This article includes the main Characteristics of WordPress, but are more. WordPress is the most popular CMS. WP is easy to learn to use and to maintain, with a lot of FREE plugins, Themes, and very big Community support.
The Most Important Characteristics of WordPress are :
It is FREE
Joomla & Drupal are also FREE.
WP is Popular
-- more than 43% of Web
It is very easy to learn
--- Easy to learn
It is very easy to use
--- Easy to use
It is Secure
--- Secure (third party plugins have bugs)
It needs Cache Plugins
--- Needs Cache plugins
Joomla & Drupal includes Cache functionality
Written in PHP
--- written in PHP, HTML, CSS, JS
Joomla & Drupal are also written in PHP
it uses its own Framework
--- has its own framework
Templates are using mainly Bootstrap
--- templates using Bootstrap or other Frameworks of CSS
New editor Gutenberg
-- new editor + Use React JS
Blocks the Javascript Library React JS
-- Pages and Articles are using Blocks written in ReactJS
It has a lot of plugins & Themes free and paid
--- it has a lot of free Plugins & Templates
Joomla has less and Drupal has also more than Joomla
It uses Child Themes
--- it uses Child Themes for local template customization (so that to not overwrite the local modifications from the Theme update)
It uses an SEO customizer
-- it uses permalinks for SEO optimization + plugins
It is light
– --it is light (fast)
We can optimize and secure by .htaccess and plugins
--- it is needed for SEO, Optimization & Security to edit .htaccess
some more Characteristics are:
A lot of sites have a Security problem
---because of not updating or bad plugins are not secure
--- It has more than 80% of sites hacked every year (not updated sites and bad plugins)
big Community support
--- big community support
--- it has many articles, forums, online free and paid tutorials
It is mobile-friendly
--- mobile-friendly
It has a very popular e-commerce solution
WooCommerce
(WooCommerce is an open-source e-commerce plugin for WordPress. It is designed for small to large-sized online merchants using WordPress. Launched on September 27, 2011, the plugin quickly became popular for its simplicity to install and customize and for the market position of the base product as freeware. Wikipedia)
Using WordPress you can create
any app developing your own plugins
Blogs were the 1st use of WordPress, before to became a CMS
Magazines / News sites
e-shops with the FREE WooCommerce plugin or other Paid
social communities, by using the Free BuddyPress plugin (or another Paid) and a Pro Theme
Learning Management Systems (LMS or Online Schools)
apps that are needed booking (like Dentist Office)
Bridge with WordPress at the front and Moodle LMS at back
Sites for Marketing promotions
Authors and Writers Sites
Real Estate Sites
Doctors, Lawyers, and more sites
Sites like Amazon, Quora, e.t.c.
Job sites
and many more
WordPress is the best FREE blog platform. If you know how to code you can use it to write many apps. It is relatively easy and many NOT Web / IT educated people use WP to create sites.
Joomla is less popular compared with WordPress, and a little difficult. In this article are the main Characteristics of Joomla, maybe to be more. This is a fast picture of this CMS. It has less support but you can find whatever you need. On the other hand, Drupal is still more difficult from the three. Joomla has its characteristics as every CMS. It is a matter of choice, every CMS has friends, and at the end of the day, the important is to have done your work with love, because love gives quality. I am using Joomla for this site. So follow the Characteristics of Joomla in a list format.
Joomla is less easy comparing with WordPress
-- less easy
some other characteristics of Joomla are:
It has a smaller portion on the market than WordPress
--- popular (2.1% CMS market)
It is free
--- Free
It is secure
--- Secure
It includes Cache Functionality
--- Includes Cache functionality
It is proper for communities
--- proper for communities
some other characteristics of Joomla are:
It is written in PHP
--- written in PHP, HTML, CSS, JS (it uses MVC model)
Joomla has templates written in Bootstrap
--- templates using Bootstrap or other Frameworks of CSS
Comparing with WordPress, Joomla has fewer Plugins & Themes
--- it has less of free Plugins & Templates
Joomla does not use Child Themes, it uses Overwrites
--- it uses Overwrites for local template customization (so that to not overwritten from update)
It contains SEO technology
–- it uses URL configuration to create SEO URLs
some other characteristics of Joomla are:
Via .htaccess we can optimize, secure and add SEO functionality
-– it includes SEO functionality , Optimization & Security to edit .htaccess
Joomla has few sites hacked
–- Only 3% of sites hacked (2018)
Joomla, comparing with WordPress, has smaller Community Support
This is the last article on Online Education. I will underline some important areas that you must investigate if you want to run an Online School. The best Tip on building an LMS is to be always a student of your area of expertise, you must work hard and you have to know it.
The most popular free LMS is MOODLE. It can be integrated with WordPress via Bridge software. Here are the links:
General Tips on building an Online Education Site (LMS)
You must study what competitors do.
You need to speak with an Accountant for taxation
You need to speak with a lawyer for "Terms" and "Privacy" pages and other topics that a site is needed according to low
And of course, you can have parallel courses on many educational sites.
You must use many other sites, communities in order to promote your course (Facebook, YouTube, e.t.c).
