The Joomla Blog

Jom Social vs Community Builder (round 1)

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:41:07 +0000

For those new to these extensions, Community Builder is one of the oldest (and possibly most used) Joomla extensions. It has a plugin system and lets you quickly develop user profiles for logged in members; with custom fields and member lists. Because its Open Source and how long its been around, there are a ton of plugins to give you google maps of your members, on-going/live (facebook wall-type) listings of member activity on their profiles and more.

Jom Social isn't Open Source. Its a commercial release from the Malaysian web development firm Azrul Studio. They're well known for simple blogging and commenting extensions and have recently released Jom Social - which pretty much gives you the same functionality as Community Builder for $100+ but doesn't require must setup/configuration once installed.

There's been discussion in the Joomla forums about this topic before and I think people are most concerned about the lock-in factor of using commercial software plus the question of how integrated JomSocial is to Joomla itself.

Before I jump into a comprehensive review next week, I wanted to ask for your thoughts on Community Builder vs Jom Social. (Post comments! :) )

re: Dries Buytaert on the Future of Open Source

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:55:55 +0000

(This post is in reply to one that Dries Buytaert wrote on OStatic.com)

I agree with Dries that Open Source CMS' are putting more power into the hands of people who may not know or want to learn code, and that as their learning curves get less steep we will see more people jumping into creating and growing their websites themselves; depending on the type of website they want to have.

We've of course seen the *huge* acceptance of wordpress for simple content publishing (read: 'blogging') amongst all sorts of people ranging from tech pros to near-luddites. As people use more websites that have richer feature sets everyday they'll no doubt want to see the functionality of those sites in their own; for a while yet, though it may not require custom coding, I think the role of 'web master' or 'web developer' or whatever-you-want-to-call-them will be around for quite some time.

That role will continue to exist but may change to focus on conceptualizing the end result and making it happen with the right combination (and configuration) of 3rd party modules/extensions; whether through just hand-holding/teaching people wanting to develop their own sites or actually putting the pieces together themselves.

I'm really excited for Mark Boulton's redesign of Drupal 7; right now a major hindrance to non-technical people using Drupal is its stratified admin interface, which often leads to developers custom-creating UX per-project to suit each client's administrative needs.

To help people jump-start their web projects we've taken a hard look at another Open Source CMS called Joomla for example, and come up with a packaged solution called Seedling (http://www.plantseedling.com).

Seedling's distribution of Joomla is cool because it comes pre-configured and loaded with a suite of extensions and easily changeable theme; so people can develop their web projects a lot quicker and with more power under the hood. Plus, it comes with optional email/ticket support - so new adopters of Joomla can get help when they need it.

Until core installs of Open Source CMS' are a lot more user friendly I think solutions like Seedling will really help bridge the gap for those folks who want to learn via DIY and/or can't afford the services of web developers.

Another custom 404 error approach - JoomSEF

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 20:33:29 +0000

Out-of-the-box, Joomla 1.5 has pretty silly error handling pages - for times when a user hits your site to find a page no longer in existence ('404 Not Found') etc... A simple work-around I've previously posted about is to create a custom error page as static HTML.

Now, if you like to have your error messages presented to site viewers with the same look and feel as your website, a custom page outside of Joomla might be frustrating - everytime you change the layout of your site you'll likely want to edit that page and so on.

There's another approach; some semantic URL extensions can actually redirect those errors to particular content within Joomla. I recommend using JoomSEF - its a weird extension because of the partially-free (ie. non-GPL) license they've released it under, but you can download and install it for free and then make one edit to its code to remove a footer message created with the free version.

With JoomSEF, you can choose a custom 404 message by typing it directly into a field through the extension's admin side or by choosing a menu item already linking to a message page you've created. Plus, you can keep track of 404 messages to help streamline your site's navigation!

JoomSEF will make managing your site's error pages easy, and it makes it much easier to navigate your site by URL because you have more control over the format of URL writing rules than with Joomla's stock SEF URLs option!

Seedling: Commercially supported Joomla!

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:28:43 +0000

Seedling's distribution of Joomla is fully supported.

Our distribution of Joomla comes pre-configured with a suite of excellent extensions and a custom theme; its a complete website in a box and comes with peace of mind; we now offer 2 support options!

Basic Support: $49

Full Seedling package download
Community support forum access
No Help-desk access
No emergency support

Buy it / download now »

Our basic package is best suited for individuals or organisations who are familiar with Joomla and/or don't mind solely relying on our community forums for support.

