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While TYPO3 and WordPress stand out as two of the most popular website builders globally, this article aims to provide a comprehensive comparison between these two great top open-source CMS platforms. By the end of the blog, you will be ready to make a decision on which CMS best suits your needs as a content editor.
TYPO3 Vs WordPress as Content Manager
Are you confused about deciding between TYPO3 and WordPress to build your website? Being a nontechnical person always puts you in a situation where you get confused about what to choose and what is suitable for the content manager.
So, without waiting any further, let's grab a large cup of coffee and get started with the article!
TYPO3 and Word press - Basics comparison and key features
We are talking about two giant CMSs, which both have different functionalities, features, and benefits. Let's get started with TYPO3 vs WordPress:
TYPO3 CMS
TYPO3 is an Open Source CMS Known for its Security, flexibility, and scalability. It is often chosen for complex websites and enterprise-level applications. but TYPO3 is all in one!
Key Features of TYPO3
Scalability:
TYPO3 is designed to handle large and complex websites. It is suitable for enterprises and organizations that require extensive customization and robust functionality. So, if you have a large enterprise or are starting small and later on looking to scale. looking perfect!
Flexibility:
In terms of flexibility, TYPO3 provides a high degree of flexibility, making it suitable for websites with diverse content types and complex data structures.
Multi-Language Support:
TYPO3 enables support for Multilanguage functionality. Through this feature, you can create TYPO3 websites in multiple languages, making it an ideal choice for international businesses and organizations with a global presence.
Extensibility:
TYPO3 Offers a wide range of extensions and plugins, allowing users to add custom features and functionalities to their websites easily.
TYPO3 Backend Customization :
TYPO3 offers flexibility for backend customization. This feature includes the ability to create specialized page types, such as those designed for specific purposes like blog posts or team members on dedicated team pages, enhancing the overall user experience and design.
TYPO3 Content Elements :
In TYPO3, a page is intricately composed of content elements, including various components like headings, paragraphs, and images. This modular approach simplifies editors' tasks by minimizing the need for direct HTML manipulation.
TYPO3 LTS Support :
TYPO3 always emphasizes Extended LTS support for its premium services. TYPO3 offers an extended lifecycle for installations, which is crucial to know, considering that new TYPO3 versions are released approximately every 18 months with TYPO3 community support for 3 years. ELTS provides an additional 3 years of security coverage. This allows installations to remain secure and functional for a total of 6 years without requiring a complete relaunch, offering a robust and cost-effective solution for long-term sustainability.
WordPress
WordPress is a free, open-source content management system(CMS) that allows users to create and host websites. It is a popular CMS for people who want to build websites and blogs without any coding experience.
Easily Manage Website Content:
The features provided enable you the freedom to manage website content. With the intuitive WordPress CMS, the task becomes easy, allowing you to handle your website content seamlessly from any browser.
Plugin Ecosystem
The vast libraries of plugins extend WordPress's functionality, enabling users to add features and enhancements effortlessly.
Easy to Use
The WordPress dashboard provides a user-friendly interface, making website management a straightforward task. You don't need to hire an expert to learn or manage your website.
Community support:
With a massive and active user community, WordPress users benefit from a wealth of online resources, forums, and tutorials.
Media Management :
WordPress includes a media library for easy management and organization of images, audio and video files. Users can upload and insert media into their content effortlessly.
Impactful Differences: TYPO3 vs. WordPress
Before exploring the technical and content management aspects of TYPO3 and WordPress, it's essential to consider several fundamental factors that play a pivotal role in choosing the proper CMS for your needs. Let's explore these key considerations:
When evaluating TYPO3 CMS and WordPress CMS, it is important to understand their user-friendliness, flexibility, security, SEO features, community support, costs, and scalability. TYPO3 is known for its complex but powerful backend and may require a TYPO3 developer for effective use. It offers extensive customization options, scalability, and robust security, making it ideal for large enterprise projects. Additionally, TYPO3 provides advanced options for TYPO3 developers with its TYPO3 Headless features.
#1 Price
- TYPO3 - Typically, TYPO3 is associated with higher implementation and maintenance costs. Its enterprise-level features and robust capabilities may require more investment, making it well-suited for larger organizations with significant budgets.
