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! :) )
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.
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'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!
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
Posted by: Qasim Virjee
on Tuesday, 17 February 2009
in:
extensions
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.
Posted by: Qasim Virjee
on Thursday, 05 February 2009
in:
extensions
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.
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.
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.
Posted by: Qasim Virjee
on Wednesday, 21 January 2009
in:
scalability
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:
For those new to these extensions, 
(This post is in reply to one that 
Seedling's distribution of Joomla is fully supported.
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.
In somewhat of an 
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.![[photo of qasim]](/images/stories/qasim_sm_round.gif)
why joomla? is mainly contributed to by Qasim Virjee - the Principal @ Design Guru
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