You must optimize your site, and build an SEO friendly site.
you must be patient
see what others do
in your area of interest, you must study and know the majority of info
to offer what the people need (solve problems in areas of big interest)
validate the content, what is asking the market?
do not forget the family
do a little gymnastic
have main targets and minor (keep a diary)
if a task is difficult then break it in smaller tasks
to take feedback (how many see your article/course, with Google Analytics is away)
how may stars give to your course?
communicate with students to learn what is not good for them
all we do mistakes and we have failures, but we learn and we have progressed at the end. Since a lot of people create LMS sites then everyone can create, the quality is coming with experience, clear thinking, few lessons, and the help of God.
work with love
others tips on building an LMS are:
You are going to build the site or you are going to hire an engineer?
Can you build the site, if you have the knowledge do it and refactor it until you make it as good as you can?
There are many sites with prebuild option, just click and the site is ready, then update, delete, add info.
Or find a web engineer, to make the site.
What is your budget -Tips on building an Online Education Site (LMS)?
You need to pay for the LMS software, the domain name, the hosting company, the hosting company of videos, the PayPal or other payment gateway (per sales amount of money), and programs like Video editing and capture for your lessons.
Some programs we pay one's a year or more years depending on what we want.
There are also expenses of the Template, plugins/extensions, the payment of web developers, and possible support contracts.
What is your site content -Tips on building an Online Education Site (LMS)?
You want to produce or/and offer pdf books?
Do you want to have a blog? (can you write articles or you will have to pay?)
What form of lessons are you going to have? (video, text, PowerPoint, photos with text, slides e.t.c)
Do you want to have an Online Community?
Do you want to offer support or making projects or writing plugins/themes?
So I wish all the future owners of Online Schools all the best in their efforts to create great sites.
How to offer? It depends on the type of Education. If it is about Programming, it is a practical material you must preset practical info. If it is about another topic you may use PowePoint and speak as you speak to one of your friends. You may have music or not, you may have short or big paragraphs or videos or audio. After the article about some budget LMS's, I'd like, in this article, to give some info on how we must deliver Online Education.
There are some basic principles, on how to offer Online Education:
Do what others do, what is popular, for example, WordPress is very popular
Validate that the content is popular, now in April 2020 everyone wants an Online School
Do it with love, start from this that you love
keep mental space
cooperate with one or more person to obtain expertise and gain the needed time to learn
if you can not do a task outsourced it
have time for your family
What is popular in order to know how to offer online education
You can validate the demand of the content by Google (keyword search), or on how many students are following the course in Udemy, e. t.c. There are a lot of services performing SEO research, and you can learn what people want and where. In general, you must solve problems with online education and you must help the people.
Online lessons on how to offer education
First I 'm going to give info about a school (between others) that gives lessons on how to deliver:
ACS Online School on how to offer Online Education
ACS Online School follows the link. In principle is a good school to learn how to teach, if you are not a tutor.
For multisite solutions with site generators are not bad, but you must have backup of your data. These solutions are easier because you pay and other work for you, you earn time but you pay, you do not need to learn a lot, others work for you..
If the central serves stops to work and no backup or even with backup, how you are going to work, are you going to be able to migrate your data to another platform ?
For me the best use WP, Joomla, Drupal, or even Typo and more, where the data is yours AND the platform is open source, In This case you are the BOSS of data and you ARE using a FREE platform.
At the beginning of Web Programming, programmers were using HTML, CSS, and JS for static sites (this is and now true), and with PHP and MySQL for dynamic content. It was a time consuming procedure and difficult to create APPs, Menus and specific apps. So this lead to the creation of frameworks.
Frameworks
Then we have the creation of Frameworks
CSS Frameworks like Bootstrap and more
PHP Frameworks like Laravel, CodeIgniter, Sympony. CakePHP, WordPress and more
JS Frameworks like Vue JS, React JS, Angular JS and more
A PHP Framework has summary commands and extra functionalities, and is faster to develop PHP Apps using a PHP framework that to write in vanilla PHP ( But in the last case you can create your own framework libraries.
WordPress is . also. a CMS and a PHP Framework to develop applications.
What is a CMS ?
In contrast, a CMS or Content Management System, is a piece of software that allows you to store, manage and publish said web pages. Most websites use a content management system, but you could make one without a CMS, writing directly in a programming language like HTML and CSS. (Google)
A CMS may be have plugins that add extra functionality and Themes that give the external appearance.
There are plugins that offer
e-Shops
Social Networks
Blogs
Forums
Learning Systems
Security
SEO
Marketplace
and more
Kind of CMS'
It is fast to build an Application in CMS
It is secure
There are CMS, with Database or Not.
There are CMS written in PHP, Java, Javascript Frames (Vue Js,React Js , Angular Js), PHP Frames (CodeIgniter, Laravel e.t.c.) and many more.
At this site, we speak about WordPress, Joomla and Drupal.
Monolithic with PHP template
Headless or/and decoupled with front app in JS Frameworks
So for a site builder it is easy and fast to create a site.