Why Joomla Sucks! (My Joomla Review)
Nov 10th, 2006 by AhYap
(Skip this post if you don’t know what is Joomla, it is only meant for Joomla Fans)
joomla 
drupal 
phpnuke 
wordpress
Joomla is the MOST popular CMS today. They have a lot of users, a lot of developers, a lot of contributers, a lot of extensions and a lot of templates. I put in a very high expectation on Joomla and have play with it for the last few months. My experience ended up quite disappointed with Joomla and thus I take the time to try out over 30+ CMS, reading their documentations and users feedback. Finally, I admit that Joomla is not for me with the following problems.
#1. Joomla Uses UGLY URLs (No Built-in Friendly URL Support)
As the #1 CMS in the market, Joomla didn’t even have built in SEF (Search Engine Friendly) capability to display nice looking URL. The best built in capability is still something like www.yoursite.com/section/category/2/5 and sometimes it can be as ugly as www.yoursite.com/component/option,com_weblinks/catid,26/Itemid,45/
Long and Ugly. There are 3rd party extensions available, some are free and some are not! Installing and managing the friendly URLs do takes a lot of configurations and a lot of work. Joomla 1.5 is said to put in more attention to SEF, but it will be in 2nd phase. The current Joomla 1.5 beta still doesn’t have any improvement yet.
If you have already have a website and thinking of converting it into CMS, think twice before you choose Joomla. It’s very hard for you to configure Joomla to use your old addresses and naming. Unless you don’t mind losing your old addresses (i.e. lose all the traffic that is going to the old addresses).
#2. No Built-in Comment System!
This is really bullshit, as the so-called #1 content management system, there isn’t built in comment system support for your articles and blogs! You need to install 3rd party extensions and I tried almost all of them, but didn’t like any of them.
#3. Documents are group using Section and Category System
While there are people who like this, I prefer a hierarchy model. All documents in Joomla must be placed in a category. What that means is that if you have 2 sections call FRUITS and COLOR and categories APPLE, ORANGE and MANGO under FRUITS, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE under COLOR, you must put your document in one of the 6 categories. You cannot put your document under FRUITS or COLOR, nor can you create subcategory under APPLE or BLUE. So everytime you create a document, you must pick 1 section and 1 category.
There are 2 problems. The first one being that if you just want a category call FAQ, you have to first create a ‘ghost’ section call FAQ that you will not use and create FAQ category under the FAQ section. So everytime you create a new item under FAQ, you need to choose FAQ under the section drop down, and then FAQ under the category drop down. This is not logical.
The second problem is already mentioned, you will not be able to have more subcategories. Even there is section and categories, note it is still 1 LEVEL only and not 2 level because you MUST put a document under a category, you cannot put it under a section!
Hierarchy method is a more logical way of grouping, you can create a 1st level call FRUIT, then 2nd level call APPLE & ORANGE and 3rd level call RED APPLE, GREEN APPLE (under APPLE). You can put you documents in any of them! Hierarchy method make more sense. That’s the way how our files are saved in our computer (directories, subdirectories, more subdirectories …) where you can save your file in any of them. That’s also the way how book are indexed (chapters, sub chapters, more sub chapters …).
#4. Poor Documentation for Developers.
Joomla core-developers are busy migrating all their Mambo codes to Joomla and they are too little effort on documentations. If you are new to Joomla and you are a hard-core PHP programmer, you will find it very difficult for you to start making extensions for Joomla. There are not enough tutorials and documentations. Maybe they think it is not worth it to make documentations for Joomla 1.0 as all their effort now is to fully migrate to Joomla 1.5.
#5. Nightmare if you want to add a little PHP code to your site!
Joomla is designed for end-users and expect everything to be easy so that grandma and grandpa can use it easily. However, if you know some PHP and wanna add some dynamic stuff to your site, it can be a nightmare! Even a simple echo “Hello World” will require you to create a complete module/mambot/component (writing XML file, a lot of joomla-integration PHP codes, etc). There isn’t a more simple way to quickly put some PHP code.
For other CMS like Drupal, MODx, WebsiteBaker, etc, you can easily add some PHP code to extend your site.
#6. A Joomla site is very fixed to its Pattern
What I mean is that you can easily recognize a site being made by Joomla by looking at a few things. Most of the time you can see from the urly URLs (look for the word component and option) This search in Google looking for both keyword in the URLs return 13 million pages
http://www.google.com.my/search?q=inurl%3Acomponent+inurl%3Aoption&btnG=Search&hl=en&safe=off
Others include the way they list our their categories with a bullet on the left and with a bracket that contain the articles count on the right. Also thanks to their Section/Category structure, you can only see a long flat list of documents listed in a category because there isn’t any hierarchy. There is also an easy recognizable filter, order, display row on top of listing. And lastly the << Start < Prev 1 Next > End >> Joomla Signature found under the listing of their documents.
Something Good About Joomla
Ok, I have bash too much about Joomla and with their fan base, I will not be able to stay alive long. 
So here are some praises for Joomla.
1. Should be the CMS with the most templates available! (only maybe WordPress can have a little bit more)
2. So many users that the website and forum is extremely active! Joomla.org is the top 500 most visited sites of the internet according to Alexa!
3. A very BIG and dedicated team behind Joomla. So Joomla will continue to grow rapidly in the future. You don’t need to worry that it will be abandoned like some of other CMS (or maybe wait very long for new releases).
4. Hopefully after they read this post, they will do something on it and I can blog “Why Joomla Rocks!” in 2007!
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joomla sucks! joomla follows mambo.
JOOMLA SUCKS!!!!!!!
Joomla is the SON of Mambo. The developers have a fight and leave mambo, creating they own ‘mambo’ called Joomla.
So, Mambo and Joomla also sucks!
no wonder la.. but yeah.. the cms is too complicated. and it sucks. whats ur best recommendation for cms? i’m lookin for something i can work and tweak with.
After testing so many, my recommendation would be
#1. MODx
#2. CMSMadeSimple
MODx can do everything cmsmadesimple can do. But cmsmadesimple is extremely easy to use. And i think it is the fastest tool to make a complete working website. The initial installation come with a premade website with contents that is actually some basic guidelines on how to use it! It make getting started really very easy. If what you need is really a simple website (such as a brochure site for a company), cmsmadesimple is very suitable. After playing with CMSMadeSimple and get comfortable with it, you can start playing with MODx, once you good with MODx you will want to stick with it all the time.
MODx advantage is that it is simple and at the same time allow further extension easily if you are a PHP programmer. Another CMS that is good for developer is Drupal. It is not for beginners. If you are new, you got to read a lot of documentation to learn what is node, what is taxanomy, etc. The default installation also doesn\’t come with any sample site.
I definitively agree!
The shortcomings of this crappy “CMS” caused us two launch delays (three weeks each)!!!
I have to add the following annoyances:
1.) No fine grained access control (permissions)
2.) BLOAT
3.) API is changed quite often – Modules break quite often after security updates
4.) “Dirty” and extremely verbose HTML output
To be continued …
Totally agree!! I wrote another article almost at the same time this was released about how Joomla sucks as well. It really sucks, I had to take a few hacks in order to get my things done for SEO. I spent nights to fix the weird stuffs in the Joomla components and its internal structure was a nightmare! I was/am really mad about it! It just SUCKS!
Elvis
Internet Marketing Watch
1. Joomla have Built-in Friendly URL Support
2. Joomla have Comment System (Extension)!
3. Documents use Section and Category System, and its the best way to do it.
4. Good Documentation and Support for Developers.
5. Easy to add PHP code to your site (Extension)!
6. A Joomla site is not fixed to its Pattern
Hi Babula,
Thanks for commenting in my blog.
