Compass Designs

Right now, there is no robust and feature rich blog extension for Joomla that will fufill the core features that is needed in a blog, and does it as a native (not a port) extension. Until something has been developed to fill this need, wannabe bloggers are probably much better off building a blog out of its consituant parts. Its a little more work, but the solution is more robust and easier to manage.

There are many places on the web where you can create a blog, some are free and some are paid services. To name a few:

• Blogger
• Typepad
• Wordpress
• Moveable Type

The 800 lb gorilla in the room here is Blogger. Part of the Google world, it by far hosts the most blogs. This is probably because it is very very easy to set up and free. A quick look at some Alexa rankings (rough estimate of traffic) show this picture.

So why would we want to use a content management system to blog with? Isn't there already much easy solutions?

Well, first off, this is a book about Joomla, not Blogger, so I want to try and show how you can use Joomla to blog, sell products, build community sites, make your coffee, etc etc. But there is a real reason too.

Blogs are closed systems.

What I mean by that is the software that powered alot of these blogs is basic. That's perhaps part of Blogger's huge popularity. But if a moment should come that you want to extend the features of your blog, you are stuck. Maybe you want to add a forum, or a shopping cart for your ebook, or a subscription part of your blog. Try to add any major functionality to it and you are stuck.

A big theme of this book is being very excited about how amazingly extendable Joomla is. With that in mind, if we can have Joomla mimic the basic functions of a blog, then that can be a basic foundation for all you bloggers out there to build a super sticky blog site.

Basic parts of blog

Let's pause from our headlong rush into joining the blogosphere and consider what essential features you need for a successful blog.

• Flexible Layout
  Been to one Blogger blog and you have been to them all. Being able to make yours look different to the other 27 million blogs out there is a good thing.
• Browser-based Editing
  You have to get your content on the web fast and easy.
• Automated Publishing
  FTWho? You don't want to have to mess with complicated file transfer, you want to click a button and have your posts appear. Text formatting and spell checking is a bonus too.
• Categories
  Part of having a usable site, being able to split your posts into categories will make them easier to find.
• Automatic Archiving
  I am unsure as to the usefullness of this. User will be far more likely to browse through categories than archives, unless they really like your writing. But heck, it seems a standard feature of blog software, so we'll throw it in too.
• Search Engine Optimized Titles
  If you have written a post, you don't want your URL to be www.myblog.com/9823749.html?myleftleg. You want to be able to squeeze every ounce of SEO out of your post. So having a URL that includes keywords about the post is useful in this regard.
• Comment Systems
  An absolute critical feature. The comment system is one of the #1 ways that your site becomes sticky (how likely a visitor will return). Free for all commenting is something bloggers have embraced and has led to their explosion in popularity. Many corperate sites that have blogs are afriad to tread this path. So Web 1.0...
• Trackback or Pingback
  Two things are going on here. Pinging is a mechanism whereby other blog search engines are alerted automatically to a new post being made by you. An example is Technocrati.
  A Trackback is more complex. The bottom line is you read a post, and you comment about it on your blog. You place the URL to her post in yours and her blog picks up your post and leaves it as a comment in her post. Confused? Its a tool to get more traffic, that's good, and we want it.
• Syndication Feeds
  RSS and ATOM are XML applications that can push your posts onto other RSS readers. Email clients such as Thunderbird come with RSS readers, as do personal sites like Yahoo. Perhaps a more important point is that a web site can read RSS, you you can have your posts appear automatically on someone elses website, where (hopefully) it will get even more readership. Its kind of like automatic and dynamic real time article syndication.
• Email Notification
  If you make a post, wouldn't it be good if you had an email list that got notified that you did? If you are a web business, you will soon start building a list of emails. This is a whole other subject beyond bloggin however involving CAN's of SPAM.
• Search
  As a prolific blog poster you will seen have your archive bursting. You will need a robust search tool that can help site visitors find your posts. Steve Krug maintains that some visitors will automatically look for a search as the first thing they do, people are either searchers or browsers.