Professional Support: $349 (1 year)

Full Seedling package download
Community support forum access
1 year of help-desk access with email and web support tickets
Emergency support tickets between office hours

Buy it / download now »

Implement Joomla with confidence; our professional package includes help-desk support tickets so you can get top-notch support from our staff for an entire year.

Wordpress vs Joomla, part 1

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:14:14 +0000

NOTE: Rather than posting an exhaustive comparison of the two, this will be the first post in a series looking at what sets them apart and why you would be better off with either in particular situations.

Both Joomla and Wordpress are industry-leading Open Source publishing platforms that make it simple for people with no knowledge of HTML to create blogs and publish pages to their website easily and quickly.

However, they are each built for different core audiences - Wordpress is essentially a blogging tool; extending its feature set beyond blogging requires the use of FTP and custom code - so it is best suited for individuals and small organizations who have an on-going relationship with a web developer who can provide upgrade and feature developments for them. This isn't to say that it can't be used to create highly usable websites with creative aesthetics; but just that doing this takes more elbow grease than with, say, Joomla.

Out-of-the-box, Joomla allows users to create dynamic websites which incorporate a powerful menu system that allows dynamic displays of content - not only for blogs but other lists or tables of content items, with just a few clicks of a button. Innately, Joomla websites can be grown by uploading sub-programs (eg an e-commerce package or discussion forum) directly through the admin interface in a browser- no need for ftp or dealing with any code whatsoever; Joomla offers more powerful yet easier scalability than Wordpress.

Another major feature that sets the two apart is the ability to edit posts from the front-end; managing a Joomla site can be much faster and visually understandable as only admins need to see/use a dashboard/admin side of the site - anyone with content submission/editing permissions can simply log into the front end of a site, be shown the edit button [or submit new content] and make changes live to the site.

Announcing the release of Seedling

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 19:02:25 +0000

We're pleased to announce the availability of our newest in-house project from Design Guru. Its a distribution package of Joomla we're simply calling 'Seedling.'

[ * Download the press release: pressrelease-seedlingrelease.pdf ]

Seedling's distribution of Joomla is a packaged solution that includes the latest release of Joomla CMS; pre-configured and optimized including a suite of extensions and tools. It installs on a host/server quickly and easily, featuring a customizable template and demo content which you can edit or replace to create a powerful website.

With Seedling there is no need to spend time and energy installing Joomla, then figuring out how to configure it before shopping for additional plugins and modules to install.

Seedling saves the average user weeks by ensuring that major 'web 2.0' functionality comes with the package. Installation is simple and takes minutes. Each install includes sample blog posts and articles to demonstrate how a site can be easily set-up.

In addition to pre-loading Joomla with extensions and sample content, Design Guru's bespoke 'Seedling Blog' template is pre-installed and offers simple configuration options – allowing users to change the look of their Seedling website by simply choosing colour options from drop-down selections. As well, our template lets you display an optional site title, slogan and logo.

You can find out a lot more about Seedling over @ http://www.plantseedling.com and through this walk-through video we put together last week.

{vimeo}3205480{/vimeo}

Yootheme announces Zoo - cck for Joomla

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:58:27 +0000

In somewhat of an ambitious statement last Thursday, Joomla template and extension development firm Yootheme announced that they are almost ready to release 'CCK for Joomla' - an extension they're calling 'Zoo.'

As of now, Zoo seems to offer Joomla developers an easy interface for creating content types other than the standard 'article' type which is the basis of content currently in Joomla. The concept is exciting - but I wouldn't be so quick as to liken Zoo to CCK; you see the Content Construction Kit for Drupal ('CCK') is a highly advanced extension which provides an infrastructure for complex content types which can interface with each other and be presented in a myriad of ways through dynamic GUI-created-and-controlled views and panels. Then again, once Zoo is released I expect a hugely positive reaction from the Joomla community and that could speed up development of its feature set; depending on how easily people can extend it. Yootheme have mentioned that a template engine will be included; it will be interesting to see how this stacks up to the Views/Panel modules for Drupal.

I've blogged before that there are a few different people working on custom content types for Joomla. Building a CCK for Joomla is an excellent idea and I'm loving the attention its been getting since the introduction of Joomla 1.5, though I really want to see the idea translate into an extension that is built with sustanable scalability in mind.