1. The built-in friendly URL doesn’t allow you to name your path exactly the way you want it.
2. How could the #2 CMS doesn’t have built-in comment system but rely on 3rd party extensions. There are few of them and users need to waste time to further research to decide which one to use.
3. That depends on people. Some like it, some (like me) don’t like it.
4. Are you sure? For future Joomla 5 maybe. For Joomla 1, developers are busy focusing upgrading Joomla from Mambo and doesn’t spend much time on developer document. User documentation are indeed quite good, but not developer documentation. (Compare Joomla Documentation to Drupal Documentation and you will see Elephant and Mosquitoe)
5. Haha. Extension again. The extension are buggy and insecure. If you run a multiuser site, your user can enter PHP code! Drupal handle this perfectly.
6. Look at the way its display a listing of pages and the next previous link, and other I refer in mypost.
I have made 40 sites with joomla.. never needed some built in comment system
http://www.juicymedia.co.uk joomla-site
I have tried drupal, it was quite ok.
The main reason why Joomla is #1 is it can be used out-of-box and is user friendly enough for not technical savvy users (which are most people). For technical savvy (programmer, coder…) who like to have more control and customization, we might prefer other CMS like Drupal.
Joomla out of the box? Friendly? I’ll have a pint of whatever you’re on my friend.
@11ahyap
you’re definitely on drugs, joomla sucks big time, but what annoys me the most are the extensions and their management(they’re either installed or removed, shitty placement.. )… heck, all the administration sucks, tables everywhere, templating systems sucks too, doesn’t give you enough freedom and the presentation code is both on the template and extensions, etc etc etc, I’m really pissed off with joomla, started creating a template thinking it would be as easy as creating.. you know, a template, like a few hours and I’d have a super-duper xhtml/css/wai compliant layout as usual but no, I ended up wasting lots of time looking for extensions that allowed me to make the template look like the original prototype…
I am starting to hate joomla, i used 1 before and 1.5 version today and i cannot stress enough who much i hate this category/section bs. Just cannot see the point, what are they trying to do? Tell everyone they are stupid and only them are smart with that crayze system. Hate it, it’s so confusing and it cannot be me because i tried other systems and did lots of stuff easily. I like the big community but hate product..
This article sounds so awfully familiar to me. The tutorial on how to display ‘hello world’ on your webpage was absolutely hilarious. And I find it very difficult to add my own programming to a website. It’s like I am forced to do it Joomla-style, for creating your own menu (with divs and links and not tables or ) is too much work. But I have to use this crap because my employer uses this. I hope I can find my way in the code-mess of joomla.
Also for a month now I feel that Joomla is designed for end-users. People who don’t understand a crap about programming. For example, when I want to use a seperator in my menu I have to fill in a parameter. Seems simple, but somehow it doesn’t work anymore. But when I look at the code, I just can’t find the solution for this problem for it is hidden in the humungous amount of code… needle in a haystack so to say.
Menuhighlighting is another crappy thing. I wanted to use a seperated submenu. On top of the page I have my main menu, on the left the submenu. Highlighting doesn’t work then. So we spend a whole day figuring out how to implement this in the website. I could’ve managed it in a few minutes using a CMS built by an ex-colleague of mine…
Have to go…have to make a very simple webpage…with joomla…
Hi everyone!
I find it a bit hard to sort out who lies about cms in order to defend what interest so I can only speak about my own experience. I use both drupal and joomla 1.5 to create sites for my customers…
If you honestly compare joomla 1.5 and drupal, you will be disappointed by joomla basic limitations at early or later stage of a site development unless you need a blog type site and nothing more.
When you really need an important basic extension you don’t find it… only gadget free extensions made by companies who want to sell you something behind them but nothing serious.
Joomla looks very nice and that’s why it’s a very good trap for people who don’t compare cms by trying them themselves…
Drupal is much more efficient than joomla which was thought and made as a fly trap for non professional people to sell templates among free template, SEO amongst free SEO services, and so on…
Drupal has the core functionality for the long term which joomla misses from the start and which cannot be patched even with the millions of extensions.
Example: Group access should have been basic in joomla core as they cannot be cleanly extended later without creating many holes in cms security … too bad for joomla unless they start it all over again (you will find extensions sooner or later for group access but don’t use them!).
That’s probably why only private individuals and small companies use joomla when clever companies use drupal.
Allow unregistered visitors to submit a new article with captcha in joomla as a simple proposal for approval by admins in a queue before it is published is possible but will never be secure… it takes 2 minutes with drupal !
Hi, nice thread here. I have to say; I think Joomla! is excellent! for creating messy, instable, non xhtml complient, SEO-unfriendly, WAI-losing, impossible to manage or deploy.
I tried Joomla to create a simple, seo-friendly, complient website and stopped after a week… I tried CMSMadeSimple to do the same and was finished in 5 hours. Believe me; this is the one. Have to see what additional modules bring, but so far, this is something that could actually be used! I just started my webdesign firm and use CMSMadeSimple for my first client… He LOVES the easy admin module, and added content is actually humanly understandable..
Kudos to them!
Wouter
I think Joomla is kind of old school. Things are moving into ROR like frameworks: Cake, CodeIgniter…
I dumped Joomla because of the Joomla-SMF stuff thats going on.
I used TinyPortal for SMF to do what Joomla did and I’m happy with it.
http://eCric.net
Agree with all the points, there’s gotta be built-in commenting and SEF support like drupal.
What do you guys think of Website Baker?
http://websitebaker.org
It is super easy to setup and use.
2 things I really like are #1 it is super SEO Friendly with the urls it creates. #2 unlike joomla it uses a simple system to publish pages. You can install and publish pages in a few minutes. No stupid category system to figure out. I installed joomla and gave up after a few hrs of trying to just get a damn article on the front page. What a joke.
I have so far about 10 sites of my own and another 10 for customers. This is pretty much the only system I have found where I can set it up for some one who knows nothing about how to operate a website and they can catch on and run it without too much trouble. There are some decent templates available and they are pretty easy to modify. I have 1 site that does about 1k to 1.5k unique visitors a day. Not much I know but the site is solid and google really likes it seo wise.
I would just like to know how others feel about this cms.
###
Joomla 1.5 has a lot going for it.
The Model-View-Controller design pattern for extensions is EXTREMELY powerful. I find most people who complain that Joomla isn’t “developer friendly” actually mean that Joomla isn’t “scripter friendly”. Anyone who understands object-oriented design and common software engineering design patterns will be in love with Joomla 1.5’s extremely clean and extensible framework.
The templating system is insanely flexible and easy to use. Some of the core components are still outputting outdated tables, but it is dead easy to write override templates since ONLY pure data is passed to the template – no HTML is passed from the code which is very uncommon and forces people to hack core code to change default HTML.
That said, Joomla is FAR from perfect. The user access is short-sighted and very limited. Also the content management setup with Sections and Categories is utter nonsense.
I personally look at Joomla as a site framework more than a CMS. Once you learn the ins and outs of the API, Joomla makes a great base for web application development as opposed to typical content management.
Hi AhYap,
I know joomla sucks, but it is open-source among others. Now I’m stuck in Fetch PHP coding, anyone willing to help?
Or recommended me other CMS. Thanks a lot.
Your are absolutely right — Joomla will not be abandoned, but it will abandon it’s older version users.
As I have built a site using the pre Joomla 1.5 engine, I have become quite comfortable with my plugins and components.
Now that Joomla 1.5 is out — there is no easy way to move my data over from an older Joomla to Joomla 1.5. Even the Joomla site states that data may be lost upon conversion.
None of my components and plugins will run natively in Joomla 1.5 unless you turn on legacy mode which is counter intuitive to Joomla 1.5 and turns off certain features of 1.5.