- WordPress - WordPress, being open-source, is known for its cost-effectiveness. While the core software is free, additional expenses may arise from premium themes, plugins, and hosting. Overall, WordPress is often more budget-friendly, especially for smaller businesses and individuals.
#2 Best Suitable for
- TYPO3 - TYPO3 is best Suited for mid-sized to large enterprises, Government institutions and organizations with complex content management and scalability requirements. Its strength lies in handling extensive and multilingual websites with diverse content structures.
- WordPress - It is an excellent choice for individuals, bloggers, small businesses and even larger enterprises seeking a platform with widespread adoption.
#3 Requirement of technical knowledge
- TYPO3- TYPO3's interface is feature-rich but may be considered more complex for beginners. Users with technical proficiency will appreciate the depth of customization and control available within TYPO3. But TYPO3 is easy to understand in terms of UI/UX, Design, and functionality.
- WordPress - WordPress is renowned for its user-friendly interface, making it accessible to users with varying technical skill levels. The platform's intuitive design and extensive community support contribute to its popularity among beginners. WordPress is Easy to use compared to TYPO3.
#4 User Interface Experience
- TYPO3 - TYPO3 offers extensive customization options, allowing developers to create tailored solutions. This is an advantage for organizations with specific design and functionality requirements.
- WordPress - WordPress also gives customization options due to its vast library of themes and plugins. It enables users to seek both simplicity and the ability to customize their website.
Note: For the brief about TYPO3 Vs WordPress please take a look at our Blog - https://nitsantech.de/en/blog/migrating-from-wordpress-to-typo3-cms
Content Editing Experience - TYPO3 and WordPress
While discussing two major open-source CMS platforms, it is worth talking about the content editing experience offered by both TYPO3 and WordPress.
CMS Backend Screens
#1 Dashboard
TYPO3: A Robust Backstage Experience
TYPO3 boasts a robust backend experience with a structured and customizable interface, offering content editors full control and extensive customization options. Its modular dashboard enhances efficiency, making it ideal for organizations with complex content needs.
WordPress: Simplicity in the Backend
WordPress, known for its simplicity, presents an intuitive and user-friendly backend. The WYSIWYG editor amplifies content creation, and efficient content management makes it popular among bloggers and small businesses.
#2 Manage Pages & Content
TYPO3 enables precise and structured content control, offering a hierarchically organized page tree and modular content elements. Its Workspaces feature facilitates collaborative content editing.
WordPress, known for user-friendliness, features a straightforward page and post management system with the Block Editor for a more visual approach. Categories and tags enhance content organization.
For TYPO3, all configurations are mostly self explanatory and can be found at one place.
TYPO3 Themes and WordPress Theme
#1 Theme Concept
TYPO3: In TYPO3, themes are commonly referred to as "templates" or "TYPO3 templates" The theme concept involves the visual and structural design of a website. TYPO3 templates encompass a combination of HTML, CSS, and Fluid, TYPO3's templating language.
WordPress: WordPress themes play a central role in determining the appearance and functionality of a website. A theme in WordPress encompasses the overall design, layout, and style, affecting the presentation of content.
#2 Child Themes concept
This feature is almost the same in both the CMSs. You can have one base theme and structure and can have a child theme that uses the basic configurations of the Parent-Theme and have a new layout in the child theme.
#3 Edit Themes
To edit the template, one would need basic programming knowledge as an editor in both WordPress and TYPO3.
Page Structure
#1 Page Templates
#2 Backend Preview
#3 Grid Structure
Both WordPress and TYPO3 don’t provide the Grid structure by default. So you have to depend on external plugins/extensions to make the CMS more flexible and structured in all kinds of layouts.
#4 Save as Draft
In this segment, both WordPress and TYPO3 are mostly similar.
TYP3O Editor Experience vs WordPress Editor Experience
TYPO3 Content Elements Vs Gutenberg
There are a lot of things to find the difference between the TYPO3 content Elements and Gutenberg. But here we can explain the major graphical and working experience between both of them.