How can Joomla meet these Blogging Requirements?

There are two ways to implement a blog on a Joomla site. Firstly, there are several blog components available that run as self contained blog tools inside build the blog from its seperate parts. Each has its advantages and disadvantages and we will look at both.

Blog Components

Joomblog

Joomblog (www.joomlafreeware .com) is Joomla version of blog, including blog, blog comment, blogside, blogroll, blog-archive, blog section/category, blogmail (email/MMS), blog header and personal guestbook.

Joomblog is a very simple component and an interesting candiate for blogging. Describing it as a blog might be somewhat of a stretch. Its actually an integration of two functions. The first is that it allows registered users to have a blog page all to themselves. The core Joomla functions of handling content are used to do this.The second is a comment function that allows you to have comments enabled for specfic sections. It also has a module that links to all content submitted (aka blog posts) by a particular author. So to summarize, Joomblog allows you to have mutiple bloggers on a single site. Its not so much of a blog component perhaps, but more of a packaged authentication/permissions tool focussed on blogging.

Blogg-X

Blogg-X is a cross platform (OS X, Windows XP, Linux) content management tool for websites based on the Joomla! CMS. Blogg-X runs locally on your computer as a desktop application.

Blogg-X is another interesting tool. Again, its stretching what we are considering to be a blog component, in fact, its not a component at all. Blogg-X is software that you actually install on your local computer. It allows you to create, edit and post content to your site. Basically, its an editor that talks directly to the content. It even allows you to create content offline and then upload it when you are back connected. Not really a "blog component" though.

A related tool is JExplorer (www.joomlatools.org). Its basic functionality is the same but is alot more powerful. Its more of a future platform for any kind of remote publishing to a Joomla site.

JD-Wordpress

Joomla! does content management very well and Wordpress does blogging very well.

JD-Wordpress is more of a complete blog offering. That not really surprising though, its basically Wordpress squished inside Joomla. It does all the things you might expect of a blog. The administration is difficult however. The admin interface for the Wordpress part of the site is very different to the rest of the Joomla site. This means that its something new to learn. Another challenge is "skinning" the blog to look like you want it to.

Summary

There does not seem to be much to help us here. When we look back to our list of essential features, there is not really a blog extension that bundles them all into one for you. JP-Wordpress is the closest, but it is challenged by being something else that being squeezed into Joomla.

Let's look at another alternative then, building a blog out of the seperate peices, and things that Joomla can do itself our of the box.

Building a Blog from Joomla "Out of the Box"

So let's go back to the drawing board and look at what extensions you might need to pick up to duplicate the whole effect of a blog.