So… as no more security updates will be done for an older Joomla structure, I will therefore be stuck with a system that will eventually get eaten by hackers.
Since my plugins and components run on Mambo as well, I guess I will be forced to switch back to Mambo eventually unless the Joomla team can come up with a better solution to let me move all my data from Joomla 1.0.014 to Joomla 1.5.
I’m sure I am not the only person stuck in this boat.
-joe
Hey some of you guys are forgetting something.
Not everyones a programmer. While I agree Joomla is hard to understand it’s not such a bad option for those who prefer to go to the configuration screen rather than edit configuration.php
Also there are some pretty decent templates for Joomla.
Sure IMO Drupal is better all round it could do with a few slick templates (themes). Joomla hardly ’sucks’ but it’s also not the ‘king’ of CMS people make it out to be.
My company wants to deploy content, not provide a playground for programmers. We’ve been using drupal, but every time we want a design change in our sites it results in months of work by our one developer, all accompanied by grousing and complaining about how much is expected of him. We’re moving to Joomla slowly and find that with little work we can deploy feature rich and content rich sites that are easy for end-users to manage, cutting out the programmer middle man. Maybe others are finding this to be true as well. That probably accounts for the complaining on this blog from hard-core coders that Joomla isn’t good enough. Of course you’ll complain about a technology that cuts you out of job. So much for the high-tech high-priest guarding the technological holy of holies. Joomla is delivering web design and development to a broader audience. Warts and all, that’s a very good thing!
Hey guys,
)
I’ve been using Joomla for a year now and must say that I’m quite satisfied with it. I’ve installed Virtuemart and a few other components and modules and everything runs fine. I count X pages that I made with Joomla, one of them with 1.5.
When I read some of your posts, I ask myself if half of you even think about what they are writing. This is an OS CMS. Got something to say? Give your 5 cent to society and make it a better world. It’s really easy to point the finger and say: “bad” or “sux” or “shit” … But about changing it to make it better?! I point the finger and say: “retards” “idiots”. Why ? Because You can’t do better than this! You can ? Prove it!
So what? there are some extensions or templates that have to be paid for ? Don’t we all want to survive in this jungle and have something to eat every day ?
Stop talking s*** and try to build a community like the Joomla one and/or do a better Job.
To “ahyap”, what have you done today that makes you proud of yourself? Or in the past? Bitching about 3rd party components and modules … Oh man, you’re sad. This is an OS. Open your dictionary, maybe you’ll find the meaning of it. As for me, if there weren’t possibilities to add these “plugins” or make some hacks, where would the OS concept fit in?
To tekno_boy: You’re right, Not Everyone Is a Programmer. And most of the so-called Programmer do forget that …
Why don’t you guys just join the community and earn money with your so called “talent”. Because if you have a big mouth to criticize, I guess You Must Be Really Really Good in what you are Doing or Bitching about!
This was my 5 cent about this great (but by far not perfect) CMS. Anyway, who’s is? YOU?!
Regards
Oh, and I almost forgot None of my clients ever complained about this CMS. ;op
Interesting read. I tried searching information on Joomla after evalaluating if for several days and had a hard time. I absolutely agree those several drawbacks ahyap initially listed. I am trying to migrate one of my client site and I think this post helps me a lot on my decision.
To LusoLux, if you are grown up then try to behave civic.
I totally agree with those drawbacks too.
The worst thing is the section/category feature … not only you must have a 2 level category system (not 1 or 3 but exactly 2) but also you cannot put an article in multiple categories. I can’t understand how can people bear such limitations …
joomla are not for blog shit, so why need built-in comment system.
joomla have the ability to reorganize the module positions, unlike other cms, u have to tweak the code.
@ LusoLux
“Stop talking s*** and try to build a community like the Joomla one and/or do a better Job.”
What community are you talking about there buddy?
I have to agree, Joomla is rather crappy. And that is also true from the developer side. Mostly because even simple things are implemented in a messy complex way technically and completely naive in functionality. Same goes for praised MVC implementation for extensions. I’ve done rails, I’ve done MVC-s on .NET and none of them required so much dumb keyboard dumping as Joomla requires.
I’m won’t even discuss the content model Joomla uses or the “great” globalization features it offers nor performance issues and handicapped caching system. I must confess I don’t know how much of the 1.5 code was actually ported from 1.0 and how much was rewritten. If it required such a bloaty framework, I wonder why they didn’t start from scratch.
hi,
been there, done that…well ur pre-mature experience wif joomla n ur complaints against it like u know ‘em better! i have nothing against other cms, as i used different approach towards projects. n of course this doesnt mean that joomla can fits in every project though. it’s the questions of what to use n how to use it. it’s the person who use it that matters most!
I must agree to ahyap regarding the shortcomings of Joomla. It’s true using Joomla often pissed me and made me cursed “Joomla sucks!”
Main flaws:
- Bloated
- Little flexibility
- Found it’s often unable to do some basic CMS functions
- Doing simple CMS things the complicated way
Main benefits:
- Very popular, many users base
I have to admit I am not a big fan of Joomla but I do like all the available modules . Even the commercial ones if they allow code modification. I have used cms made simple and must admit it is much better for smaller sites and non tech savvy users but joomla may be better for large sites for organizing lots of content with thir limited but still useful sections and categories. Although I totally agree that it is poorly developed. I see version 1.0 like the cms version of oscommerce: badly designed, mixture of presentation and business logic and a lot of questionable modules BUT it comes with a large user base with a lot of off the shelf extensibility. I think they are headed in the right direction with 1.5. Adopting the MVC design pattern is a big step in the right direction. My biggest gripe right now with joomla is that urls are all hard coded in the database. Both in the menus and in content items. I would also like to see better documentation to the likes of drupal or the codeignitor framework. Both well documented. I also don’t see why anyone would say it is end user friendly. Try sorting the menu structure in joomla then try the ajax sorting in cmsms. Try assigning a different template to each page. Try counting an explaing to the end user each step to create a page in joomla. Between creating the section, category, content item and menu item there must be at least 12 page views to get the result. Then compare to single page using cmsms.
I’m a user, starting an online business. Not a coder at all. I just want a tool to build my business (an arts-oriented portal) My criticism of Joomla and other cms’ is that
**the sites and templates all look the same**.
Very rectangular, no graphics, menus, or anything running at angles or overlapping. It’s a very corporate look. No matter what the color scheme or images, they’re all just these very blocky grids.
So can somebody tell me, is this because
(a) CMS like Joomla are limited to this look, by design?
(b) Designers are too lazy to make anything else?
(c) Nobody in the world other than me wants their site to look any different?
Thanks. I’d really like to hear something about this.
Most of the stuff you’ve mentioned is either inaccurate or outdated. Perhaps its time to take another critical look at Joomla.
- Sid
I think Joomla is for end-user with little programming knowledge..Not without total programming knowledge/experiences at all!
However, you don’t have to be a competitive like a ‘genius’ of knowing how to make a ‘complex’ – ‘Hello World’ output.. Untill now I don’t even know how to make ‘Hello world’ using PHP.
I don’t even know how to program at first and my background is in agriculture! Yet I figured out how stuff work out and find solution toward it. Not just cry out yelling here and there.
By the way, layout of Joomla is mostly depend on the designer creativity and their tweaking experiences on using CSS, PHP and HTML. Sadly the structure of design still have to adhere and limit to JOOMLA positioning..However, this is not a major issues. I’m sure by time goes by, Joomla will develop into better CMS..
I totally agree! Joomla is for idiots who cant code in php. Joomla created their own alien language that is designed to be understood by morans only. I had a competition with someone who is a joomla professional and created a site with 10 times more functionality in half the time using php and notepad.
