A Journey from Wordpress to Joomla!

Or how could you recommend Wordpress when Joomla! is so great!! !!

Pete Rossetti - Web developer and Joomla! fan-boy

Briefly about me :)

• I work freelance from home

• Highly organised !!!!!!

• But when it gets tooooo much :(

• I am lucky enough to be able to take a break and walk around here

• Just 5 min walk from my office :)

Why this topic?• During J & Beyond 2014 - was press-ganged into giving a talk :)

• During the ‘make it happen’ session - this topic came up and gave me the idea

• Part of a group - headed up by Peter Martin - writing a support document for the Joomla wiki on this very topic

• Also it may help with potential customers who want websites - heard of WP but not Joomla or have a WP site and it has outgrown their needs/business

What I will cover - What I will not

1. This will not be a ‘bash Wordpress’ session - at least not intentionally!

2. A look at the pros and cons of both CMS’s

3. How you may persuade a customer to choose Joomla over Wordpress

4. A look at 3 options for migrating content (primarily) from WP to Joomla - useful if a customer already has a WP site.

5. Will provide a slide with links and resources at the end for you to copy

Pros and Cons of WP & Joomla

• First let’s look briefly at the market share

• Not surprising that there is a uphill battle to compete with a CMS with this size of market share

• Most people I talk with have heard of WP but considerably fewer Joomla!

• But let’s not try & compete - but point out the benefits of Joomla! over WP

But still there are many myths out there to bust!!

Pro’s WPI know WP 4 has recently come out but I haven’t had time to check it out completely so this analysis looks at versions up to this:

• Easy setup

• Lots and lots of free themes

• Apparently user friendly Interface

• Strong SEO features

Cons of WP

• Security

• Incompatibility with other plugins

• Limited design Options

• Limited content management capabilities

Pro’s of Joomla!

• User-friendly

• Strong developer community

• Extension variability and a huge range

• Strong content management capabilities

• Responsive out of the box

• Security - 2 factor authentication

• Powerful ACL

and many more……………..

Con’s of Joomla!• Some learning involved!

• Advanced customisation

• Lack of SEO capabilities?

• Limited ACL support!!

This is not intended to be a complete list - there maybe other points for both CMS’s, I hope it gives you a flavour of the points made from both camps :)

tips/points for use with customers

1. They have an existing site but have reached the limit that WP can provide of what they want/need and are looking for an alternative

2. They want a new site, want a CMS option and have of course heard of WP but are open to other options.

2 possible scenarios why a potential or existing customer might want/need to move from WP to Joomla!

Have existing WP site

• Remember most people dislike change

• Offer support - training

• It’s future proof - it won’t be disappearing tomorrow

• A vibrant development community

• Vast number of extensions available

Migration Some Options

• Propose to look at the 3 main options I have found.

1.C Migrator

2.J2XML

3.WP to Joomblog Converter

NOTE: all these methods primarily transfer by and large - the content only

There are other options I discovered CMS2CMS & gConverters - these however are really a paid for service by a 3rd party company so in my view don’t count.

C Migrator• This is a paid extension but will import all your existing Wordpress or Drupal

users and content into Joomla. (€49 for 3 months support)

• With CMigrator you can import your categories, posts, pages and users from Wordpress or Drupal directly into Joomla/K2 It will migrate the content into com_content or K2 and much more including categories (keeping the structure), users, tags, and even moves images to the images folder. Also comments if CComment is installed on on the Joomla site

• It does have on their site one statement that gave me pause ‘Your CMS tables that you want to import from (wordpress/drupal etc) need to be in the same database as your Joomla tables. Otherwise the import is not going to work!’ Have not used or tried this component personally but it does appear to do what it claims.

• Comprehensive yet simple tutorial on You Tube at http://youtu.be/8NwB8gnNNCg

Brief run through C Migrator

• Of the 3 mentioned this option seems the most developed and comprehensive

• The run through is based primarily on the training video - not tried it directly myself but the video is pretty idiot proof - so good for me :)

1

• As CMigrator requires the WP tables to be transferred to the Joomla installation

• First access PHPmyAdmin for the WP site - export the DB as a .sql file then import it directly to the Joomla database

Next step if not already done is to install CMigrator & create new configuration

2

3

Next initiate the migration

4

At this point all the content, categories, users and images (if there are any) have been imported Check these in article manager, user manager and categories manager

However there are a couple of things that need to be done to make the imported users work and content look formatted as it did on the WP site.

5

User manager In this case the imported user is admin but because of a different algorithm used in WP the password will not work Need to enable a plugin that was installed with C Migrator

6

Parse the content The content when imported will look like this But using the parse content button will format the content to look like it did in WP

WP to Joomblog Converter

• OK if you want to convert from from a WP blog to a Joomla! blog

• Extension is free but needs you to install Joomblog which is a paid for extension (€39 for lifetime access for 1 domain)

• A good option if all you want to do is go from blog to blog, but if you have extra pages? Its not clear.

• Not tried it but there are a number of posts on the Joomla forum that says it works well.

J2XML!

• Import posts, categories, images and users from an xml file (generated by WP)

• I have experimented with this method - and briefly describe it next (not managed to transfer users yet)

• Need to install three files j2xml-3.1.1.zip plg_j2xml_wordpress-3.1.10.zip, plg_content_setimages-3.0.8.zip

In WP use the standard export tool and save the generated .xml file to your computerThen making sure the relevant plugins are enabled open up the component select the file and click importHey presto all your content will be in article manager and categorised

in conclusion• Though the majority of options for

migration available are for Joomla! to WP

• Yes there are user-friendly options other than WP

• Your customers could be better off with a more powerful CMS

That’s all folks!

References and Resources• http://vinaora.com/2014/08/revealing-pros-and-cons-of-joomla-vs-wordpress/

• Web Designer Issue 182 - “JOOMLA! is it time to quit Wordpress for a better CMS?”

• Web Designer Issue 220 - “JOOMLA! 20 reasons to switch from Wordpress”

• C Migrator - https://compojoom.com/joomla-extensions/cmigrator

• J2XML - http://www.eshiol.it/

• CMS2CMS - http://www.cms2cms.com/supported-cms/wordpress-to-joomla-migration/

• Good Read - http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue-aug-2014/item/2183-joomla-for-web-designers

• http://gconverters.com/convert-wordpress-to-joomla/ (like CMS2CMS a paid for service)

• Slides available on Slideshare - http://www.slideshare.net/FreeFelix