Ultimately I feel this functionality should be included Joomla core - with extensions being provided by the community offering new types of fields which can be combined to create content types; an approach which exists in the Drupal community. Over the past few years CCK has become an integral part of most Drupal websites and this has even spurred a donation effort to raise enough money to get it fine tuned enough to be included in an upcoming Drupal core.

Reading through the commend thread on Yoo's announcement, it looks like they:

will be releasing Zoo under GPL (nice!)
have built it in a plugin system to afford scalability (double nice!)
are keeping Joomla 1.6's ACL advancements in mind (triple nice?)

So I'm super excited to check Zoo out and will be posting a full review as soon as the extension is released (no release date posted yet.)

Hopefully some of the other chaps working on a CCK for Joomla like bContent can link up with Yoo and come together behind one strong solution for the community @ large.

PunBB integrates seamlessly with Joomla through Agora forum

Thu, 05 Feb 2009 16:54:22 +0000

Years ago the only forum component specifically for Joomla was called Simpleboard. It installed natively and worked pretty well with Joomla user information and other extensions like Community Builder (which extends user info with profiles etc...) As its name implied, Simpleboard wasn't too difficult to deal with, until you wanted to custom theme it - back then Joomla developers likely kept bottles of asprin in close reach!

In the past couple of years Simpleboard got rebranded as Joomlaboard and then became Fireboard - which until recently was the best fully-integrated forum solution in Joomla. Alternative approaches involve bridging your Joomla site to an install of other software - such as phpBB or SMF; which sounds great but often becomes a nightmare as its very difficult to accurately and consistently ensure that users are logged in and out of both software etc...

Well, I just did an install of Agora yesterday - its a new extension that basically ports the simple-but-powerful punBB Open Source forum software into Joomla. The default style it comes with is hideous, though its code is pretty CSS-friendly; took me a few hours but I'm quite pleased with the look of my resulting forum install. Of course, it seems reasonable that you should be able to jump over to punBB's resource site and apply mod's and styles to your Agora install - so you may not need to roll your own CSS.

I highly recommend this extension for anyone who needs to install a forum on their site - the full administration is front-end and it has its own user management interface so you'll be able to make ecrtain folks mdoerators of the forums you want to and so on!

If you've checked Agora out - please do drop a line in the comments below to let us all know how you like it; I'm curious to see how it interfaces with other extensions - and to be honest, am not sure if I've seen any modules for it to display forum information (like 'new posts') outside of the forum itself.

Gregory Maassen: using Joomla for simple publishing and document downloads

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:46:07 +0000

Though it may not win any awards for innovative design, development consultant and Rotterdam School of Management professor Gregory Maassen's personal website is an excellent example of how Joomla provides a ton of accessible functionality.

developmentwork.net was built in Joomla 1.5x with a suite of free/Open Source extensions by Gregory himself. As its main function was to serve as a repository for his publications, docman served well in easily creating an interface for organising file downloads and offering them up within articles as referenced links.

Some info about the site from Gregory's write-up on the Joomla forums:

It serves as an archive and introduction to my academic publications, and management experience with business development and judicial reform projects, legislative initiatives and educational programs in developing countries such as Afghanistan, Macedonia and Armenia.

The audience of the site is relatively limited:

Students and other course participants who like to download materials;

Other professionals who work in developing countries who may want to read some of my work and/or get inspiration to set up their own sites for their projects; and showcase what is possible with Joomla.

Its definately worth checking out the site and referring to his post on the forums describing the process by which he came to the right mix of extensions to create this site.

{sharethis}

Migrating from 1.0x to 1.5x - some helpful tips

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:10:31 +0000

There are still a ton of sites out there running Joomla 1.0x and though the new 1.5x platform's been out for some months, many web developers [like you? :) ] are a little daunted by the prospect of moving their old sites over.

Well, like anything, its best to start with some form of roadmap; make a list of what needs to move over and plan your approach by weighting the tasks you think will be most strenuous along a timeline you can deal with.

Migration is actually pretty simple if you consider that your Joomla site basically is just made up of:

Category-structures/Articles/Menus/Modules
A template/theme
Installed 3rd party Extensions (and their data)

Error page handling with Joomla 1.5 (403, 404 etc..)

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:22:36 +0000

The new joomla handles errors differently, and there's been quite a bit of discussion about why this is, as well as whether the current solution works as well as it should. Mainly, this discussion stems from people being concerned about making their site uber-Search Engine Friendly.

