Researcher, Software Developer, Writer

DISCLAIMER: These tests were undertaken in a spirit of slapdash curiosity and are not scientific.  Speed test websites were chosen by grabbing whatever looked interesting from a Google search.  If this subject is of vital importance to you, run your own tests.

For background please read the two previous posts.

Joomla! Version: 1.5.24

WordPress Version: 3.3.1

Before beginning, I logged out of WordPress admin on the Wp site as it seems to affect what’s loaded with the page. I also logged out of Joomla! admin and cleared the Chrome cache.

First test:  websiteoptimization.com.

The results page provides a load of data but I am only going to look at one figure – the T1 download time. Here goes.

WordPress site

T1 1.44Mbps – 9.11 seconds

Joomla site
T1 1.44mBPS – 12.15 seconds.

Ooooh.

Interesting. I’m going for lunch. Then I’ll run a few more tests from Chrome, and some from FF (though that shouldn’t make any difference).

www.iwebtool.com via Chrome:
Joomla! – load time – 1.34 seconds – avg s/KB: 0.25
WordPress – load time – 0.71 seconds – avg s/KB: 0.11

This again suggests that WordPress is faster – almost twice as fast. I ran the test here another nine times. On only one occasion was Joomla! faster than WordPress.

Running from Firefox (fyi, yeah I know it should make no difference).
http://www.webpagetest.org/
I love this site.  Never been here before.  It allows you to choose your test location.  I chose Dublin.  And choose your browser- I went with IE8.

Joomla!

  • First View – 5.202s
  • Repeat View – 1.916s

WordPress

  • First View – 5.525s
  • Repeat View – 2.403s

Interesting!  Big change from previous results.  WordPress is slower by both measures.  Why?  Could it be the choice of IE8 as browser?  I ran it again, choosing Chrome:
Joomla!

  • First View – 4.573s
  • Repeat View – 1.588s

WordPress

  • First View – 4.177s
  • Repeat View – 1.627s

And again, choosing Firefox:
Joomla!

  • First View – 5.761s
  • Repeat View – 1.454s

WordPress

  • First View – 5.727s
  • Repeat View – 2.407s

I think the reason Joomla! does better in these tests is because they measure time until the page is initially displayed, rather than total load time.  But that is a pure guess.

Final site: Google PageSpeed Insights
Joomla!
Marks out of 100: 53
It makes several suggestions – the high priority ones are to enable compression and leverage browser caching.

WordPress
Marks out of 100: 61
It suggests I enable compression and leverage browser caching, but this time  caching is given only medium priority.

Well, that was fun.

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Ita Ryan

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