While we’re slamming stuff, has anybody noticed that the site ‘joomlabook.com’ will not open in IE6? I pinged the author, Barrie North, about it and the response was that “IE6 is old. Don’t use it.” Excuse me, but IE6 is still 30% of the user base according to w3.
In fairness, I’ve not seen this problem with any other Joomla-powered site. But I thought for a Joomla ‘guru’ to take such an attitude to a browser-compatibility issue was way off-base. Especially since he was pitching me on his ‘SimplWeb’ service at the same time.
First off, I’m a coder who got sick of building custom CMS systems for each one of his clients, so I decided to look for a CMS system that would meet most of my clients needs and could be easily extended to meet those that it didn’t. I built a membership based site that needed a couple of extra modules, as well as automated user import from a legacy system. I built the site on Joomla 1.5, thinking that building with the newest and best was going to save my client money on later upgrades… Bad call. They want a forum component… Oh yeah, none exists for 1.5. (They may now, this was about six months ago.) In fact, MANY components don’t exist in 1.5, and the whole Joomla Open Source component sales issue means that many will NEVER exist for 1.5, paid or free! The API is very poorly documented, and writing the admin side of any component is a MAJOR pain in the butt.
So, I tried Drupal and was blown away at the ease of customization. The previous commenter who said their coder was complaining about customization obviously has a very crappy coder working for them because I’ve never met a pre-built system easier to customize than Drupal. You can hook into (almost) any part of the page building process easily, allowing you to inject your own functionality almost anywhere in the system. Integration possibilities are endless (we do a lot of flash, so Services/AMFPHP is awesome).
Yes, Joomla is pretty and somewhat easy to use, but I’ll take the power any day. My clients can handle a learning curve if it means that they can save lots of money and get more bang for their buck.
I just have to say that in my opinion Joomla [1.5] is more framework than CMS, sure it has some faults [non SEF urls (by default!!!, but it breaks with non-SEF extensions), fixed user groups and fixed content categorization [section->category->your-content or static (with no section)]], but it accommodates my client’s needs and mine perfectly.
I think you should see Joomla more as a framework tahn a CMS, it has succeded as a CMS thanks to the vast library of extensions, but you can’t always rely on extension devs [Fireboard is a good example].
For those arguing about not being able to use custom php, there are several custom-code modules that work with no problems, and it is quite easy to add your own code for anything you like [even pre-existent hand-written php sites] as a component, just following a simple file-structure [read the first pages of "Learning Joomla Extension Development"].
Again, if you are a dev, Joomla should be seen more as a framework, not as an openly customizable CMS ["hackable" for the joomla fanbois (as me =P)]. If you want to make a blog, use wordpress, a BLOG software, using Joomla for that is like using a cannon to kill a fly, but hey, the fly still dies in an awesome way =).
Joomla is not blog software, it’s for real websites
, so its dumb to compare it to wordpress, as dumb as comparing PHP to Ruby On Rails (language vs. framework) . As I said, I’m a Joomla fan, but if i had to do a blog, I wouldn’t hesitate to use Wordpress instead.
Get the packt publishing books, that is all you need to make joomla yours in no time. Want forum integrations?, look at JFusion [http://jfusion.org/], still under development, but its advancing extremely well and can be looked at as a solution right now.
Why cant we compare joomla to wordpress? we just redid an entire site with wordpress that was running on joomla and was never finished.. so if joomla is meant for real websites, how come this one sucked and it works fine on wordpress now?
because.. yes, joomla sux!
Joomla… Does the Job but not the tidiest/cleanest of all
CMS Made Simple… One of the Best CMS
Drupal… The Best CMS
ROR (framework)… Kicks Ass
Old School PHP… Beats them all
After converting 2 static websites (10k+ documents each) into Joomla 1.5 powered websites, I can honestly say, I’ll never consider using Joomla for anything ever again.
Not only is it so developer unfriendly its repulsive, but try explaining to a client how they are now supposed to manage 10k documents using Joomlas admin UI. Its a nightmare to say the least and no one comes out happy.
Because of this, I developed my own CMS – API powered. Requirements on the client front-end are almost non existent (make xml requests and get the response [curl], and a way to parse the XML). Mavieo does not force people into cold fusion, php, .net, jsp, or anything else. Its completely up to the client what language they wish to use to build out the front-end of the site. This makes the CMS completely portable, flexible and a joy to work with. However, I have developed a PHP powered frontend to get those with PHP servers up and running quickly.
Check it out and leave your thoughts.
Frontend: http://demo.mavieo.com/
Backend: http://myadmin.mavieo.com/?demo
I agree with some guys that Joomla is not so user friendly. Well, basically most of our clients find it a little hard to understand the system, while others find it simple!
hmmm.. i guess that’s a matter of hmmmm.. can’t say.
but overall, i believe on a project management level, Joomla helps you really finalize your work .. fast and efficiently, except for the challenge in making people understand how to build their content on it.
In short, Joomla sucks!!
I know inside out of php and still struggling to change my button name and text labels in joomla …
With a day of meeting with client i listed 2 pages of changes he want, like changing lables and buttons and basic functionality and addition of few extra fields..
In php it is a 2 days of work so far ..
In joomla, i guess this will take for ever, 2 days passed with not much of progress … ya may be because i am new to joomla but still joomla is just a system written in PHP and I understand PHP well, so wat the fucking language does joomla speaks that was rooted by PHP.
Shame on you joomla guys … well comment is based on Joomla 1.0.15
I am stuck with this crappy, bloated, fucking so called CMS.
I agree with this.. Joomla is nothing but a whole lot of B.S… I shifted from joomla to wordpress for its ease to use and the space it takes.. and nothin can beat wordpress..!!! NOTHIN!!!
Great read,
Joomla is horrible. I tried for months to give it a chance. Everything is way too hard to do, even after you figure it out, its like WTF, why is this so difficult!
I tried all the CMS’s on opensourcewebdesign.com and like how CMSMadeSimple does it, plus the smarty template system is genius.
For everyone who think Joomla sucks:
You just don’t understand the system.
And indeed, it can be a framework or a CMS, your choice. But to create a good site in Joomla, you need to understand the system. For upkeeping your site, you can let users give less rights then superadmin, everbody who has a bit more then an IQ of 60 can work with it.
You can piss on Joomla all you want, agreed, it has somke quirks but that goes for every framework/cms.
The startpost is also on 2006, 2 years is a lot of time guys
Joomla is easy and excellent. But users need some IQ (above 60 yes)
rom- We don’t understand the system? If it were better organized we would be able to. That’s the issue! Your IQ comment is ridiculous. Regardless of IQ, one could work with any program, but one IS intelligent they choose the program with better UI. I’ve read most of these posts and they pose valid points, not insults, so they’re not pissing on anything. No program is perfect, but our point is that there are a number of programs that have far fewer issues. In two plus years, what has improved?
OK, I had to work with Joomla 1.0.x on a film festival website with this guy who would not use anything else. He initially set it up so was stuck with it. I found it painful to use and to develop. I usually hate a bunch of 3rd party components that do not do the job they way they want it. IT does not dictate. The user base dictates the functionality. The administration was painful for me and I am used to a Unix or Linux environment where all configurations are done with VI. They users hated trying to even write documents using this piece of garbage. The people coming to the site found it difficult to navigate. When the users find a module they would like to implement then the component costs a price they do not wish to invest. Well, it basically means I have to emulate it at what they pay me. This retard split and we have to move hosts. I am rewriting the site in ASP.Net 3.5 with the functionality they need. At least I will be able to maintain that with greater ease.
Mark:
In my opinion the system is well organized, there is 1 place where articles are stored. Pretty basic if you ask me
A lot of comments seem to be about this sections and categories, I agree that there were better solutions possible.
But Joomla is more of a framework, not just software to create a simple blogwebsite.
