What Joomla People Need to Know About Wordpress 3.0

I had the chance to attend Wordcamp Atlanta on Saturday. It was a well-run event in a great location: the Savannah College of Art and Design.

The best presentation was the keynote delivered by Jane Wells who is the User Experience lead from Automattic.

Here's her rundown of where Wordpress is going in 2010, head-lined by the release of Wordpress 3.0. A lot of Wordpress' successes and problems have lessons for us in the Joomla world.

Wordpress and Wordpress M.U. Will Merge

Multisite capability will be native in Wordpress 3.0. Running two separate versions of Wordpress was meaning too much duplicated work by core and 3rd party developers. This has long been part of Drupal but is still lacking in Joomla, even with 3rd party addons.

Custom Post Types

C.C.K. is coming to Wordpress. Its been long-established as a part of Drupal and has recently arrived en-masse in the Joomla world. Wordpress is catching up and 3.0 will allow you to create custom fields and define multiple post types.

Canonical Core Plugins Will Get Official Support

Yes, "canonical" is a stupid word ... does it refer to pirate ships? "Canonical plugins" were originally meant to be officially-support plugins that will be more-or-less integrated into the Wordpress core, including the core development tracks. So it made sense to change the name to the much more logical "core plugins". Efforts will be made to combine development efforts so that instead of 50 broken Twitter widgets that will be one officially-supported Twitter widget that works. Emulating the Drupal model anyone?

Daily Dev Updates Via Blog

The WP devs aim to provide daily updates at http://wpdevel.wordpress.com. Different groups are scheduled to report on a different day of the week. The first few posts? Some very useful, some not so much.

Core Themes for Specific Purposes

Kubrick, the current default theme, will be scrapped - that's for sure. There's also talk of providing more core themes for different audience. Rather than just including random themes, there would be a default theme for magazines, another for blogs etc.

Code of Conduct

Wordpress badly needs a Code of Conduct for its community. As a result, whereas 25% of U.S. computer programmers are female, less than 1% of Wordpress devs are. There are behavior problems in the community (in fact, they were on display at this Wordcamp) and a Code of Conduct for community members is coming.

Usability is Being Taken Seriously and Internationally

Usability testing is either not done or its done on a small subset of users ... people walking past a San Francisco coffee shop on a weekday afternoon, for example. WP aims to run usability tests in over 30 countries and languages.

Overhaul for Wordpress.org and Its Themes / Plugins Directory

There was an admission that Wordpress.org was not doing a great job and that the themes and plugins directories were hard to navigate. The sites will be overhauled with an emphasis on community, including the ability to more easily see each users contributions to the community.

GPL Debates Rage On

The GPL discussions are alive and kicking in Wordpress. The next goal for the WP team is to convince more theme developers to go GPL.

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Your Comments (12)

John Garrett

January 11, 2010

Now this is interesting. I've been developing sites in Joomla for a few years now, but my latest I decided to do in Wordpress to see what all the fuss was about.

I noticed a few of the things you mentioned, especially about the themes/plugins areas.

Although, "Canonical" is a perfectly logical word for "core" plugins. I can see that many people might not be aware of what official "canon" is. Probably best to "keep it simple, stupid" and not confuse people.

steve

January 11, 2010

I'd agree John .... Wordpress seems to be doing a good job of KISS. It will be interesting to see how they handle more complexity in the core.

joomlapraise

January 11, 2010

It's so interesting to see where the top 3 CMS's are going. I think we're just at the beginning of this whole CMS ride.

I love the idea of core themes for specific purposes. I think Joomla and Drupal could benefit from this as well.

heather buckley

January 11, 2010

Interesting, we published a post comparing wordpress and joomla not long ago and the comments still keep rolling in. Seems like a hot topic.
http://www.siliconbeachtrainin...comparison

WP

January 11, 2010

People continue to use Wordpress for what reason, I ask ?? WP is inferior, and without warrant. In addition, it's so easily hacked through plugins and such, why would anyone want this.

I think WP is used by individuals too lazy to take some time to learn Joomla, or even Drupal.

AmyStephen

January 14, 2010

Excellent piece, Steve. I think WordPress is going to continue to surprise people.

Many times, I find sometimes thinking about the OS/2 vs Windows "battle" from long ago. There was simply no comparison between the two as to which was technically superior. But, Windows was so easy to use that having half the functionality and power ended up winning in the end.

WordPress has dominated the market by huge numbers. As of this moment, WP 2.9 has been downloaded 2.25 million times. (WP 2.9 was released December 18, 2009.)

WP 3.0 is expected in March 2010 - and - they *will* hit their date, like they always do. Look what they plan to pull into it. WP is the only one who has already released their framework separately - even though it's not the "technical" solution.

In part, I think we are seeing Automattic employees becoming more front and center with WP coding. It will be interesting to see how that community evolves. Very interesting comments, Steve, on the gender issues.

Good piece.

Mark.Simpson

January 14, 2010

Great to see Wordpress follow Drupals footsteps with regard to Usability.

It's extremely frustrating to me that Joomla has only ever taken baby steps in this direction.

steve

January 14, 2010

Thanks Amy

I wonder how Joomla can compete in the long-run with a company as professional and well-backed as Automattic supporting Wordpress. They have no problem dropping 6 or 7 figures to purchase companies that can make them better.

Joomla's reaction? They only one I can see is to empower the core and 3rd party developern ... a strong core team creating the framework on which a vibrant marketplace can build.

AmyStephen

January 14, 2010

If we can pull together as a community and quit stubbing our toes on the stupid stuff, then, with the talent we have, there would be no stopping Joomla!.

salyris

January 23, 2010

I second Amy above, Joomla!'s community just needs to step it up and make revisions where necessary. Make Joomla!'s core based on whatever we all have been begging for and just be the one to beat...enough already!

damo

January 26, 2010

@steve
when you say 'what joomla people need to know' are you referring to any particular group of joomla people or just anyone that uses joomla?

steve

January 28, 2010

Hi Damo

No, no-one in particularly. Beyond being a snappy headline, I think its important to keep tabs on Wordpress, Drupal and others as both rivals and colleagues.

They have similar problems to us ... GPL debates, bad community behavior, lack of female coders, unreliable 3rd party extensions, less than optimal main sites etc etc.

They've also got some good ideas on how to solve them.