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I’ve set up at least 50 Joomla websites in the past 3 years and at least as many Wordpress blogs. Both platforms have very strong, active communities that are constantly improving the products based on community feedback.

For small sites Wordpress has become a viable solution which I wouldn’t have said a year ago. Many new plugins and tool have appeared in the past year that make it easier to build a website instead of just a blog.

Joomla has matured and the release of the 1.5 platform last year solved many of the problems with the original version. They rebuilt Joomla from the ground up instead of patching the previous versions. Search friendly URL’s are now built into Joomla and my Joomla sites appear highly ranked in Google with little effort. Adding SEO plugins to Wordpress also makes it fairly easy to rank high in the search engines.

I still prefer Joomla for larger sites because I haven’t found a good menu plugin for Wordpress that lets me create menus with many levels that looks clean. . Joomla lets me create multiple menus located at the top, on the side and at the bottom of the website. I haven’t been able to create multiple menus in Wordpress without custom programming.

I like the way Joomla lets me move content around in different module positions and I can define the module positions in the template. Wordpress is limited how you can display content. Widgets must appear in sidebars and it’s not as flexible as Joomla. I know you can create custom themes for Wordpress but it’s always the main column and 1 or 2 sidebars. I’m sure Wordpress will continue to evolve and become more flexible.

Wordpress was designed to be a blog system and evolved into a content management system. Joomla started as a content management system and continues to grow. Both systems have easy to use Admin interfaces but Joomla has a lot more features so it looks harder to use than it is. It’s like Microsoft Word. You have 1000 features and you use 10 of them most of the time.

To sum it up, I like both platforms and I’ll continue to develop sites in both platforms based on the client’s needs.

Here’s a list of my favorite Wordpress plugins? What are your favorites? Please add them in the Comments section and I’ll compile a list for everyone to share.

All in One SEO Pack – Great SEO plugin that helps you get better search engine rankings

NextGEN Gallery – easy to use gallery plugin

Sociable – social bookmarking plugin that display social media plugins after each post. Use this or ShareThis

ShareThis – Social bookmarking tool that pops up instead of displaying the social media icons on your blog

Google Analytics for WordPress – let’s you monitor your blog traffic and gives you detailed visitor information

Google XML Sitemaps – automatically creates updated sitemaps

WP Security Scan – Shows you security vulnerabilities on your blog

DISQUS Comment System – connects your blog comments to your community page at www.disqus.com. Also allows video comments on your blog.

Suckerfish Dropdown Menu – easy to use menu system for your blog

Twitter Tools – Connects your blog to Twitter

Sphere Related Content – Let’s you instantly find related content based on the keywords in your post

TinyMCE Advanced – advanced editor for the dashboard

My Page Order – Let’s you easily reorder Page order

My Link Order – Let’s you easily reorder Link order

Category Order – Let’s you easily reorder Categories

Image Widget – Let’s you easily display widgets in the sidebar

What Would Seth Godin Do – Prompts people to subscribe to your blog

Wordpress Automatic upgrade – Upgrades your Wordpress software to the latest version using an easy to use wizard

Add your favorites in the Comments and I’ll compile a list for everyone.

If you like this post please bookmark it below by clicking on Share This. Watch this video to see how to use social bookmarking.

What are your favorite Wordpress plugins? There are hundreds of free Wordpress plugins and most people don’t take advantage of them to enhance their blog. Some plugins improve the appearance of the blog. Other plugins improve your search rankings. What’s great about Open Source software is that new, free plugins appear almost daily on the internet.

It’s important to make sure you only use plugins from reputable sources. Some plugins are written by amateur programmers and can crash your blog. Other plugins can have malicious code that can download spyware onto your computer. I always read the reviews of each plugin to make sure it’s reliable before I install it. One of my favorite plugin creators is Joost de Valk at www.yoast.com

Yoost recently released his top 11 Wordpress plugins on his blog at http://yoast.com/top-wordpress-plugins/ This is a great list of “must have” Wordpress Plugins.

What are your favorite Wordpress plugins? Please add your favorites as a Comment to this post and I’ll compile a list for everyone.

I’ve put together a list of my favorite Wordpress Plugins that will optimize your [tag-tec]Wordpress[/tag-tec] blog for the search engines. [tag-ice]Wordpress[/tag-ice] is already SEO friendly but these plugins will supercharge your blog.

You can download the list of my favorite Wordpress plugins  on my NetBizExpert website