In to years plus (lets state the original points again)
#1. Joomla Uses UGLY URLs (No Built-in Friendly URL Support)
-> Not true, nice URL out of the box
#2. No Built-in Comment System!
-> I still don’t see why this sucks.
#3. Documents are group using Section and Category System
-> Minor issue for all websites beside blogsites
#4. Poor Documentation for Developers.
-> http://developer.joomla.org/
#5. Nightmare if you want to add a little PHP code to your site!
-> just extend the framework! (why is that an issue, ever framework shoulb be extendable?)
#6. A Joomla site is very fixed to its Pattern
->entirly untrue. In J1.5 you can customize the output to whatever you want, without touching the corefiles
See http://developer.joomla.org/tutorials/165-understanding-output-overrides-in-joomla.html
Thats is why I said if you think it sucks, you just don’t understand the system
I see a lot off people hacking into the core files of a component or even joomla because they do not know about this whole output override mechanism.
Again: Joomla is a FRAMEWORK, not just some blogsitecreatethingy.
My IQ remark was not intended as an insult, but more of a statement how easy is it to work with Joomla, so I’m sorry if anyone has read an insult in it.
Chris:
“The administration was painful for me and I am used to a Unix or Linux environment where all configurations are done with VI.”
-> don’t blame Joomla for what you are used to. Just as you should not blame a manually shifted car if you are used to an automatic
“The people coming to the site found it difficult to navigate.”
-> don’t blame Joomla if you have a bad navigation implemented
“When the users find a module they would like to implement then the component costs a price they do not wish to invest”
-> for almost everything there is a good free extension at http://extensions.joomla.org/
“I am rewriting the site in ASP.Net 3.5 with the functionality they need. At least I will be able to maintain that with greater ease.”
Don’t blame Joomla for the fact that a beginner has set up a site and got stuck. You should have rebuild from scratch, but you couldn’t know, because you were not a Joomla expert.
In c# you would also rewrite an application if a beginner has started the wrong way and got stuck, you would not automatically rewrite it in Java. You would do that only if you didn’t know enough c# and a lot of java
So again, you think Joomla sucks because you had 1 bad experiance, which has nothing to do with Joomla, but more about cleaning the mess someone else has made.
Here are some new points and some we are still waiting on:
#1 No ACL system….this is something any well designed cms has from the start…authors, editors and admins oh my…we will see how 1.6 solves this! IMHO this is the single largest issue for J1.5!
#2 can not choose a different template for different menu items like cmsms…
#3 no multiple site manager…ok to be fair not many open source cms systems have this
#4. STILL POOR DOCUMENTATION for Developers – come on be real…do you really consider this line item fixed haha …see http://www.codeignitor.com for what real documentation looks like
#5 extensions are not really true MVC…i looked at 6 or 7 of them to verify and i think only one came close…most others still mixed business logic and presentation and where are the models?
#6 poor ui – Somebody tell me why I can’t i move multiple menu items to one parent menu item…in fact my favorite cms menu managers allow me to drag and drop sort my menus…
#7 poorly designed extensions and modles – 65% of the modules and extensions I have reviewed for use in a customer websites were crap and had issues. That being said the rest were great. I think better documentation will help with that issue. Then all you newbie developers that don’t know basic coding will stop creating hack jobs…i mean c’mon does joomla want to be the oscommerce of cms’s.
#8 slooooow – has anyone noticed that joomla is slower then your custom apps and other cms systems when they are on the same server….ok granted my custom apps are light years more efficient and better designed then Joomla but I do use a framework and people are touting Joomla as a framework
Some points that joomla HAS improved upon:
overriding core and extension templates
almost an HMVC design pattern – although not all module and extension developers follow the rules
much better urls which are human readable!
added uncategorized category and section and got rid of static content
It is true that Joomla was a horrible when this was first posted and now it is just mediocre. Developers that belong to the church of Joomla just don’t know better because to them it probably is the best framework they have ever been involved with!
Here are some new points and some we are still waiting on:
Also this is probably al legacy problem, extension not completely rewritten.
#1 No ACL system….this is something any well designed cms has from the start…authors, editors and admins oh my…we will see how 1.6 solves this! IMHO this is the single largest issue for J1.5!
-> Is has ACL, but admitted, it is not GROUPWARE quality
#2 can not choose a different template for different menu items like cmsms…
-> Sure you can, you can assign a different template for every single menu item (just check extension->templatemanager and click a template you want to assign. Then assign it to the menuitems
#3 no multiple site manager…ok to be fair not many open source cms systems have this
-> Yes there is, check the extension library
#4. STILL POOR DOCUMENTATION for Developers – come on be real…do you really consider this line item fixed haha …see http://www.codeignitor.com for what real documentation looks like
-> Maybe not a lot af docs for the framework, but surely enough to create extensions and develop your templates.
#5 extensions are not really true MVC…i looked at 6 or 7 of them to verify and i think only one came close…most others still mixed business logic and presentation and where are the models?
-> don’t blame Joomla for poor 3rd party extensions
#6 poor ui – Somebody tell me why I can’t i move multiple menu items to one parent menu item…in fact my favorite cms menu managers allow me to drag and drop sort my menus…
-> True, this can’t be done. Never missed it.
#7 poorly designed extensions and modles – 65% of the modules and extensions I have reviewed for use in a customer websites were crap and had issues. That being said the rest were great. I think better documentation will help with that issue. Then all you newbie developers that don’t know basic coding will stop creating hack jobs…i mean c’mon does joomla want to be the oscommerce of cms’s.
-> again, don’t blame the framework for poor 3rd party development.
#8 slooooow – has anyone noticed that joomla is slower then your custom apps and other cms systems when they are on the same server….ok granted my custom apps are light years more efficient and better designed then Joomla but I do use a framework and people are touting Joomla as a framework
-> Point taken, but this is tweakable.
Maybe it is not the best cms or framework in the world, but I see a lot of comments that Joomla sucks because of this or that, but a lot of these comments are there just because lack of knowledge of the framework.
So I’ve given Joomla what I consider to be a fair try. I originally chose it over Drupal because it seemed easier to theme. And it did in fact prove to be so.
But in the end, I really wanted simple, computed URLs. I didn’t want to force users to associate pages with no less than Sections, Categories _and_ MenuItems. I just don’t see how have complicated URL lookups was at all efficient, and considering the output, it was definitely useless. So I have switched my project over to CMS Made Simple, and I am really appreciating the simplicity. Theming is fairly easy the admin UI seems user friendly. Overall, a much quicker turnaround product. The main loss of course is Joomla’s massive repository of addons. CMS Made Simple have quite a few, but i haven’t explored them heavily yet.
Dissapointing version 1.5 :
+ Easy installing modules, components, templates.
+ Relative easy to organize articles.
+ Speed is okay.
+ Amount of free (gratis) templates are fair.
+ Very good backup plugin (JoomlaPack) !
- To many buggy and ugly extensions.
- Not even a events calendar build in ?!
- No way to organize backend articles.
Major disadvantages (to my use anyway) :
- No (core) content access control (by groups and users).
- No (core) way to force specific articles to use SSL.
(Hope to see these functionality in V2.0) !!
Don’t mention Drupal as an alternative. Same disadvantages, just more ugly ;-/
———————————
Any alternatives ??
When V1.6 ACL is implementet and actually works – Joomla becomes a winner.
http://developer.joomla.org/coordinator-blog/286-happy-new-year-2009-is-going-to-be-a-big-one-point-six.html
I found this post by googling “Joomla Sucks’…. LOL. I just installed it today via Godaddy and I’m having tons of problems with it.
well bro, even after 3 years you post this, Joomla still suck.
