Top 5 Drawbacks of Joomla!

With tongue placed firmly in cheek, Chris Szabo rants about Joomla!

When it comes to CMS solutions, some things are just plain obvious - here are five ways Joomla! falls down again and again:

1. You can’t recognize a good Joomla! Web site.

Professional Web developers who create CMS solutions using Joomla have no regard for the standard templates that are available and inevitably create sites that are totally unrecognizable as a Joomla! Web site. The origination software can only be determined after digging in the source code. Very original!

2. Get lost in the available extensions.

Good CMS solutions sport a ‘reasonable’ number of extensions. I know of several that can boast dozens. I know some CMS developers who can list them by heart. I even know of commercial CMS options that sport approximately 60 extensions. But Joomla, with total disregard to its user base, has gone totally overboard and currently offers 3,704 extensions. Now that’s just sick! Who can keep track of so many extensions?

3. Joomla! Web sites can fall to bits when they are finished.

It is alleged that Joomla Web sites are so easy to manage and keep up-to-date that virtually anyone with a Web browser and an Internet connection can edit their Web site. In fact, Joomla will tell you that you need no programming or HTML experience to manage your site. Therein lies the problem! Once a Web design company has handed over a finished site to a client, they go crazy and add new text and images and the whole thing ends up looking quite different to what the designer had in mind and, instead, has a really ‘up to date’ feel about it.

Caution: If you want your Web site to stay the way it was when you designed it - don’t use Joomla! and don’t let your client update it.

4. Joomla! is not for the elite.

Elite design companies use specialized tools. They like to use things… the elite use. So forget Joomla - apparently masses of people are now using Joomla. There are hundreds of thousands of registered Joomla developers and a whole heap more of people using Joomla Web sites. Joomla has become very common indeed.

The bottom line: Joomla isn’t for the sophisticated anymore. Stick to your Mac and your iPhone!

5. You can’t deduct Joomla! from your taxes

Yes, for most of you this will be the sticking point. You really can’t get tax returns when you use Joomla. So what’s that all that about then?

Those people at Joomla really went out on a limb when they decided to make Joomla ‘Open Source’. Without going into the small print I can tell you that it’s cost free - you can’t buy it. You won’t have any ‘overhead’ advantages with Joomla. For Pete’s sake - you don’t even get to pirate it!

So there you have it in a nutshell, Joomla! is free, common, over used and quite possibly under rated. You can find many more drawbacks at www.joomla.org.

Reprinted from Navega Bem Web Design Blog with permission of Chris Szabo, author.

169 Votes

15 Comments

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David makes this comment

2008-12-15 10:07:46

Haha, wonderful article.
joom ba la makes this comment

2008-12-16 08:27:21

nice article
Christoph makes this comment

2009-01-03 08:32:05

"2. Get lost in the available extensions."

Well, quantity is high but many extensions lacks of quality.
Sometimes I would wish less but better tested extensions.

Joomla 1.5 is good, but there are many issues to work on. E.g. there is no need to put a poll in the core ...

Chris
Ashok Chaudhary makes this comment

2009-01-05 11:56:29

I m not agree with u.
Alvaro makes this comment

2009-01-08 11:34:15

Pretty much agree with your Top 5 drawbacks, except with that old farfetched regarding mac as an elite machine. I use and abuse Joomla! and Wordpress on a mac. And I don't want anything else. My Apple machine is costier than a windows or linux box? Really? I bought my Apple Powerbook G4 almost 5 years and still do all my work with it. Never had to take it to service or reformat the harddrive. Can you do that with other machines? You don't need to use a mac to be creative and efficient, but I rather spend my creativity in actual work and not figuring out what the hell is the problem with my computer. So, in the end, my mac is far cheaper than other machines. As to iPhone, I don't know. Can you use it to build a website? I'm a bit old-fashioned there, only use my phone to make phone calls and send SMS...
Bo makes this comment

2009-01-08 12:32:23

Thank you for Joomla,

but I really need an easy-to-manage group-based ACL solution build into the core.

Making a restricted (company) Intranet were users are not allowed to read all content, but only content they are auth. to read. This is not possible and I don't trust ACL add-ons because ACL is not a core functionality $:\$

I've tried Typo3, Drupal, Xoops but Joomla is the best.

In short :
Typo3 is way to advanced to my use.
Drupal is just ugly and too many unfinished extensions.
Xoops : Could not get it to work.

A hope for ACL functionality in V1.6 or maybe more realistic V2.0.

An Explorer-like organisation / management of content would also be nice.
me makes this comment

2009-02-05 16:36:11

I think that Joomla lacks some core features which are usually added with extensions. Heavy use of extensions can slow the site down a lot also.
webdesign makes this comment

2009-03-07 19:31:01

Love this article! great drawbacks! I agree that joomla extensions is the key to get all the great features.
tech makes this comment

2009-04-14 13:20:38

this is nice Drawbacks of Joomla
i want 1
Marc makes this comment

2009-04-24 10:02:22

a nice article, I just can't take it seriously with regards to its title. There are some drawbacks to Joomla's functionality, like the limited authentication system, where you can't assign people roles for certain groups, etc. I was expecting to see this kind of information in this article. This I see as a humourous Joomla ad. Nice, but lacking information for somebody looking for the real drawbacks, e.g. when comparing CMS software.
Nicolas makes this comment

2009-08-25 23:14:20

I agree with Mark. This doesn't seem to be a very serious article, but more of a arrogant self-uplifting post.
I'm not saying that much of it isn't true, this article mainly speaks to "Joomla! fans" instead of winning over "Joomla! skeptics"...

I would love to see you write a new article on the subject, but this time a bit more serious and informative for us comparing Joomla with the rest of the competing CMS's.
johnny makes this comment

2009-08-28 20:48:21

I agree with 3 and 4. I switched to PHP-Fusion, Joomla seemed way too basic and the admin interface is s**t

Although I still use it on a smaller personal website because the themes are always awesome
QFIG makes this comment

2009-09-16 09:30:05

Joomla is nice but it starts to be illogical and not intuitive for simple people editing pages. One of my clients was really frustrated because he cannot make a simple and quick text link from one article to another article in the same Joomla. Text formatted in builtin Joomla editor is not WYSIWYG. J ver. 1.5 is much simpler and easier to use than 1.x but it lacks of one main idea how Joomla should work. Administration Panel proofs that Joomla Developers are the bunch of individual developers glueing their own ideas in one platform
Zak makes this comment

2009-10-13 22:04:32

Right... Regarding the extentions. I currently have quite a few different ones. I think it's good there is so many for specific site reasons. If you don't want that many that's fine.
Steve Jobs makes this comment

2009-11-01 19:52:28

This is True part I like he says:

Caution: If you want your Web site to stay the way it was when you designed it - don’t use Joomla! and don’t let your client update it.

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Yup this is true I see many idiots clients who don't have knowledge of html or programming. I dont care has long they paid me they can fix there problems themselves. Idiots...

Also Mac computers Sucks! those are for women and gay men.

Windows 7 blows it away