WordPress isn't a bad CMS and I'm not attempting to claim that it is. What I am saying is that, like all CMS out there, it has its faults and specific use cases when it's best recommended.
The fact of the matter is, there are many other CMS that could do a better job in situations where WordPress ends up getting recommended and these system simply don't have the same word of mouth or marketing prowess that WordPress does, therefore they never get explored.
The problem with plugins is that they cause bloat and bloat means your website slows down. Sure, you can use a caching plugin but that in itself is also a plugin developed by a third party and if you want support, you have to purchase that separately. Why caching is not built into WordPress as of yet still eludes me.
Can WordPress be a good option for a realty website, a law firm or something similar? Absolutely but rather than making a recommendation based on no information adds no value to a conversation. It's important to ask qualifying questions and find out what the individual needs and wants from a project, how it will be used, who will be using it and so on before attempting to help trim down the list of content management systems.
Joomla is NOT the Best CMS
There are lots of people that love Joomla and that's great. The Joomla community has really helped shine the light on open source products on the market. It is, however, simply not the best CMS out there.
The Plugin Game
Joomla suffers from the exact same issue that WordPress suffers from when it comes to plugins. Plugins are not tested against the system by Joomla core developers before being added to the repository (this same issue is persistent across a ton of CMS and isn't Joomla specific)and there are also a significant number of outdated plugins from 2010 - 2012 throughout the Joomla extensions directory.
I haven't had an opportunity to test out if Joomla will let you install an outdated plugin or not as their Joomla demo was not functioning correctly for me in order to test this so I cannot speak to that capability on the latest version. Hopefully, it blocks outdated ones or at least gives a warning.
Hacked?
Joomla websites, for some reason, also seem to have a high rate of hacking attempts against them. I don't blame this on Joomla specifically but I think it's more due to the fact that Joomla is popular and therefore, hackers focus on it and target websites using it specifically. This happens just as often with WordPress to be sure but I tend to hear more often from people who have attempted to use Joomla, been hacked and are looking for new solutions.
No, I am not making this up. It's the #1 thing I am contacted about. To those Joomla fans out there that are ready to freak out that I mentioned this, I am not saying Joomla is the most hacked CMS by any stretch. I am simply pointing out that in my case, I am contacted about it more often than any others.
In Joomla's defense, I personally think this is largely due to the core issue in this post.. Joomla being recommended for projects it isn't best suited for. What I mean by this is the more people that attempt to set up Joomla with no knowledge of the CMS and that are using it for a purpose that differs from it's core strengths, the more likely they are to make mistakes and end up with a hacked site.