* time consuming when updating website
* too many page level to go through
* template not so user friendly even Forum/Wiki page not very helpful
Trying out Joomla now. My god it is slooooow and disorganized, the navigation system is stupid, the entire UI is completely useless and non-intuitive. The only good part was the setup procedure which was reletively painless.
Fully agree, Joomla is really a strait jacket. Huge amount of files but almost no creativity possible unless you make radical changes.
It is almost 20 MB when uploaded – with so much software you would expect to have much more up-to-date performance, like stylish gallery, elegant forum, perfect slideshows, attractive random headers, first class text editing, SEF. Actually I also don’t like the design very much, it is all without fine details. For me a website must have all functionality, but a website must be also like a jewel, something what people like to see again and again. Joomla is a big disappointement, you work for so many hours but what is the result, upgrade to next version? Yes, Joomla is for old people who cannot write code.
I’ve been doing design for more than 10 years. Being a non-programmer, I agree that Joomla SUCKS. If its good for developers, then thats all good but when you have to watch video tutorials to understand how the back-end works, you know there is something wrong. I have written my own CMS’s in the past, and I can tell you that Joomla sucks bone compared to Wordpress or other CMS tools.
just curious, which CMS did you use for this site ahYap?
I’m finding that Joomla is not as bad as I originally thought. I had to do a lot of troubleshooting, and spent 12hrs one day just digging into it to figure out what was going on. Once I got ride of the sample data and built the tutorial site to learn how to use it, I grew to actually like Joomla. I’ve also found that editing the backend is about as easy as wordpress once I figured out what I was doing.
Heya.
I’ve used Joomla once for a fairly extensive site re-build, as at the time, it was the only Open Source CMS capable of handling what we needed to do, the site we made even won an award from the Joomla team.
I found it a nightmare to design for, and after the fact, there was the frustration of seeing the system publish using tables, regardless of my markup, and after a few months the users were unanimous in their dislike of it as a publishing system.
It seems that a few years down the line, nothing much has changed really, as I’m having to work on a Joomla site now, developed by someone else, and it is just IMPOSSIBLE to get into, even with experience. It has to be one of the least intuitive CMS’s out there, and I can guarantee I’ll never use it again. I switched to Textpattern after that, before Wordpress was as good as it is now, and will probably look into CMSmadesimple at some point, along with Drupal.
If you’re looking for something to run a small to medium sized site, use Wordpress, bigger sites, use Drupal.
As a developer friend said, “Joomla is great. IF you can afford to hire a full-time php developer, a part-time designer, and a part-time website manager, all to run it for you. Otherwise, forget it.”
I am content with Joomla.
I assume this is an old article because most reference is about 1.0 and not 1.5. In either case, it’s fun to rant
Joomla sucks, reason X+1:
I installed the thing, and when trying to access the admin panel the password I had just set didnt work, tried to reset it to a known hash, didnt work, twice. Goodbye Joomla
Joomla totally sucks bigtime, you’re absolutely right. No way to change the look and feel without hacking code or creating templates? WTF? So I can’t change header image, font or background colors AT ALL from inside the interface??? No file upload from my computer straight into an article? A Frontpage Manager which is an article manager, and very little to do with how the frontpage looks?
Crap interface, crap functionality, crap security, and zero flexibility unless you’re a programmer. So much for Web 2, putting power into the hands of ordinary people.
reading these comments, it´s clear some people haven´t spend long enough with it.
Joomla is incredible if you know how to use it. Of course you can edit css files to change colours and suchlike within the template (in the admin panel). Just don´t rely on crappy templates, go with professional ones – or write your own.
The SEO function works well, but you need to edit your configuration.php to ensure this works (livesite line).
The updates for joomla are so simple a 3 year old could do it. Just upload and extract… it´s not difficult!
With Joomla you can change the site to make it how YOU want. So many people say all sites look the same but it isn´t true. Use some imagination people!
Joomla is the core engine, if you want it to work for you put the time into it.
@Cropper
I’ve spent more than enough time on Joomla, enough to know that it’s the most cumbersome, laborious, and clunky CMS out there.
Clients hate it, and almost all agree that in order to use it proficiently requires hiring a web manager, or getting a developer on staff.
For small jobs there are much more appropriate systems out there, like Wordpress or Textpattern, or SimpleCMS. For larger jobs, given the amount of time needed to learn about Joomla, I would always go with a bespoke system.
Joomla simply doesn’t cut it.
The section / category model is extraordinarily inflexible, limiting, confusing and just plain dumb. This is not content management.
Still no built-in commenting or blogging functionality in 1.5. Unreal.
The admin interface is so complex that clients invariably end up not even using it.
Joomla is a disaster. How this so-called “CMS” ever got to be so popular is beyond me.
Joomla is a big crap!!!! Nothing else!!!!!
Never used but I like complaining, so Joomla SUCKS !!
All prebuilt CMS’s suck. Use CakePHP or Ruby On Rails if you want some power.
make your own cms then.. Jommla ROCKS!
it helps those who wanted to create a powerful CMS page with ease.
Hail Joomla! and THANK YOU for such a good cms! and billions of cool templates!
Joomla programmers just can’t figure what kind of template basically most people want, something like http://www.nps.edu/ with good-looking dropdown menu, impressive slideshow, and below articles with comment function. Joomla isn’t meant for static content, it is meant for dynamic stuff. So far unless you make a whole new template on your own, there is nothing ready available.
Well Lenny, glad you found a website you like, but opinions are not all the same regarding the beauty of it
Joomla sucks big time!
can’t even figure out how to alter a menu. Or add a single page. Don’t see how this is easy.
I also agree with the fact that Joomla has got some limitations as in the case of SEF and all. But it is not a Crap at all. If it is a whole crap , then why it become this much popular..? Actually Joomla is powerful CMS that will help anyone to create a simple site or a complex one like a Social Networking, Video Sharing, Online marketting using the powerful thirdparty extensions. There is a number of free extensions avialble . It will work great if the code is hacked a bit. If you want to study Joomla thoroughly consider visiting http://joomtuts.co.cc for the resources and http://hacking-joomla.blogspot.com for useful hacks.
well, maybe joomla is not for the mentally challenged forcefiend
RTFM
@smartass
Is that what you tell clients?
That they’re mentally challenged and should RTFM?
No wonder we don’t let the programmers answer the phones…
No Pah, just forcefiend
I hate joomla..I have to get it off my chest.
Reason being is you have to link a menu to a componet, and everything you write has to be an article or a blog. There are preconfigured ways to arrange these articles and you CANT CHANGE THESE!! (unless you do like a milliion hacks..) See I thought ooh id like to control layout of two articles on the same page in different places, would it let me, yeah right!! You have to link menus to components, you cant link them to modules, and you can only put one content component on a page! But people say ooh theres so many add ons and templates…the templates you get free are terrible and the add ons i tried are slow, trying to fit these together with a single style that runs throughout your site, which is the essence of design is insane!!
I have wasted too much time on this joomla, I will do better just programming from scratch, at least I know when I make a box, I know where it will be!!!!
I only used it because I thought clients would easily be able to maintain their site..hmmm. How do web designers allow clients to maintain websites without one of these cms?
Right I think im going to go to the coffee shop and get a blueberry muffin before i regroup
(feel betetr now)
Good point, joomla is far too complicated compared with the result what you have at the end. Meanwhile wordpress has so many templates which are much easier to handle, with more features and look even better like joomla. Seems like joomla is made for this that once you get envolved you have to pay for impressive templates which make the whole endeavour worth it. At joomla’s main page they took off the free templates section and more and more you find they want to sell stuff. At the joomla forums you always read, “hi, I’m a newbie to joomla…”, why, because all experienced webmasters avoid joomla.
