WordPress has been a piece of cake in comparison. We converted a major client’s entire website from Joomla to WordPress with excellent results, and even if they asked for more complex functionality in the future that WordPress couldn’t handle well, it would probably be easier to hand-code the add-ons than the wrestle with Joomla’s modules.

(Drupal is the other main CMS we are starting to use for more complex projects, which like Joomla has a steep learning curve at first, but seems much better architected once you get to know it. We also work in jsp-based OpenCMS and a cruddy old asp-based CMS for another client.)

From my perspective as a developer, no CMS has offered much advantage over hand-coding a site in php, asp, jsp etc. unless you just want to throw up a blog (for which WordPress is way easier than Joomla).

There might be some advantage for a very large, very complex site with multiple users with different privileges and levels of experience managing a huge amount of modular, re-usable content, plus community membership, discussions, blogs, news, etc., but most sites really aren’t like that. Such sites tend to be very complex to set up and administer whether you use a CMS or not, and using a CMS capable of that level of complexity tends to bring that complexity along even for simple sites. And you still usually can’t entirely avoid mucking around in php/asp/jsp at some point.

So the justification (for me) for using a CMS usually boils down to it being easy for non-developer end-users to add and modify content, and Joomla didn’t seem particularly successful from that perspective.

At the least I don’t want a CMS to get in my way, making it more confusing and difficult to set up or modify the site’s appearance or functionality, and I felt like Joomla tended to make my life harder rather than easier.

I am a newbie website developer (an experienced programmer by trade) and have tried both Joomla and WP. I must say I am very impressed and excited by WP. Joomla just seemed unintuitive too me.

An important point touched upon by some of the previous comments is Loading time. Joomla just seemed sluggish to me where WP running off the same hosting platform simply loaded faster.

I have also installed Virtuemant under Joomla for ecommerce capability – again clunky and not confidence inspiring. With WP I am looking at MarketTheme – adding a shop to my site. Early days but certainly looks encouraging.

If what I needed is found on WORDPRESS or could be achieved by one of its plug-ins and is also found in Joomla!’s basic component, I will choose WORDPRESS for its simplicity.

I have helped a couple of friends and clients get their ecommerce and sites live. The best result in both the SE and loading time is always hands up on WordPress. My client’s client does not have time for a beautiful website that takes long to load. I cannot sacrifice that. My clients cannot afford to read more on how to manage their site than working on their content.

This is the experience of my team: For wordpress site to be up and running, it takes and average of 16hrs with a custom theme working perfectly. For joomla, 32hrs is not enough. Hiring someone to do this task would be much.

In the end, it will be more profitable to go WordPress even with complex sites. My programmer once told me, show me a site that you think that could not be done in WP and I will show you one done in WP within 32hrs.

I still think she is right!

Since I have been using it, I have found that Joomla is like a full-sized, multi-acre farm where WordPress is a small home garden that only has one crop and only enough to feed a single family.

Drupal is somewhere in between. It more resembles WordPress in ease of use, but a multi-plant garden.

I recently made the mistake of converting two of my sites over to WP because it is easier to setup, but found out it is very limited. As a single topic blog, WordPress is fantastic. But, for multiple topics and multiple daily updates, it can’t cut the mustard. I would need to install more than a dozen copies of WordPress to mimic just one feature that both Joomla and Drupal have — multiple blogs.

To say that WP has 90% of the features of Joomla is like saying a motorcycle has 90% of what the car has, therefore you can use one in place of a simi!

If a person has need of a personal or single blog updated once or twice daily at the most, WordPress is perfect. It is easy to learn, easy to use and has the best selection of templates I have seen available for free.

If you want your family to share a website and each have a blog, you are better off with Drupal which can integrate and separate them with one engine.

If you need to handle several categories integrated into each other with a single control and gathering point, Joomla is the way to go. And this is what I need. I need a simi to haul my cargo around.

I will be using WP for my customers and friends, but I will be going back to Joomla for my needs.

I hope this is helpful information.

Good luck

Paul, to answer your questions:
1) SEO with WordPress is a snap. We use a plugin that allows us to enter custom meta data for each page.

2) WordPress has one click upgrade built right in. Back up your DB, click to upgrade, and within a few minutes you’re running the latest and greatest version.

3) WordPress’s plugins are great for most applications. We use the following free plugins quite a bit: Nextgen gallery, cforms II, Event Calendar, Another WordPress Classifieds Plugin, Custom Branding, and a few others. However, ecommerce with WordPress is pretty janky to say the least.

I think the author underestimates the time needed to train a newbie on either system. As a rule of thumb, we spend 2-4 hours training our clients on WP, and 6-8 training our clients on Joomla.

I have seen such a steep progression of WP in the last 2 years that I believe in the near future, WP will offer many of the additional features contained within Joomla and Drupal, but offer much more user friendly set up and management.

that’s my 2 cents.