Now, I have my own personal gripes with some people who spend too much time throwing the 'SEF' acronym around [ie. paying more attention to garnering machine-love than making their site relevant to readers], but out of the discussion comes an important mini-predicament; Joomla 1.5 uses an error.php file [stock URL: /administrator/templates/system/error.php] which resides outside of the CMS.

Error.php is the file which gets loaded when viewers cannot be presented the info they request (leading to 403 and 404 errors) - the default one is super ugly and sure to scare people away from your site at first glance; this is something to avoid and doing so is easy; you have to create a custom error.php and bung it into your front-end template's main directory.

I recommend reading the documentation on this approach and then looking @ the source code through your browser for a page on your site - then copying and pasting in whatever error message you want to replace the copy of that page you were looking at. Here on Why Joomla? you'll notice that I've thrown in the site's search form - so people can quickly keep looking for the info they wanted in the first place.

As we've just upgraded to 1.5 and done away with JoomSEF/OpenSEF; a quirky URL rewriter module, our out-of-box semantic URLs have changed throughout the site - so I'm sure some of you will come into contact with our homemade error.php soon :)

If you have other approaches to this problem, please comment!

Easy custom home page definition with Joomla 1.5

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:14:25 +0000

There's a really simple new approach to defining what a site's default homepage is now with Joomla 1.5: All you have to do is go to Menus>mainmenuand, select the menu item you'd like to be the homepage and hit the new 'Default' button - you'll see a star appear in the table row for that item. Now, whenever people land at your site they'll see that page/view/component!

HTML Filters in Joomla 1.5 - how to allow full embedded html

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:04:47 +0000

If you're like me, one of your 2009 resolutions is to upgrade all Joomla 1.1x sites you have kicking around into fully updated 1.5x versions.

There are a number of configuration options available to you in 1.5 for the first time [to Joomla] - and one of the easiest to miss is due to the new parameter button layout (when you click on a component, or core function the parameters for that function of the site are accessible by clicking on a particular button, not located in the main admin menu.)

Specifically interesting is the new article HTML Filtering system. You can now filter out specific tags in your articles automatically; this is great because you can avoid your contributors publishing erroneous or potentially harmful bits of code, as well as choose which user groups are allowed to post full HTML (for limiting 3rd party video embeds etc).

Avoid head-scratching; go to Content>Article Manager>Parameters and then in the Filtering Options, choose 'registered' and 'blacklist' - now all registered users can submit only tags*not* in the list you then fill in; play around from there. With this setting, and no tags filled in of course, users can submit full HTML - like youtube video embed codes etc...

Problem installing sample data

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 12:54:11 +0000

I was surprised to see how much searching it took to find this solution and so thought it worthy of a blog post...

... When installing a fresh copy of Joomla 1.5 you may notice that it comes with a configuration.php-dist file; my assumption upon seeing this was that I should rename it 'configuration.php' and chmod it 777 so that the installer could write the values I fill in during installation to the file.

Well, don't worry about the configuration.php file until the end of the install walkthrough screens; you're likely to get an error when trying to install sample data using a pre-defined configuration.php file - instead, wait until the last install screen where a congratulations message is displayed, then copy the code it provides into an empty file called configuration.php and upload it to root.

More info @ the forums...

Hide areas of content from the public

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 14:17:20 +0000

I've had my eye on Dioscouri for a little while - they're the Joomla services guys that released JUGA, or Joomla User Group Access - an extension which gives you control over registered user groups and the power to define content access per group & category/section.

Well, they've obviously given a lot of thought to this whole idea of ACL and I like the most recent little extension they've released; called Hider . As you might imagine, it lets you simply hide certain areas of content from public site viewers.

Ultimately, this might get messy if you have a lot of content with embedded tags all over the place to display certain info to certain user types, but for simple uses I could really see it being handy.

Security Update - Joomla 1.5.7

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:02:35 +0000

Not so long ago a previous update was released for Joomla 1.5; I mentioned that updating your 1.5 site was pretty easy and well, its time to do it again. Joomla 1.5.7 was announced as a security update some days back and I thought I'd mention it in case you hadn't heard the news...

Note: its great to see how quickly reported issues with Joomla are being solved by the core team and everyone contributing to the project! With each release comes fixes as well as improvements to Joomla - expect an updated OpenID library, upgraded TinyMCE, better menu handling and more with Jooma 1.5.8

Custom content types - thanks Google Summer of Code!