Yes, Joomla is a serious web development tool, and if you need a blog then something simple like WordPress probably makes more sense. Drupal has its place but is not the framework Joomla is (there are extensions to plug Drupal INTO Joomla, but have not heard of vice-verse).
A few tips for some of the ‘Jhaters’ out there:
1) To resolve your Section/Category and diverse layout issues, just use the K2 extension.
2) Use the JCE WYSIWYG editor to make it easier to directly upload images into content.
3) Joomla is somewhat limited by GoDaddy’s bulk server solutions: they seem to restrict quite a bit of access from my experience.
—
But honestly, Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, and CMSMS are all tremendous accomplishments for open source development. Coders who learn the ins-and-outs of any of these systems have far more power to create than ever before; and the cost of affordable web development is now within the reaches of average businesses like never before.
One thing I’ve noticed as we’ve continued to use Joomla more and more through the years, is that more and more often we’re just writing our own extensions from scratch: it seems odd to me to review these comments and not read more postings from developers who tried to take the route of developing their own components, modules, and plug-ins.
Once you get THAT down, Joomla is a very beautiful beast.
-Matt
MLP
Joomla CMS is considered to be the #1 CMS system all over the world
User list in millions – Numbers Simply DON’T STOP
Everything is based on MVC pattern, if you are a developer you will need to learn its API or framework (Only if you are writing an Extension all by your self) – Though most of the extensions are readily available
Joomla.org is ranked top 500 by Alexa..
and so forth and so forth.. I am talking about facts. Also, have a look out for Joomla 1.6 Beta, it has over come all the lame negative points mentioned in the start of this blog.
Joomla only gives you its fruit if you are a user / developer with PATIENCE, or else you will just use fast systems which are not secure, not reliable, not scalable, not user friendly & so forth..
Joomla Team and community Simply Rocks !
@Dino
You’re talking nonsense, and I have one word for you. Wordpress.
Just like you said, “Joomla only gives you its fruit if you are a user / developer with PATIENCE”. Why should I be patient with a CMS? I want it to work, I don’t want to have to hack on it to make it work.
Here’s a fact for you Dino, since you like facts. Joomla was written with code stolen from Mambo, by ex-Mambo staffers. It’s a horrible mish mash of code, put together by horrible people, and it sucks ass as a CMS. End of story.
Have always hand coded my sites because I like the control,
I was told to use Joomla for work but after four months I could honestly quit my job in order to stop using this crap.
Joomla is not for pussies. Why don’t you losers go play with drupal or something.
fucking complicated BULLSHIT thats what joomla is, i’m at the end of my tether with it
I’m with Haha Haha:
Everyone who posts these negative Joomla rants is one of three things:
1) An uninformed and uneducated newbie (this must be the biggest class of commenters here; all these complaints about SEF URLs, comments, section/category, etc. are all items that can be easily added with common FREE extensions).
2) A designer posing as a developer.
3) A untalented wannabe coder.
Plain and simple. End of discussion.
- MLP
@Matt
I’m none of those things Matt, I have a decade of experience in front end development, and I spent 8 months fighting with Joomla. 8 months was too long. I simply don’t like it, I don’t like the architecture, I don’t like the interface, I don’t like designing sites with it, and every single client I’ve handed it over to has hated it and asked for a different system.
Your comments are pretty immature generalisations, so I’ll make one about you. You’re a child.
Matt, yes your right.
m: Complicated? Not at all
you can’t be humourless
there remarkably is no way to make known the fact
DMC-
8 months to figure out Joomla and you’re calling ME a child?
You don’t like “designing” with it?
Recommending WordPress as a robust CMS?
And get your facts straight about the Joomla/Mambo split – you’re assertions are quite inaccurate and sound a bit out of date, or are you just talking about Joomla 1.0?
Either way, sounds like you’re a classic case of #2: the designer wannabe developer.
And Joomla rolls on…
- MLP
Matt-
I’m not going to bother responding to your comments, you’re just an obnoxious little turd. Go play with your attitude problem.
I hate to take sides DMC, but you’re not offering much of a retort in your responses other than calling Matt a “turd” and a “child”, and generally attacking him rather than his points.
Nor do you have any kind of link to your work or abilities as Matt has provided – why don’t you show us what you’ve built WITHOUT Joomla?
As such, your comments are fairly meaningless.
BigBorker
Funny discussion. I don’t think we can call Joomla a “framework”? It’s really a big mess. I would suggest Django CMS as a nice option for a near future.
May be we have to be fair about Joomla in that sense that it might be an useful Content Management System for bigger enterprises, like hospitals, schools, ministries, etc., who, more and more, engage people for starvation wages. Big companies were a team of unpaid student apprentices are updating the easy to handle Joomla backend – which doesn’t require any programming knowledge. Could be that Joomla was made, what we’ll surely have soon, to engage foolish people in slavery work, pittance?
BigBorker:
Thanks for pointing out the obvious frailty of DMC’s argument, but I think I can defend myself here (thank you very much).
Brosc.oLHo:
Yes, it is appropriate to call it a “framework” if you’re able to use it that way – the MVC structure is quite easy to use once you learn it. And I’m not sure why you think it’s such a mess.
And Lenny: This is nonsense.
Isn’t the idea behind a CMS is to allow non technical people to manage a website once technical people build it for them? This doesn’t have to be for minimum wage or “slave labor”, but as a business decision, the choice to use ANY CMS is generally to allow non-techies to manage a website- if Joomla caters to the lowest skillset, as you’ve suggested, then isn’t that to its credit?
And if something is good for bigger enterprises, then why wouldn’t it be suitable for smaller enterprises that want to have a platform that will grow with them or at least hope to compete with larger more established enterprises in their market? Overkill for simple jobs? Perhaps, but for those of us who know what we’re doing with Joomla, it only takes a few minutes to deploy a basic site, so if clients want more “bang for their buck” and want to be able to manage their site themselves or with lower cost labor – then Joomla is a good fit.
Seems these critiques of Joomla are becoming less and less factually based, and more and more opinionated – as Joomla continues to improve, I’d expect this trend to continue.
- MLP
Joomla – commercial crap disguised as Open Source.
Just don’t like it.
Two words – Bloated Crap
Wow, great to see comments starting from 2006 to 2009, going to be 3 years since the first comment had been posted, in a few more days. I am with most of the people here. Joomla sucks!
If Joomla is too good, can you show me any well-known sites that is built on top of it? WordPress is used by NASA, CNN and so on, same goes for Drupal.
Sean,
A little bit of research (like less than 2 mins) would have yielded sufficient answers for your question.
Perhaps you’ve heard of:
- Porche
- Nikon
- Olympus
- Epson
- TNA Wrestling
- Sprint
- Burger King
- and others…
See a more complete list here:
http://www.internettips.com/departments/website-publishing/who-is-using-joomla?/
And the list keeps growing…
Cheers,
MLP
Wonder why so many template and extension sites require user registration to download non-commercial stuff ?? To sell my email adr. to spammers ?
joomla has built in crap.
if you like crap add virtuemart and you’ll get the crappiest crap ever.
if you want to make an online shop without wasting your time on fixing other developers crap code you might as well code your own mini CMS-store. i used virtuecrapmart once and will never ever touch that crap again.
otherwise CMS made simple rocks.
i don’t understand why people like joomla, maybe that’s just because the masses in general always love crap.
Crapman,
Let’s keep our comments about Joomla specific to the CMS and not get into dissecting specific extensions – VirtueMart is now one of the older ecommerce platforms developed for Joomla, and not the only option either mind you – and yes, you can even build your own ecommerce platform for Joomla if you want (or bridge with Magento).