• Flexible Layout
  Joomla is probably the easiest CMS to "skin" or "template" which means you can have your blog looking like anything you want.
  Conclusion: Out the box.
• Browser-based Editing
  One of the whole points of Joomla is to be able to maintain your site and edit your content in a browser.
• Automated Publishing
  Publishing is one-click with Joomla. You can even have items be published at a future date. Say you need to go out of town, and you write some blog posts to get published while you are out of town.
  Conclusion: Out the box.
• Categories
  This just requires a bit of planning. When you are setting up your site, make a section called "blog" or similar to hold all the categories. Then make categories as you need them. Last step is to make a menu that has a link to each category. A module is automatically created at the same time, which you can place as needed.
  Conclusion: Out the box.
• Automatic Archiving
  I have yet to find an easy way to do this. The archive function in Joomla allows you to index content by date, but it changes the URL. That is very bad for a blog as you need persistant URL's for all those people linking to you.
  Conclusion: Still looking
• Search Engine Optimized Titles
  For OpenSEF. It's new Ajax admin interface is great and it seems to produce robust URL's. The clincher is the ease in which you can create redirects. If you have a lot of URL's that need to change, links from other sites. All I have to do is monitor my logs and when I see traffic coming in from old URL's its a 3 second (literally) job to set up a redirect to the new URL. No messing with htaccess here.
  The second part of the process was internal links. These are useful for SEO, but who wants to be found on a Google search for "read more". There is a mambot from Run Digital that changes that though, and makes the link much better. It also does it automatically.
  Conclusion: Install Open-SEF
• Comment Systems
  Luckily, at the time of revising how I was building my blog, a new comment component was released. I am using it on my site now and its great. The front end looks good, has a robust captcha and is easy to template. Its also got some nice extra features like hiding the comment form with Ajax. Its $12.50 for the basic version, but well worth the price.
  Conclusion: Buy JomComment
• Trackback or Pingback
  Here is our first major issue. Currently there is no method of acheiving trackbacks on a Joomla blog built from its seperate peices. If this is an absolutely critical, must-have feature for you then you might need to be using the JD-Wordpress extension. If its more a question of "it would be nice if I had it", then its probably worth going with the seperate pieces solution and wait for this to be developed. In 1.5, this function will be much easier to add and there are at least two developers working on a solution at this time.
  Conclusion: Wait for a release
• Syndication Feeds
  Joomla has built in RSS syndiation, there is actually nothing to do here. Well, that's not quite the whole story. The RSS as it runs in Joomla is only of the Front Page (or home page). This means that if your blog is on an interior page, or you want to have multiple feeds, you need to find some help. Fortunately, there is a great extension from Run Digital that will do both of these, and its free.
  Conclusion: Out the box, or get Run Digital RSS feed manager
• Email Notification
  Right now there is no way to have email notification to an emaillist when you make a blog post. There is a way round this. Several 3rd party (non-Feedblitz. You can have people subscribe to an email list and they actually get the introductory text from your blog posts emailed automatically to them. There is nothing you, as the blog author, need to do.
  Conclusion: Seek a 3rd party application.
• Search
  Joomla has a powerful search function built in.
  Conclusion: Out the box

The Best Way to Set up a Blog with Joomla?

Right now, there is no robust and feature rich blog extension for Joomla that will fufill the core features that is needed in a blog, and does it as a native (not a port) extension. Until something has been developed to fill this need, wannabe bloggers are probably much better off building a blog out of its consituant parts. Its a little more work, but the solution is more robust and easier to manage.

Comments (30)

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Joomla! User said:

I belive the Core-Content-Component of Joomla! will do fine for most needs. You can adjust it by components. You may add a comment-option, etc. But you're right, there is nothing in a bundle yet. Greets! -------------------------------------------------- Joomla! Bücher Schweiz

September 10, 2006

Wally said:

Hi, JD-Wordpress is the old name. The new name is: OpenWP. (and OpenWiki, OpenSef....) And it is the best I have testet. bye, Wally (Joomlablog blogspot)

September 17, 2006

Corrado Conti said:

A spell checker is something I really would like to see in Joomla, but so far I had no luck. I am forced to write my posts in my email client (to make sure it's plain text) and then paste them in J. Any ideas there?

September 17, 2006

Barrie North said:

I actually write all my content in Dreamweaver and then copy and paste the html. It has a spell checker in it.

September 18, 2006

Mike Costello said:

I was interested in the spell checker idea and wondered if anyone has integrated it into Joomla. For example I found this one which seems to be pretty impressive http://me.eae.net/archive/2005...l-checker/

September 18, 2006

Bernard Doddema said:

I thought this was going to be more of a tutorial than a review. I've been using the various blogs out there such as Joomblog and JD-WordPress and just am not that happy with them. What is the best way to build something like this?

