Joomla is an open-source CMS forked from Mambo in 2005. Today over 1.5 million sites run on Joomla. Historically in the 2010s it held a "middle ground" position between WordPress and Drupal โ more feature-rich than WordPress, simpler to learn than Drupal. Market share is declining today, but a stable user base remains, especially in CIS and Southeast Europe.
Joomla's advantages
First, multilingual is built into the core โ WordPress needs a plugin (WPML, $99), Joomla has it by default. Good for corporate sites in Uzbek, Russian, English. Second, the role and permission system is more complex and flexible โ unlike WordPress's 5 standard roles, Joomla supports unlimited custom roles. Useful for moderation and workflow.
Third, the approach to menus and content is more advanced than WordPress. In Joomla menus are separate modules with their own layouts and blocks. In WordPress this is done via plugins or page builders. Fourth, security is slightly higher than WordPress (but below Drupal) โ ACL is standard, the culture uses fewer plugins.
Joomla's drawbacks
The main downside is a small and shrinking ecosystem. WordPress has 60,000+ plugins and 12,000+ themes; Joomla has about 8,000 extensions and 1,500 templates. Many premium extensions haven't been updated in 1-2 years as developers move to other platforms. For long-term projects this is a risk โ if your extension stops updating, you may have to patch manually.
Second drawback โ the admin interface is dated. WordPress's Gutenberg is modern; Joomla's editor remains stuck in the 2010s. A beginner learns WordPress in 1-2 days, Joomla in 1-2 weeks.
Installation and localization
Joomla 4.x requires: PHP 8.0+, MySQL 5.7+ or MariaDB 10.4+, 1GB RAM. Sayt.uz has no dedicated Joomla plan, but "Universal Hosting" works. Install: download the latest version from joomla.org, upload via FTP, run install.php โ the site is live in 10-15 minutes. An official Uzbek language pack is available at joomla.org/extensions.
When Joomla is the right choice
Joomla makes sense: (1) for multilingual sites โ uz/ru/en corporate site with built-in multilang; (2) for medium-complexity content โ richer than WordPress, simpler than Drupal; (3) when user roles matter โ multi-author blog, journalism, education platform.
Sayt.uz practice
Joomla is rare among Sayt.uz clients โ 31 active Joomla sites as of January 2026, mostly built in 2015-2018. New projects choose WordPress or custom solutions. Average Joomla site price: 3-8M sum one-time, 600-1500K sum/mo maintenance. Advice: for new sites pick WordPress or Drupal; keep Joomla only if you already have it and migration would be hard.