Upgrades with Joomla take some steps — especially when you consider the plugin updates.

The simplicity and easy updates brought me over to wordpress. And the power and functionality is growing at an amazing rate.

Technically WP is a CMS site, but most people who use WP don’t care about that fact and really don’t need to know more than how to add new stuff and to backup. And WP has frequent upgrades — and now that is easy to do from the user interface. With all of the themes that are available, most people can be satisfied installing WP (which is free) and finding a free or inexpensive theme to have a full website.

The big advantage is this is the easy website for everybody. The price is right, and most people can learn to manage the whole thing themselves.

Google loves WP, so just by using it, and either blogging or updating regularly, plus having a few inbound links, the site will rate well.

Both WP and Joomla! have a huge community of support.

Joomla!, on the other hand really requires someone to learn the program. It is complex, and I find lots of people using it who don’t really understand the philosophy. I’ve seen enough Joomla! sites where the navigation is so inadequate that it is almost impossible to find the content even when I know it is there somewhere. Often the easiest way to find it is to search using Google.

If you have someone who truly knows how to manage a Joomla! site (not just what are the controls in the back end), and can set up logical navigation, the site can allow a huge number of people who don’t have Administrator status to prepare and upload content from the ‘front end.’ This can be wonderful, as long as that content does not become lost.

While Joomla! has a ‘blog’ format, it is not really a blog. Not at all! If you want to use Joomla! and you want a blog, I’d suggest that you have both, and keep them separate. And for the blog, use WordPress.