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Does anyone have a recommendation for choosing Joomla or WordPress as the framework to run CiviCRM? Or some high-level pros and cons for a CiviCRM newbie? I'm less experienced with Drupal so I'd prefer not to go that route.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

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    Although civicrm is best with drupal but you can go with any cms if you have knowledge about smarty template engine. Better to go with cms that you know in better way. – Prem Patel Aug 30 '16 at 19:45
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The integration with Drupal is still the best. WordPress is slowly catching up, but not there yet. Joomla has the least integration.

So if you have the choice between Joomla and WordPress, go WordPress.

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  • Agreed with Catorghans, the Wordpress integration with CiviCRM is growing slowly but steady. – Andrei Aug 31 '16 at 9:19
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I think it really depends on what your needs are for the site - we run CiviCRM on both Joomla and Wordpress because of the CMS needs. If you have a site that will need a lot of ACL, Joomla is better and more of a workhorse CMS. Wordpress has come a long way and is a good mid-weight CMS with good support.

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  • In your experience have you found that CiviCRM is easier or smoother in WordPress or Joomla? I understand your point about the built-in ACL options in Joomla, in this case I'm looking for the best fit for a client whose web requirements aren't too demanding, so the needs of the site itself aren't a big factor. Thank you for your feedback! – David Taiaroa Sep 2 '16 at 1:54
  • David - apologies for the delay in replying, I'm in Tallahassee and still don't have power restored after the hurricane. CiviCRM takes a little more finagling in Wordpress than it does in Joomla. For example, you do need to set up a default page for CiviCRM to use when displaying pages, and that can have some impacts in terms of theme compatibility and there are some Wordpress plugins or features within plugins that don't play well with CiviCRM. I'd say CiviCRM is more mature in Joomla than in Wordpress, if that makes any sense. Right now, Civi upgrades in Joomla are much easier than in WP. – Barbara Forbes-Lyons Sep 5 '16 at 20:38
  • I'm at the stage where I have Joomla and WordPress installations and I'm getting up to speed with both CiviCRM and how to manage it in each of the CMS frameworks. I'll look closer at the points you mention. I appreciate your followup comments and I wish you well with your post-hurricane recovery! – David Taiaroa Sep 6 '16 at 0:57
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I'd say it depends on what you need to use both the CMS and the CRM for.

Joomla-Civi doesn't have the equivalent Drupal's Civi WebForms integration - so if you want to get, say, event or profile data out of Civi and have full control over styling to integrate that with your site's content views, there is no existing extension to do that. I think there is a CiviCRM Gravity Forms integration for Wordpress.

If you're just using Civi to take payments, newsletter signups, sell memberships, or have standard Civi events/profile pages, then that will work fine with either CMS, ie go with the CMS that best suits your needs. Certainly Joomla Civi upgrades are quick (unless something has gone wrong with the install) and for access control, such as selling Membership to access certain parts of your website is straightforward on Joomla with the CiviAuthenticate plugin.

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  • thanks. actually it was a Caldera Forms CiviCRM integration for WP I was thinking of – it's still in alpha – Nic Oct 10 '16 at 11:49
  • Thanks for the tip about the forms, it looks like an interesting project – David Taiaroa Oct 10 '16 at 18:27

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