that JPress will have, and as far as I can see it comes close to Wordpress in terms of features (but it will take some time to get as mature as Wordpress). As long as JPress is not reaching beta or RC stage, this solution from corephp could be interesting to take a closer look at.

About the author Wilco Jansen

Wilco was born in 1967 in the Netherlands where he still lives. After years of being a programmer Wilco has worked as project manager and IT manager. Discovered Joomla! when he was creating his own content management system, and never lost focus after then. Joined core team as development coordinator in May 2006 just helping to make Joomla! even better then it is already. Wilco has been deeply involved in the Joomla project as Google summer of code program manager 2006, 2007 and 2008 editions, co-organizer of the Google Highly Participation contest in 2008, first ever development coordinator, creator of the Joomla bug squad, member of the board of Open source matters, regular speaker on world wide conference advocating Joomla and much, much more. Wilco has a bachelor degree in business and information engineering and studied Master of Science knowledge and information engineering at the Middlesex University in London.

More about Wilco Jansen

There are 9 comments posted.

Re: Waiting for JPress!

# 1 - Posted by: Torkil on 2008-12-14 18:39:14

WordPress is indeed a superior blogging platform, and really nice for straight blog sites, but we are waiting for J(oomla+Word)Press and it looks mighty promising. Some might think that JPress never will be able to compare with WordPress, but JPress still has the advantage of not having to bother with legacy code, whereas WordPress now is in version 2.7. JPress can aim at building the important parts from the ground up, using a relatively new framework, and they can learn from WordPress' strengths and weaknesses.

WordPress is looking as great as ever though. Their recent icon competition really worked out for them it seems, and I like the new dashboard. The update function also looks reeeally smooth :) Updating both the core and the plugins at the click of a button. Mmmmm....

Re: CorePHP Joomla+Wordpress is very nice indeed

# 2 - Posted by: Mike Carson on 2008-12-14 22:54:59

I had attended the CMS Expo on Dec 4-5 '08 and seen a demo presentation of Joomla+Wordpress by the CorePHP team and I have to say I was quite impressed with this new extension. The integration was extremely nice and updating to new versions appears to be a breeze. As stated, Wordpress is the ultimate blogging tool and it is very mature. Joomla is also very mature and a great website framework but they both have different goals when it comes to building your website. This new component from CorePHP.com marries the two platforms extremely nicely and I was very nicely designed.

If you are looking for a powerful blogging tool for your Joomla site, THIS IS IT!!!

# 3 - Posted by: Amy Stephen on 2008-12-15 01:11:30

It has been remarkably easy to extend J! 1.5 and accomplish some pretty amazing things - like customized UserMeta, Pretty Permalinks and comments and Spam protection and automatic pings and email notification, etc.

Having those individual extensions available for more than a blog is why it's important to bring it into the J! architecture. For example, email notifications could also be good for price changes on products and pinging new users who signed up for your group could also be helpful.

Wait until people see what Tibor and Wilco have done to make it easy to package, install, and upgrade. (I will say no more on this right now - except WOW! ;-) ).

I hope it's clear that this is a community solution and we welcome contributors. I think that is the most important part of what we are doing. We need to learn to collaborate and share our solutions. In doing so, we wind up with strategic software and better ability to support it over the long haul.

Then, when Torkil's son is no longer a brand new baby, and is driving a car (yes, it will go quickly!), maybe he will have a bit of available time, again, to join us! :-)

It's been fun - mainly because it's a positive and talented group. If you have an extension you want to add, or you want to help with translations, or support, documentation, or testing, let us know!

Re: Great progress....:-)

# 4 - Posted by: ssnobben - aka Darb on 2008-12-16 11:02:55

Well really admirer what you are doing here!

Thanks for your efforts for all the J community!

One small tiny but as I like to have for core is better timing (date) where you just dont set the date but also hours for action/triggers.

Like now in Joomla you can only set the date for an article to publish but not the exact time by hours. Should be nice if this could be reused for all extensions.

Cheers!

# 5 - Posted by: Wilco Jansen on 2008-12-16 12:01:48

You can set the exact time in the properties of the article. This what we do on a regular basis for JFoobar, not sure what you exactly mean by this.

Re: Follow-up

# 6 - Posted by: Steven Pignataro on 2008-12-16 16:52:38

WordPress + Joomla! Cannot be matched

Indeed, as Mike Carson said "THIS IS IT!!!" - I'm not exactly sure how years of WordPress development will be matched with a few months of ¿JP? development, but hey, it will be great to see how it turns out. "as far as I can see it comes close to Wordpress" - Disclaimer? WordPress already has over 3k plugins, hope this can be matched too.

What programmer wouldn't say that bridging two powerful platforms is a bad idea? Contrary to that, its a great idea, WordPress brings thousands of plugins that require just a few edits and they are ready to go in Joomla, how much time will the community have to wait for this to happen with ¿JP?

We have received great support by a hand full of senior programmers on this project and many people that want to see us add new features to WordPress + Joomla!

If you want more information on WordPress + Joomla! or if you just want to see the original image that you see on this post, you can see it all here:

http://www.corephp.com/wordpress/wordpress-+-joomla.html

Anyway, I am excited to see how ¿JP? turns out, we love to give users more options to choose from. When will it be ready?

Here is a how-to on twitter:

http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=26

Thanks guys and keep JFoobaring (is that a word?)

--Steven Pignataro

# 7 - Posted by: Amy Stephen on 2008-12-16 19:48:24

Steven -

I think you might have some misunderstandings, which means others might, as well.

First of all, JPress is simply a collection of extensions for Joomla! 1.5. Most of these extensions will also work without the entire package. Secondly, any Joomla! 1.5 extension will continue to work with JPress. Since there are already over 4,000 extensions on JED, the community has a rich array to choose from.

Our goal is to pull together a set of capabilities needed by bloggers - put that into a one step installation and update process - and offer it freely to the community.

Joomla! 1.5 is a pretty amazing application development framework. That framework can be used to transform Joomla! into a learning environment, or an online store, or a social network, or a blogger. It is appropriate to use in many settings.

As far as when it will be available, the software is already installable and you can see for yourself what it is able to do. In terms of calendar, we are pushing very hard for a holiday beta. (I'll even commit to a holiday this year. ;-) )

JPress is freely (beer and liberty) available and we welcome anyone who wants to join in to share their extensions, or translations, or testing, or ideas. You and your team are welcome, too.

Amy :)

# 8 - Posted by: Steven Pignataro on 2008-12-19 23:08:11

Amy,

Thanks for the follow and clearing things up. As always here at 'corePHP' believe in providing options and while JPress might work well for others - Wordpress will fill that gap - and visa versa.

Good luck and code on!

Kindest regards,

--Steven Pignataro

# 9 - Posted by: Amy Stephen on 2008-12-20 01:25:35

Thanks, Steven. I blogged with WP for a couple of years and still call it the undisputed champion of blogging. That community has much to be proud of! Merry Christmas to you and yours.

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