Reply by energetica on Friday, 2 March, 2012 - 15:21

Hi Zoya, the decision on whether or not to change technology platforms is always a tricky one. Joomla is a very flexible CMS, and it is worth taking an internal assessment on what you are unhappy with or what you feel needs changing or improving. It not only helps you to develop a strong set of site requirements going forward, but it will also help in choosing a CMS platform. One option rather than leaving the Joomla platform is to consider upgrading to Joomla 2.5, redesigning the site, and looking to see if there are better Joomla tools that you could be using to suit your organisation. You can also easily give your site a make over by putting on a new template. As a disclaimer, my organisation builds Joomla websites (and Drupal). We have had organisations come to us with their Joomla website unsatisfied, and we have been able to turn it around, make changes to better suit needs and organisational online aims. The benefit is you get a site working in a way that supports you, you reduce the amount of internal resources involved in moving content, and you reduce staff training requirements as you can build on experience you already have. Other than Joomla a great option is Drupal, it is another extremely flexible, open source CMS. It is really nice to use and can create great sites, it can be a bit of a change to get your head around if you are used to Joomla, but that will be the case in any CMS change. The great thing about open source is that you are less likely to need to compromise on functionality, especially as your online needs change. For a great membership management system we recommend considering CiviCRM, it is an open source membership management system that has been developed for non profit sector. It can handle membership, contacts, conference, grant auspicing, and fundraising. It is integrated into Joomla or Drupal sites, although you can set it up as a stand alone installation if your site uses an alternate platform. Good luck and I hope this has been of help. Ask lots of questions! Lyndsey Energetica www.energetica.com.au

Reply by Colin Thompson from TechBrain on Friday, 9 March, 2012 - 14:15

Hi Zoya, I would agree with Lyndsey that you might want to sort through the reason's for the change in platform first as there will be a bit of work in a migration. Our Web guys use Wordpress and it provides a fantastic back-end that is really quite flexible. It allows you to change the entire style of the web site really simply too. There is a basic migration process but it is not complete so will involve a little bit of work. You can see details at http://codex.wordpress.org/Importing_Content There is also a CiviCRM plug-in for Wordpress (http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC41/WordPress+Installation+Guide+for+CiviCRM+4.1) Good luck. Colin Blue Networks & Technology www.bluenetworks.com.au

Reply by cobawchc on Wednesday, 30 July, 2014 - 15:41

My organisation changed from Joomla to Wordpress at the end of last year - best thing we have ever done! We tied it in with a change in design and support company. Joomla is great for those who are very IT savvy however for a less IT minded person Wordpress is very user friendly - so easy to keep updated and manageable.

Reply by cobawchc on Wednesday, 30 July, 2014 - 15:41

My organisation changed from Joomla to Wordpress at the end of last year - best thing we have ever done! We tied it in with a change in design and support company. Joomla is great for those who are very IT savvy however for a less IT minded person Wordpress is very user friendly - so easy to keep updated and manageable.

Reply by cobawchc on Wednesday, 30 July, 2014 - 15:42

My organisation changed from Joomla to Wordpress at the end of last year - best thing we have ever done! We tied it in with a change in design and support company. Joomla is great for those who are very IT savvy however for a less IT minded person Wordpress is very user friendly - so easy to keep updated and manageable.