2. Text Editor
TYPO3 CMS features a sophisticated Rich Text Editor (RTE) that supports various formatting options and allows direct HTML input, catering to users with diverse technical skills. WordPress, on the other hand, is known for its user-friendly Block Editor (Gutenberg), offering a visual and intuitive content creation experience through distinct content blocks. TYPO3 provides flexibility for users comfortable with HTML, while WordPress prioritizes simplicity and accessibility. Both text editors aim to streamline content creation in their respective CMS platforms.
#3 Full Page Editing experience
If you compare the full page editing experience of WordPress with TYPO3 then the editor may feel that editors are not able to edit the whole page at once, but only single content elements.
Hence the editors have to switch the elements in order to edit them. However this problem can be solved using the frontend editing extensions.
Multi Language Capability
This is the most important part for any content management system and WordPress has backstep.
Media/File Management Module
User Access & Permissions
If you are just a blogger and handle the content individually you don’t require a user access permissions module that much. But if you want to have a proper CMS and have multiple users to the site to manage the content you will require a good user permissions module.
Just checkout the following images which gives you an idea how in depth you can give access permissions to particular users or any group.
Extending Default Features in TYPO3 CMS and WordPress
1. Plugins/Extensions
Both CMS platforms, TYPO3 and WordPress, offer a wealth of add-ons in the form of plugins and extensions. These ready-made solutions enhance functionality, providing users with the ability to easily integrate features, themes, and additional capabilities. The extensive libraries of free and premium TYPO3 plugins contribute to the versatility of both TYPO3 and WordPress.
2. Custom Elements/Components
Extending fields, elements, or components in your CMS is achievable through the utilization of free plugins or custom development. TYPO3 and WordPress provide flexibility for users to tailor their websites by incorporating custom elements or components, ensuring that the CMS can be adapted to meet specific needs.
#3 FrontEnd Editing
While neither TYPO3 nor WordPress includes a default feature for frontend editing, both communities have responded to the demand for this functionality. Active members of both CMSs have developed plugins that allow users to edit content directly on the frontend, providing an improved and more intuitive user experience.
4. SEO
High SEO scores are crucial for optimal website performance. Both TYPO3 and WordPress recognize the importance of SEO, and users can enhance their sites' search engine visibility through various plugins and extensions.
Both CMSs give you some intermediate level functions to improve your SEO. However, there are also free and paid extensions such as Yoast SEO available to improve SEO score.
From Developer perspective
If you have already selected any CMS then you also have to consider that if you need any developer’s help then how much a CMS can offer to customize anything based on your need. So I have listed a few points for that.
1.Templating
- TYPO3: Utilizes TYPO3 Fluid, a powerful templating engine, emphasizing separation of content and presentation.
- WordPress: Relies on PHP-based templates, known for simplicity and ease of use.
2. Extendable
- TYPO3: Strong extensibility through well-defined extensions, accessible via the TYPO3 extension repository.
- WordPress: Relies on plugins for extendability, with a centralized directory showcasing a diverse array of options.
3. Rich Install Tool
- TYPO3: Features a comprehensive install tool with diagnostics, database handling, and extension management.
- WordPress: Boasts a straightforward installer, prioritizing simplicity and accessibility.
TYPO3
TYPO3 provides a rich level of configurations and settings. You can manage the different kinds of configurations like Cache, Language packs, extension configurations, installation configurations etc...You can realize there are a lot of settings and configurations to manage & customize the site in whatever way you want to have it.
WordPress
The WordPress by default doesn’t provide advanced configurations. It has basic configurations like date and time, country selections etc…
#4 Security Audit Trail
Administrators have access to one log in the backend or individual logs on each page where they can view changes that have been made to the database for both CMS. Those can be rolled back to previous changes by clicking the history brush.
#5 Robust Extensions
TYPO3 is extendable in a true manner. Even extensions can be extended. From any of the small corners from the TYPO3 you can extend any method from a class due to it’s great structure. TYPO3 has a great, very modern Extbase framework to develop any extension. One can find the list of extensions directly from the community, See here.