October 01, 2006

Chris Baskind said:

Been meaning to comment on this for weeks. A helpful article. A lot of what bloggers expect from blogging software -- mostly the cruft you find in blog sidebars -- is totally unnecessary. Do we really need integrated calendars, sidebar linkrolls, and half the crap that clutters most blog pages? Not really. While there are areas for improvement, I think a lot of bloggers would love the stability and ease-of-use in Joomla's core components. The most glaring need is for dramatically improved RSS support. Bloggers expect flexible, full-content feeds (complete with images, links, and formatting). I'd really like to see Joomla get out in front on this, offering feeds to practically anything with the ability to insert feed advertising. That's the future. I don't think I'm violating any confidentiality to say Azrul's excellent Jom Comment component is currently testing trackback support. Spellcheckers: I never compose anything important in a web window. The best solution is to write your articles in the word processor or writing tool of your choice, then paste it into Joomla for markup. A good WYSIWYG editor is a help in this department. The WYSIWG editors common in Joomla are superior to those in WordPress and Movable Type. The new version of Firefox -- Firefox 2.0 -- is due out Tuesday, 24 October. It features built-in spellchecking on all platforms. I blew up a WordPress blog Friday and should have its Joomla replacement ready ina couple of days: http://moreminimal.com And this one ain't mine, but I enjoy mentioning it to people. A Joomla-based Buddhist humor blog (pretty narrowcast, but funny): http://bigredbuddha.com kit

October 23, 2006

richanx said:

Just getting going with Joomla, I found this article really useful. The one issue I have with Run Digital RSS feed manager, is that once set up I have not found a way to display the syndication links for the new feeds. For the built-in front page feed I would use the Syndication module, there seems to be no way to use this for feeds generated by Run Digital RSS feed manager or any alternative? Cheers

October 24, 2006

phlux0r said:

I saw a few people mention spell checking and here's what I did on my local server but it should be possible with any reasonably helpful linux host. This is a high level overview and the details could be challenging for people not savvy with hacking php code. 1. Install the Joomla FCKEditor plugin since FCKEditor actually comes with a built in Spell Check infrastructure. 2. Then you have to edit a few files to enable the aSpell spell checker, the button in the toolbar and set it to the dictionary you'd like it to use. 3. Most crucially, you have to make sure that your host has aSpell installed and that the binary is available to php exec (and exec is also allowed). When you then create your content you can press the ABC icon with a tick and it will do the spell checking for you. If there is interest on a more detailed, step by step tutorial about this, I can write it and post it here or somewhere on the Joomla forums. Contact me on phlux0r at gmail dot com...

October 29, 2006

Angelos said:

I would really need a good joomla blog component for my corfu site (www.corfu.at. :Joomblog is not that good, it changes core files which is not so secure...

November 10, 2006

Ran Shubert said:

Hi, One helpful attribute would be the ability to administer the blog from the frontend. Was anyone able to add the ability to add articles or/and categories from the front end so that this would be fully possible? Thanks - Rans http://www.imdir.net

December 08, 2006

Maxwell Hung said:

Firefox 1.5 has a built in spell checker for form fields. Works well for me. Good article by the way, although I'm not sure I'd go as far as calling it a tutorial. I was wondering what commenting system you used here, so that cleared that up for me

January 10, 2007

Michele Pipitone said:

Just putting up a blog with joomla, this tutorial was very usefull, now I'm in trouble setting technorati the right way. I'm using J!tags a Ping plugins, but when I try to add my blog in technorati it shows there a lot of unusefull things like the page template instead the real content... Looks like I need another good tutorial that explains how to integrate technorati in a Joomla powerd site/blog. Here's my blog : www.michelation.it (in italian, sorry) I post it, maybe someone has a hint to give me.

January 29, 2007

micheal said:

It's great to have the depth of information here but the typos, etc. make certain sections unclear. It would be great if you could clean this up either yourself or via an editor. Also if blogging for any aspect of business don't you find it imperative to have a stable permalink/trackback type mechanism? I've found this to be the most useful mechanism for increasing and maintaining traffic. A reader/poster's ability to comment and place links, becomes a very effective form of organic, viral marketing. Just starting out with Joomla and as a blooger was very happy to find your Joomla oriented blog 'how-to'. Thanks.