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:21:36 +0000

I've been a huge fan of Drupal's Content Creation Kit for a long time - its a module that extends the core content functionality of Drupal, allowing you to create different types of 'content' - made up of a variety of fields such as embedded media (photo/video/etc...), email links, html/web links and so on. CCK's architecture is scalable and allows for 3rd party developers to add new fields to it as additional modules; so the usefullness of CCK grows exponentially in time.

Actually, for a time I saw this amazing module really setting joomla and drupal apart - as, Joomla felt really limited in its potential to grow beyond a CMS and become let's say, an 'application framework.' However, I'm excited to report today that this is all about to change...

Add commenting to your site - 3 extensions to compare

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:22:56 +0000

For a long time I've wondered why commenting on articles hasn't been a stock feature in Joomla. For the most part, I think probably 90% of websites today use the function as an essential way to allow publishers to communicate with their audience and gain valuable feedback from them.

Joomla's Extensions directory lists over 30 plugins and components that can afford you commenting ability in J1.5 - that's a ton to suss through, so I thought I'd take a look for you and offer a few recommendations:

First up, its a package called JoomlaComment . Its a component-module set which has been around for some time and has not been made native to 1.5... so you might want to check out their forums to see how well it performs in Legacy Mode and whether there are any down-sides when using it with other newer components native to 1.5.

Overall, I like this extensions because its themable, has BBcode, offers thumbs up/down on comments and generally has lots of features. Plus, its free/GPL - worth using if you have time to tinker, change CSS to match your site etc...

As the web becomes more widgetized many people are looking towards externally powered scripts to add functionality to their site. A new commenting widget that's been getting much love from the blogging world is Disqus. I like the idea of using an external service to provide comments on a site - Disqus is under market pressure to innovate and constantly upgrade the functionality of their product, which means that you should be getting the best comment system out of them for little effort - no more watching out for upgrades and then worrying about maintenance. Of course, there's also an issue of scalability to consider - if you ever decide to move away from Joomla as a web platform, Disqus comments should allow you to get up and running on the new site with your comments hassle-free.

Thirdly, we have Azrul's JomComment . This package has been around for some time and since it was first released I've loved seeing their company grow - to since release another couple of pretty sound little apps to use on your Joomla site. JomComment cleanly integrates natively in J1.5 with smooth AJAXy effects - eg. when someone posts a comment and instant-approval is set to 'on', the comment posting box will fade out and the comment will replace it - fading into the list of comments under an article immediately with no need to reload a page.

Given that JomComment is J1.5-native, you have piece of mind in knowing that it will play fairly nicely with the new Joomla MVC architecture and let you template your comment interface with simple override files - no need to edit the actual component to make your comments aesthetically jive to your site's theme. However, that freedom comes at a price - JomComment is commercially available for around $30US.

If you're cool with relinquishing control of your data and having a 3rd party company handle/store your site's comments, I highly recommend trying out disqus - though, if you want to keep it all local and are a fan of simple interfaces then my vote's with JomComment.

I've just looked at 1/10 of the options out there - what do you all use? Any other recommendations?

Disclosure: We're actually using JomComment here on whyjoomla - so you'll be able to test it simply by posting a comment below.

Upgrade to Joomla 1.5.6

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 11:36:09 +0000

Incase you didn't catch the heads-up on joomla.org yesterday - a new security patch for and full version of Joomla 1.5x has been released.

Apparently a bug in 1.5.5 was allowing unscrupulous fellows to change people's login passwords... which is quite a big deal in my book. Typically the error is reported to leave the main site admin account open to editing! You can read more on this issue in the Joomla Developer Blog .

Security bugs are always a little scary but one thing to note with Joomla in general is that the loopholes always get closed very quickly - in fact, when you cruise through the Joomla forums its hard to find many posts reporting sites being hacked due to security flaws in Joomla core.

I recommend upgrading your Joomla 1.5.x site immediately to 1.5.6 - there are simple patches available on joomlacode.org (scroll down to the 1.5.6 upgrades section) which you can download and just upload on top of your current install; a process which takes just a couple of minutes.

A question for the Joomla community - Why Joomla?

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 13:43:14 +0000

I've been posting sporadically to this blog for some time now, and we've been lucky to attract a few thousand people per month. I generally advocate that a site's success doesn't solely reside in Google Analytics but instead, mainly in the feel of community participation it relays to people when they spend time on it. In that respect, things are going well here - you guys post comments here and there fairly regularly and old threads are always being picked up for debate.

When I launched the blog I sought to answer its title question through the anecdotes and ponderings I was going to post to it. Though, in the past few months - with Joomla 1.5 being released and a whole stack of new extensions being released for it, I'm still curious to hear why you - the Joomla community at large, choose to use it as your platform of choice for building websites.