Features that aren't provided by WordPress but TYPO3 does
Here, I would like to mention those features that WordPress doesn’t provide but TYPO3 provides by default. As TYPO3 is a proper CMS tool
#1 Workspace
If your site has a wide range of pages and a lot of content and to manage them you have a huge team then you can set up this great feature of the TYPO3 WorkSpace. This is a Simple workflow or a lifecycle that you can set up and make sure every change done by an editor must be approved by a reviewer.
With the custom workspace you have a lot of benefits like Safety, Transparent versioning, Previewing, Overview of changes, Flexibility etc...
#2 History / Undo
One can undo their changes back to its original states. To be able to undo the deletion of an element, you will need to use the History/Undo for the entire page. This option will open up the Rollback function, listing all changes made to the page.
#3 Logs
There is an area in the TYPO3 backend which shows the list of actions, errors as Log, changes etc... This can help the administrator to review the changes in any content/element. Admin can determine who did the changes. It also logs the Login & Logout details of the users. So from this the Admin can review who logged in, at what time and what changes he had done.
#4 Copy/Paste (Content elements, records etc)
May be the WordPress has introduced the Copy/Paste elements recently but TYPO3 provides this feature since years. You can copy and paste or add reference to any of the elements from one page to another page to reuse any of the elements. Also TYPO3 provides Copy/Paste the element as reference. This way you just have to change the content at one place and the changes can be applied to all the affected elements/content. This can save a lot of time.
#5 Forms
For any of the CMS creating different kinds of forms is a necessity. You should not depend on any 3rd party or external plugin. By default Wordpress doesn’t provide this basic form feature.
Whereas TYPO3 provides Form management by default. So one can create an unlimited number of forms and can use them.
#6 Clipboard
Every time a record is copied in the TYPO3 CMS backend. TYPO3 provides access to its internal clipboard too. So you can put anything to the clipboard and at the same time you can also retrieve the information from it. It’s the core API so you can use and extend it to your custom extensions.
#7 Internal Search Engine
TYPO3 provides the search engine by default. It’s called Indexed Search. Indexing helps for HTML data priority, Word counting and frequency used to rate results, Exact, partially or metaphone search etc…And the search plugin helps Searching whole word, part of word, sounds like, sentence, language-sensitive based search and many more.
#8 LDAP/SSO Authentication (Backend and Frontend user authentication)
TYPO3 supports the LDAP authentication making TYPO3 a more secure CMS. TYPO3 LDAP/SSO Authentication enables import/update/deletion of users and groups (frontend, backend or both) from a LDAP-directory and provides Single Sign-On (SSO) for frontend users. These features make it the perfect choice when deploying TYPO3 as an intranet CMS
#9 User Management, Frontend Users & Login
As mentioned before in the WordPress it doesn’t provide that much when it comes to User management and role management. TYPO3 comes with a bunch of configurations, settings and features for the Roles, Users management, access permissions, Frontend users and default login module. So, for the very basic things you don’t have to be dependent on any 3rd party tool.
#10 Powerful Built-in Cache
Since TYPO3 CMS 4.3, one of the important parts of the TYPO3 is the data caching framework for better website speed. TYPO3 can cache the frontend content and pages. Along with the localization, system configurations, file cache, opcode related cache etc…
Conclusion
I have worked with both the CMSs in the past years. I can say that both CMSs are great in their business.
Both CMSs can choose different types of content elements, frames, layouts, and even colors. Both content management systems have their pros and cons.
Then out of the two, TYPO3 is probably the best CMS for you. There are of course many other CMS's, with their own pros and cons, some of the most notable/popular also include Joomla, Magento, Shopify & Drupal.
Basically: Both systems are aiming for totally different approaches to content management.
- Gutenberg provides the editors with a frontend editing experience in the backend. The editor can focus solely on design & content without having to switch between different elements.
- TYPO3 on the other hand primarily focuses on providing a clean and structured way for managing content with fully-fledged CMS functionality. The layout/design approach just isn’t as important. Still, the frontend editing extension enables the editing of content directly in the frontend.
Enjoy managing the content!
Contact for Internet agency and TYPO3 projects
Sven Thelemann
Service Partner - Germany
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