February 02, 2007

Ryan Waltz said:

How do you use Joomla to create a link to a blog section? I'm using MyBlog and when I create a Blog Section link, it links to a blank page.

February 18, 2007

Edgar Li said:

I found it very hard to customise using Wordpress, have been spending weeks to try all different plugins and themes. I believed Joomla can do a better job to make a quick start up but true its lacking some integrations. You can leverage functionality with the stock install, just find a good template (plenty out there)... put fuji tagbot, jom comment (in my case I need to hack one of the admin page), zookoda newsletter...etc I recomment Joomla or Drupal but definitely not wordpress.

March 23, 2007

Dave Marshall said:

Not feeling so stupid anymore. I am fairly new to joomla and have built my first website with it. I must have spent two months looking for a Blog component that worked. Joom Blog ruined my site and a new joomla install was needed. Mamblog? well not being able to render mambots killed that one. I tried the free version of MyBlog but it didn't cut either. So I did just about every thing described here and it works. That was two months ago and today I stumble across this, so I guess I am not such a beginner at all.

April 04, 2007

Hieu Nguyen said:

Really interesting article!!!! I'm actually building a small user portal from hacking the content component of Joomla. This thread helps me a lot in figuring out what to do next!!! Thanks

April 14, 2007

fly06 said:

Very useful article! I was actually having hard time testing Wordpress whan I read it for the first time. Since then, I am back to the Joomla safe heaven Among the list of required functionalities mentioned above, the Email Notification is quite unclear to me since 'Email Notification' is a typical multi-context feature. Could you please be a bit more explicit ? Thanks.

June 12, 2007

admin said:

By Email Notification I mean when you make a blog post, readers will get notified via email. Not everyone is using RSS yet . I use feedster to reproduce this functioanlity.

June 12, 2007

fly06 said:

Do you mean that as a Feedster user I can go on their site and subscribe to some kind of alert service to receive a mail once a new CP-Blog post is indexed by Feedster? Do you have a link?

June 12, 2007

JerryH said:

I have been trying mojoblog which supposedly is a variant of WordPress that works in Joomla. I actually like the editor that comes with Joomla better than the freeform textpad type of editor that comes with mojoblog. In my opinion the only thing that is really missing is a commenting component in Joomla. Also the articles prepared in mojoblog have a different RSS feed than the rest of the site. So, if you want to syndicate everything in your site you have to make multiple RSS feeds available. I think this would be a little confusing to the rest of the world. I think I am going to go with native Joomla blogging and add the commenting component as an add-on. www.timeclockdealer.com is still in test mode.

November 13, 2007 | url

shaid said:

Hi, I've meshed up with migrating site into Joomla. I don't know how this can be done. Can any one advice me. Thanks. http://scholarshipsme.blogspot.com BBV

November 14, 2007 | url

breeze-O said:

what's the best way to duplicate the blogroll feature that allows my very non-technical client, the blogger, to maintain a blogroll?

November 21, 2007

sydney web designer said:

Archiving is a sinch. Here is how you do it - Every time you want to create a new archive, all you have to do is add a new category to your blog section called 'Archive dd/mm/yy' or whatever you like. When you are done with your content simply go into the administrator section and change the category to the archive category and link somewhere on your blog.

December 14, 2007 | url

buspar2 said:

I never thought about Joomla to make a blog, I usually use WordPress plus it has a lot of plug-ins. And Blogger as the easiest

December 17, 2007 | url

Beata said:

I am disappointed with article. It is review but not tutorial. I was expected to find out step by step, how to organize Blog with Joomla Author said: so I want to try and show how you can use Joomla to blog, sell products, build community sites, make your coffee, etc etc....

December 29, 2007

admin said:

http://www.joomlabook.com/the-...la-15.html

December 29, 2007

Beata said:

But this is only review what will be in book ??? No tutorial online?

December 30, 2007 | url

breeze29 said:

Using joomla and "blogging" a content section, how do you ensure that you are indexed by google's blog search?

January 11, 2008

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