So - please feel free to be as candid as you'd like, post a comment below to answer the simple question...

... Why Joomla ?

Joomlafeed.com looking for community feedback

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 12:00:17 +0000

A few years ago we created a site called JoomlaFeed - our mission was to create an online space where people interested in Joomla could catch up on news from across the Web; including snippets from the Core Team as well as extension developers, community advocates and a host of others.

The site's been successful in so far as having a number of people subscribe to its aggregated RSS feeds as well as visit joomlafeed.com regularly but I think it can do more.

So, we're taking the occasion for rebuilding JoomlaFeed in Joomla 1.5 as an opportunity to see what you all think of the site and would like from it.

Please visit http://www.joomlafeed.com and post your comments! (There's a link at the top of the site)

The Beijing 2008 Olympic Orchestra uses Joomla

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:42:49 +0000

I just came across a site running Joomla thats been setup for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Orchestra to publish news and general information about the orchestra etc.

The site's fairly simple and, like many other quick'n'dirty Joomla sites out there, uses a Joomlashack template. Though its been put together a little spottily (menu item assignments don't seem to be uniform through the site so some pages don't feature the full navigation etc...), this site really reminded me how pervasive Joomla is for people who want just a tad more than say, a Wordpress blog.

For the '08 Beijing Olympic Orchestra that 'tad more' simply translates to multiple blog views of different content. In fact, they have even implemented a really simple gallery by just embedding images into content items and linking them together using a lightbox extension - which is quite clever when you don't have a gajillion images that need tags and complex photo information etc...

Joomlashack's new template builder

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:39:01 +0000

Since I first started using Joomla
years back, I've always felt that with a little knowledge of html and css making a template is quite simple - all you really have needed to know is where you want which blocks to be displayed on your site.

In fact, you've been able to do a lot with Joomla templates, and now with 1.5 can do even more - in making dynamic interfaces for websites which handle data in creative ways. Without getting to deep into the topic, I know there are a bunch of folks who are attempting to build sites with Joomla that don't really know any html and shy away from 'code.' For them, some neat tools are coming out like Joomlashack's Template Builder .

Basically, Joomlashack's created a tool to allow their customers to easily reconfigure color options of their templates by hitting up this website, changing some options in a form and previewing the result, then pasting the output code into their Joomlashack-bought Template Builder-compatible template.

I don't think this tool revolutionizes Joomla theming but its a nice step forward for commercial vendors catering to Joomla sites; though Joomlashack may pitch it as saving time and encouraging creativity, I feel its a service tool that all template sellers should offer their customers.

Joomla download statistics

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:58:31 +0000

After just having a chat with my brother about the growth of Joomla usage, and overall size/scope of Joomla's user-base I came across the following screenshot which Johan posted on flickr :

Blogging with Joomla, Part 2

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:37:53 +0000

A while back I posted something about how Joomla is a great platform for not only blogging, but developing a website that does more than just a traditional blog.

Now that Joomla 1.5 is out , I've been considering how to go about relating my observations and impressions about it and I think picking up the thread on blogging w/Joomla is the way to go...

One thing you'll notice when you fire up Joomla 1.5 and jump into the content editing interface is that everything looks cleaner - gone are the comically large diskette, checkmark and red 'x' of yesteryear; moving around and getting things done happens more easily and quickly in 1.5 - two key components of blogging.

If you are reading this and currently maintain a blog using say, Wordpress, you'll understand when I say that uploading images, categorizing content and so on is cumbersome - confounded further by the fact that the editing interface is seperate from your nice templated front end. Personally, I think that if the people publishing on a blog are offered the same interface as their readers, there's a higher chance their communication will be clearer (sort of like how a dinner party is always more fun when the host has an open kitchen and can talk to their guests whilst cooking... well, I'm not that great at the subtle art of metaphor but methinks you probably get it :) ).

Asides from more easily posting to a website, Joomla 1.5 has gotten better and letting you work solely in the front end. Seen in the screenshot above, now you can choose both the section and category to place your content in front the front end interface.... That's pretty snazzy - and means that you can move posts around your site if need be.

In my next post on blogging with Joomla I'll get technical and walk you through the basics of how to blog well with Joomla - things like how you setup your content sections/categories can really affect both the administration of your blog and its navigability - plus, I'll review some new features in Joomla 1.5 like its improved media handling and interface.