As for why it continues to dominate the marketshare for open-source CMS platforms, it most likely has less to do with your “masses love crap” hypothesis, and more likely has to do with the fact that you can build advanced websites with greatly varying functionality – even custom components – using the Joomla MVC framework, and Joomla has a very large and well established development community (presumably of coders like myself, who don’t get stuck on minor bugs in otherwise completely FREE software like VirtueMart)
MLP
Matt Hammond,
Virtuemart IMHO, which if you don’t mind me expressing it, is crap. I am aware that Virtuemart is an external application and I am aware that there are others. Now you can get all pissed off i guess, but don’t forget, free software comes with freedom of speech. Don’t go there.
I just tried Virtuemart/Joomla for a client in order to keep dev costs down and I realized that in the end I spent almost as much time as if I where to develop the webstore myself. I had to go into the code and change things for it to work, don’t even get me started on the product images. It’s ok, because now I know. Virtuemart is crap. CMS Made Simple isn’t like that, it doesn’t yet have a perfect shopping system, but that will come.
I don’t mind if people use and enjoy what I consider to be crap, that is what makes our world so diverse and colorful with rainbows, and crap.
Mambo 5 will use CakePHP framework, will Joomla follow the path taken by their elders ?
Actually there are 3 different php frameworks I know of for Joomla. It is fairly easy to add most any framework to joomla.
Cake, Ruby and another that is based on cake that speeds up joomla 40% or more. Just take a gander on google and you will see the makers.
I actually like several CMS systems. Drupal is really fun and so is MODx but a real pain for customers and finding ciders is an issue. Frankly I don’t care which CMS we use in our business as long as we get paid.
Many angry people on this blog. Seems not the most productive use of time. But as I type I am getting ready to watch a TV show
So I best keep my mouth shut!! 
Regards,
Lawson
BTW – Ruby is not php but an example of a framework that easily integrates into Joomla.
Apologies fir the mistype.
joomla is a kind of framework which allow user to do something under its framework which not much flexible and not possible to hide people that your site is not use joomla CMS.
(unskilled) Joomla user,
This is only true if you have no coding skill or talent.
It is very easy to conceal the Joomla foundation of a site if you know what you’re doing – as it is also infinitely flexible if you are a real coder who understands MVC structure.
Stop spreading rumors that are simply not true.
-MLP
If you are a real coder then why use Joomla ?
Matt. I’m not a programmer, but I work with a team of 4 programmers, all very involved in the open source community. None of them had anything good to say about Joomla, in terms of the software, the code base, or the company ethos. In fact, until I read the comments on this blog, from you and a small handful of people, I’d never heard a good thing about it. Ever. It strikes me that you’re throwing insults at anyone who criticises Joomla, and as crapman has pointed out already, free software comes with freedom of speech. Nobody is spreading rumours which aren’t true.
Maybe you’re more involved with Joomla than you’re letting on.
It strikes me that thou dost protest too much…
Crapman – if you’re a real coder why NOT use Joomla, or more clearly why is Joomla so difficult to use if you know what you’re doing?
Dad – um, people indeed ARE spreading rumors about Joomla that are untrue or simply outdated. I have no affiliation to Joomla other than using it for my company’s and clients’ projects – and I happen to appreciate being able to utilize the MVC framework to develop custom functionality (what’s to complain about the company ethos? will you even give 1.6 a chance once it comes out?).
If anything, I too am exercising my right to free speech.
Cheers,
-h
I stumbled upon this thread by chance whilst looking for an update to a template for one of my Joomla sites.
With no experience in CMS or anything like that, Joomla was a pain to go into. 1.10 was so confusing that the whole thing was just so limiting. I had big ideas for my websites, but limited to what Joomla could do. I couldn’t really go into the others like Drupal because… I just didn’t have the technical experience to go into something that would be difficult to use (on the idea that joomla was an easy CMS to get into).
Joomla 1.5 came out, and things became a lot easier. 3rd party extensions caught up with Joomla 1.5, and eventually what you pay is what you get… 3rd party extensions that you had to pay for actually improved on the core Joomla system.
I am no programmer, although if I was I might be inclined to the non-fans of Joomla, but Joomla is a really versatile system to use if you add in the right 3rd part components (K2 Content takes care of the limited Section-Category Problem for example). Yeah, the debate will long continue between what CMS is really best to use, and a out-of-box system should have all the bells and whistles that it should.
I recognize that the debate here is on the Core system.. Joomla… and I agree. it’s really bad. But great party extensions really make up for it. Today, I’m finally happy with Joomla onl
then go use plone or whatever “sophisticated” bullshit.
Hi,
I’m a computer programmer with not much time since i have a demending job. I know a lot of programming languages.
Now i’m wanting to make a site that other peeps can easily change (like my father and non programming friends).
So i decided to try Joomla. I gave it up after about 8h, it is very confusing to use. You have Sections, Catagories, articles, …. The basic page setup is just awfull, when i program 8h i have a full working application.
So now i’m looking for a other CMS to use, and i must say the candidates are many but few are ready.
I set up several joomla websites but I never entangled myself with the basic joomla. There are now thousands of ready to use joomla portals, for any purpose, full with all kind of fancy features which normally take you days to integrate. If you google you often get them free. So make sure, never to install a basic joomla. Only install joomlas which are up-to-date and stuff like at bestofjoomla.com.
Your server has the setting of “safe mode on” ? Never start with joomla at servers with “safe mode on”!
The joomla engine runs quite smooth, better than wordpress, basically never crashes and loads quite fast.
This I did last week for a Hindu temple in our city. Originally it is “Sport Line” by Youjoomla, http://www.prabhupadanugas.eu/gopal/
Once you installed it, it is immediatelly ready to post content, no time wasted with webdesign.
There’s no mystery to anyone with skills. Joomla is for programmers like windows is for the general public. Lots of users, all jerking each other off, pretending to be “skilled” in web production, all the while, bolting more and more shit onto the steaming dung heap of the core. Creating progressively more bloat, system resource hogging, conflict ridden, impossibly fucked up architecture, while heightening client expectation and lowering billing rates.
Please God, move on and go back to simply jerking off to porn, and leave the business of business on the web to real programmers.
Been using Joomla and Virtuemart for 3 years and I spend the first 4 hours of each day trying to figure out why things aren’t working. From trying to get SEF URLs or searching endless files through disorganized folder structures, Joomla and Virtuemart does nothing but make my life a complete misery.
There seems to be a lot of hot air and swearing going on from people who for the most part, on their own admission, have no or very limited actual experience with Joomla. 1.This post originated back in 2006 so was actually about Joomla 1.0 which was Mambo rebadged. Joomla 1.5 (the current system) is a whole different kettle of fish. 2. For all those people who thought they could install Joomla and then call themselves professional web developers, life is not like that. You have to take the time to learn how to use the Joomla framework. When a website is developed in Joomla by a web professional that takes the time to develop their skills, it will be a fast loading, search engine friendly site that is easy to maintain and update by non-programming users.
3. As for Virtuemart – yes it is a complete disaster and nearly turned me off using Joomla for ecommerce sites. It is NOT Joomla, it IS a third party application that has been hacked to tack on to Joomla. Have a look at a shopping cart like SeberCart that is designed specifically to utilize Joomla functionality and you are on to a real winner. Bottom line is, if you want a CMS based website with all the flexibility and time savings that go with it, hire a Joomla developer. If you want an HTML page, hire an html programmer, if you want a Flash site, wake up, its 2010.
I not sure why you so hate joomla, first of all, it is free, I am sure we can’t complain much cause they didn’t charge us any cents.
Yes, i agreed with you there are lot bug, but think most of them can be solved if you know some php programming. (Maybe for those not good in coding, yes, they will face problem)
Following from version 1 till version 5 now, I can host a few thousand member site with joomla without facing much big problem. Of cause, it being hacked before, but if you do your backup and always update your joomla version and study to improve the security. It still a very good cms out there.