New school website - Joomla or Wordpress?

[bondbill2k2]

I have been asked if I'm able to create a new school website, the current one is rather horrible in color and stretched images created by a friend of a member of staff a few years back.

 

Ludlow CE School

 

Would people here recommend wordpress or joomla? I have a little experience with wordpress (just some tutorial stuff) and a very basic knowlage of PHP/SQL but nothing more then a beginners guide text book. The CMS needs to be simple as possible for its users as our admin staff will be adding images and information at times, from expereince wordpress seems to make this a fairly easy process but i'm yet to try Joomla.

 

Any help or tips would also be appreciated thanks!

[Jamman960]

I'd go for Joomla out of the two, I'd imagine you'd quickly find that wordpress isn't quite flexible enough for a full site. We've integrated wordpress into our static site for the newsletter section though.

[K.C.Leblanc]

I've had a little look at both, Wordpress is by far the simplest.

[Singist]

Joomla, it's by far more comprehensive and allows you to customise and add loads of extensions that allows your site a lot of functionality. Joomla uses wysiwyg's making it easier for school staff to use and add content. It gets my vote!

[bondbill2k2]

Joomla uses wysiwyg's making it easier for school staff to use and add content.

Wordpress also uses a fairly simple wysiwyg editor on pages, WordPress CMS Demo on Vimeo check out 1:16>.

 

The backend looks abit clustered to for staff users in that video but permissions on useraccounts can easily be setup to only allow certain options/pages. I've just been told they don't want alot more content and functionality over the previous site which is basically a dozen static pages, home,about,news (never updated at the moment but wordpress is great for blog/news feed)

 

 

Saying that ive just watched a youtube video on joomla's UI and it also looks pretty tidy compared to what I renember.

Edited May 27, 2011 by bondbill2k2

[soveryapt]

When I looked at the options here with staff, they found the WordPress interface a lot easier to use. It used to be quite bloggy, but there are LOADS of plugins to utilise now to give it more functionality.

 

As has been said though, Joomla is the one that is aimed at being a CMS rather than a blog site come website.

 

I mean, ok, in the end, the school decided they should buy into the LEAs CMS here as that's what staff would be used to (but guess who does all the updating anyway ..)

[Hightower]

We use Joomla for ours, but after setting up many fully functioning websites with WordPress I wished we'd done the same for the school site. Definately WordPress is my recommendation, just makes everything easy, especially the installation of themes, plugins, and updates.

[chazzy2501]

I hear great things about squarespace. They host the website as well.

[bondbill2k2]

I'm going to try out joomla on a trial basis with their cloud site 30 day trials and basic video tutorials

Joomla! Demo

If its decent ill start or transfer depending how far I get on the cloud over to our current host. I've just tryed out there demo pageand while the main backend page appears very nice it can get a little confusing with the amount of lists and options on just a basic article list where wordpress does appear much easier in the backend but having to work the fronthead abit harder to accomplish some goals.

 

http://demo16.cloudaccess.net/administrator/index.php

username: demo

password: demo

[soveryapt]

I use --> WooThemes | Premium WordPress Themes <-- for my Wordpress Templates .. they build brilliant templates that often have elements you might be looking for built right in .. they can be a bit on the expensive side though, but I'm a signed up member so works out cheaper when working with my own clients sites ..

 

Might be worth a look ..

[K.C.Leblanc]

This site might be worth a look;

 

Open Source CMS Demos & Information - opensourceCMS

[Marci]

Whichever you go with, don't overlook hardening them...

 

Category:Security Checklist - Joomla! Documentation

Hardening WordPress « WordPress Codex

[samo]

Hello, I came across this thread on the search engine because I have the same problem. I was contracted to develop a site and would want to use Joomla or wordpress, but the school would also want a database of the result of each student which can be accessed through a secure login page. The school would want to make money from the sale of access login for students or parents to check their results or ward's results. Please I would like to know which is more appropriate to use for this type of database design. Wordpress or Joomla? Thank you

[soveryapt]

Hello, I came across this thread on the search engine because I have the same problem. I was contracted to develop a site and would want to use Joomla or wordpress, but the school would also want a database of the result of each student which can be accessed through a secure login page. The school would want to make money from the sale of access login for students or parents to check their results or ward's results. Please I would like to know which is more appropriate to use for this type of database design. Wordpress or Joomla? Thank you

 

Hi Samo and welcome to EduGeek ..

