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WordPress and Joomla compared: what differs when you publish

How the same spreadsheet behaves on WordPress and on Joomla: fields, status names, categories, tags, images, dates, locking and trash, in one table.

  • 3 min read
  • Updated October 14, 2026

The same configuration shape works on both platforms, but the platforms are not the same. This table lists what changes in a file and in the review.

WordPress Joomla
Content types Posts, pages, custom post types the REST API exposes, and products and product variations on a WooCommerce shop Articles
Title Required, up to 1,020 characters Required, up to 255 characters
Web address name Slug (up to 200 characters); made from the title when empty Alias; made from the title when empty; unique within the category
Body Content (one HTML field), cleaned by WordPress's post filter Intro Text and Full Text, joined by a Read more marker; cleaned by the text filters of the publishing account's groups
Summary Excerpt No separate excerpt: the Intro Text is the teaser, and Meta Description is the page's description
Status choices Draft, Pending review, Published, Private Unpublished, Published, Archived
Default status of a new item Draft Unpublished
Categories Several per item; hierarchical; created when allowed. An empty cell leaves the item without a category Exactly one, required; hierarchical; a missing or second category is a row error
Tags Flat Nested, with parents
Author Author: a user who can write content, by name, ID, username or email Created by (only if the account may manage users; otherwise the publishing account) and Author's Alias
Dates Publish date; a date without a zone is read as UTC and shown in the site's zone Created Date, Start Publishing, Finish Publishing; read in the publishing account's time zone
Images Featured image, with alt text, title and caption Intro Image and Full Article Image, with alt text and caption (no title)
Where delivered images go The media library images/content-uploader/<year>/<month>/
Custom fields Post meta by name (registered fields and any unprotected key) Fields defined under Content → Fields, of every Joomla type and of Advanced Custom Fields (Free); cannot be added by name
Other fields Comments, Parent item ID and Menu order (hierarchical types) Featured, Access, Language, Keywords, Note
Trash An item in the trash is skipped An item in the trash is skipped
Being edited Not detected An article checked out by someone is skipped
Workflows Not applicable When on, Status and Featured are not offered
Offline mode Not applicable Publishing continues while the site shows its offline page
History Post revisions, where enabled Versions, where enabled
Prices and stock Products have prices, sales and stock, which a review compares with what the shop holds now (WooCommerce) Not applicable
Items that already exist Only items Content Uploader published are matched; products can also be found by their SKU Only items Content Uploader published are matched
Sites A multisite network is not supported One installation is one site

Things that behave the same#

  • Rows are matched by record ID (or slug or title) among items Content Uploader published (and, for WooCommerce products, by SKU among the products a shop already has); nothing is deleted.
  • The review, the confirmation, the allowance and the retries are the same.
  • An empty cell for content, excerpt, tags, image or custom field removes the value (empty cells).
  • Images come from a ZIP, a web address, an earlier upload or the site's own library.

Which page to read#

WordPress content types and fields and Joomla article fields describe each field; Joomla specifics covers aliases, locking, workflows, history and time zones.

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