Thinking about switching to Joomla from Wordpress, need advice.

Hello Digitalpoint,

I have been blogging from circa ~A Year.

Since then, I have learned a great deal about WordPress, but about a week ago have started investigation Joomla.

For a while now, i have been a little tired with WP lack of customization options for the site design itself, with the requirement of learning WP script/options in order to fully customize a site. Since my year of blogging, i have learned PHP, and Javascript; and have found a Joomla theme that is really to my liking.

I have for a long time wanted to incorporate a Forum on my blog, where users can share and interact, (It's the Video Game Niche), but also be able to run their own little "blogs", or maybe a submit form/contest type-thing where users submit content and an article is chosen to be posted on the main site, and giving the author credit. (can be a forum function i guess??)

How hard would it be to implement something like this in Joomla? (I have heard Joomla is more community-based, so i guessed that implementing it would be easier than implementing it in WP)

I just wanted advice; Would it be worth it to switch to Joomla? How would any writers react, how hard is it to learn how to update posts for a freelance writer?

How is it with SEO in Joomla, i have heard talk that SEO in Joomla is not as "advantageous" as WP SEO.....is there any truth in this? (Personally i think with the right Joomla extensions it doesn't matter, but I want to make sure

thanks

--Nubix

 

White WordPress is targeted to posting blog content, Joomla is more member oriented and you can find multiple components for member features.
http://extensions.joomla.org/

If you still want to use WordPress you can take a look at BuddyPress plugin for frontend member functionality and also check related forum/group discussion plugins.
http://wordpress.org/plugins/

Browsing available listings and finding the right extensions for your project is up to you.

 

It boils down to the tool you are more familiar with.

Don't expect to be a jack of all trade, if there is anything you can do, outsource.

 

Hello nubix223,
If you need to build more complex website I would recommend you switching to Joomla. It's a powerful CMS with tons of built-in features and extensions. The SEO tools are highly adjustable and you can fine tune them to work the best for your niche. Personally I use AceSEF, which is paid component, but worth each $ spent. It is upgrading the built-in Joomla SEO engine giving you ability to control the metadata, sitemap, tags, create internal links and use social bookmarks.
Joomla supports few forum engines you can check here:
http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/communication/forum
You can also use a bridge to phpBB.

For converting your blog to Joomla you could review and try the extensions such as JConverter - WordPress to Joomla Conveter (http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/migration-a-conversion/data-import-a-export/10237).

 

If you need forum for joomla, i suggest you kunena forum extension... I used it on my gaming website, and it was awesome...
and about SEO, it's not that hard... i was big noob when I started with it, and it was pretty simple...

 

I agree with Hurki, Kunena is the best one out there. I also use it for my Joomla based website.

 

Wow!, thanks for all the imput, I think i will be switching to joomla very soon. Working with Sub-domains right at this moment to get the hang of it a bit before I start anything with my whole blog, although so far i am loving it,

 

I think you won't regret switching to Joomla, if you know also php you'll find that customizing the code it's much easier than in Wordpress.