 

That all depends on whether you're simply giving access to a prewritten system that is separate from WordPress/Joomla or whether you are looking to have the database coded into the site itself. If it's the first, then it's as broad as long really as they can both link to external resources that way, if you're wanting to code a plugin for a site though, this is a different matter entirely.

 

I guess then it would be down to your own competence with the 2 platforms. I find that WordPress is a lot easier to work with and a lot easier for End User interaction, but as some have pointed out, you can sometimes find yourself a bit limited by the plugins available, though this is rapidly changing as more and more people write "proper website" plugins for WordPress.

 

In terms of the database design (which leads me to think you don't actually have a system in place), they both run on the PHP5/MySQL combo, so that is what you would be looking to write in.

 

I hope this helps a bit, but if you posted further information with regards to the database you talk of (is it preexisting of are you looking to create one) that would help.

 

Best Wishes

Andy

[CatherineMay]

I use Joomla now, I think it is complicated unless you know code - I don't. I have tried WIX - they host as well.

[samo]

Hi Samo and welcome to EduGeek ..

 

That all depends on whether you're simply giving access to a prewritten system that is separate from WordPress/Joomla or whether you are looking to have the database coded into the site itself. If it's the first, then it's as broad as long really as they can both link to external resources that way, if you're wanting to code a plugin for a site though, this is a different matter entirely.

 

I guess then it would be down to your own competence with the 2 platforms. I find that WordPress is a lot easier to work with and a lot easier for End User interaction, but as some have pointed out, you can sometimes find yourself a bit limited by the plugins available, though this is rapidly changing as more and more people write "proper website" plugins for WordPress.

 

In terms of the database design (which leads me to think you don't actually have a system in place), they both run on the PHP5/MySQL combo, so that is what you would be looking to write in.

 

I hope this helps a bit, but if you posted further information with regards to the database you talk of (is it preexisting of are you looking to create one) that would help.

 

Best Wishes

Andy

 

 

Thank you aptproduction for your prompt response. I have used Wordpress to design some sites and know a bit of phpmysql ( I use wamp and dreamweaver) but I wanted to try my hands on the second option i.e. wanting to code a plugin for the site. I have never really hosted a site on Joomla but have dabled into it, but I think that Joomla seems to be more robust than wordpress and for my kind of site which needs constant updating by the school admin and online checking of results, I was thinking of a good plugin that could work. Please any recommendation for Joomla or wordpress.

Thank you

[ikmps]

Hi

 

We have move to Drupal, had a look at Joomla, wordpress movable type and some of the others and found Drupal worked for us.

 

Paul

[emaderam]

I can understand why someone would choose WP for a small site and it's probably a little easier to administrate than Joomla. But i've always preferred Joomla to WP or other CMS, mostly because i've used it more. Joomla is very good, there's a lot of great free and commercial extensions available, pretty steap learning curve for an administrator though. Drupal is also a great platform to create complex sites, but I'm not a fan of it just because I don't wanna learn another system. Joomla meets all my current requirements. I don't think there's a "best one" of them.... it depends on your goal and technical expertise. There are some useful resources which can help you have a right choice when choosing your needed CMS. I recommend two pages providing a comparison chart of WordPress, Joomla and Drupal: WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal and CMS Comparison: Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress | Knowledge Center | Rackspace Hosting. Both present the information in an easy-to-understand format. Besides the three mentioned programs and before making your final decesion I also recommend to consider other content manageent systems. A full list of them is available at List of content management systems - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. But the most popular ones are presented on Script List | SimpleScripts. Platforms on SimpleScripts are categorized and this helps you make your decesion more easily.

[Love_Sausage]

Hi emaderam, the last reply before yours was 3 years ago, sometimes threads that are suggested as "similar" under a discussion are well out of date - I've fallen into that trap myself.