I asked ChatGPT “What is Joomla best for?” and here’s the response I got. (I did the same for Drupal and WordPress). The response is interesting and like other AI feedback, not always accurate.
- Content-Rich Websites: Joomla is well-suited for websites that require extensive content organization and management. It provides a structured approach to content creation, making it a good choice for news websites, online magazines, and similar content-heavy platforms.
- Community and Social Websites: Joomla has strong community-building features, making it ideal for creating social networking websites, forums, and community-driven platforms. Extensions like JomSocial and Kunena enhance its social capabilities.
- Membership Websites: Joomla offers user management and access control features, which are essential for creating membership-based websites. You can create different user groups with varying permissions and access levels.
- E-commerce: While Joomla is not primarily an e-commerce platform, it can be extended with extensions like VirtueMart and HikaShop to build online stores. This makes it a suitable choice for smaller e-commerce projects.
- Event Management: Joomla provides extensions like JEvents and Event Booking that enable the creation and management of events, including calendars, event listings, and ticketing.
- Multilingual Support: Joomla has built-in multilingual capabilities, allowing you to create websites in multiple languages. This feature is valuable for businesses and organizations targeting diverse global audiences.
- Customization: Joomla offers a fair amount of flexibility and customization options. You can create custom content types, templates, and modules to tailor your website's design and functionality to your specific needs.
- Extensions and Templates: Joomla has a dedicated extension and template ecosystem, with thousands of free and premium options available. This can significantly extend the features and design possibilities of your website.
- Security: Joomla has a strong focus on security, with regular updates and a dedicated security team. It provides features like two-factor authentication and strong access controls to help protect your website.
- Educational Institutions: Joomla is often used by educational institutions and non-profit organizations due to its content organization capabilities and support for user communities.
While Joomla has its strengths, it's important to note that it may not be as user-friendly as platforms like WordPress, and it can have a steeper learning curve for beginners. Additionally, for highly complex and custom projects, developers may find more flexibility and control with other CMS options like Drupal.
The choice of CMS depends on your specific project requirements, your team's expertise, and your preferences for ease of use and customization.
So I feel like this is the least accurate (or just out-of-date) of the three responses I got.
Joomla’s e-commerce extensions are just not very good when compared to WooCommerce (WordPress). Here in the United States, Joomla has fallen out of favor (for a number of reasons) with website builders. Which honestly is too bad because Joomla is still a really great CMS. I continue to use it for smaller sites that don’t require strong custom content types (which Joomla doesn’t do well at all) and where I need quick landing page builders (which Drupal just doesn’t have) - thank you YooTheme and SP Page Builder.