(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.

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.'

[ * 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.

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!

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...

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...

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. 

For a long long time I've been sending out email newsletters - for both personal projects as well as clients.  A few years back it became worth spending the time to code elegant html-formatted newsletters because most people had formatted-email reading ability offered through gmail/hotmail/etc or their local email client applications.

There are tons of issues to concern yourself with when considering how to send an html newsletter via email and the biggest issue I've found is that when using 3rd party senders like Groundspring , the sent from and reply to addresses are usually different - especially when you have email click-through stats enabled (so that the clicks can be traced through the 3rd party sending domain).

Well, I just noticed that sometime in the past year Campaign Monitor has solved this riddle by adding SMTP authentication - so you can use your own domain to send email through! Nice... 

Incase you're not subscribed to the Joomlasphere newsletter, you can peep a copy online at this link:

http://www.joomlasphere.net/mailers/102507.html

Visit Joomlasphere.net to subscribe! :) 

In dealing with various clients over the past few years, I constantly find myself dealing with hosting packages that just don't work.  Rather, they take far too much effort to get to work! 

At base, Joomla's pretty simple to get up and running; it just requires three prime things - Register Globals and Safe Mode should be OFF and Magic Quotes should be ON.  Now, most of you out there likely signed up with a web host because of cheap prices - back when perhaps you just needed a domain and some email address, maybe a couple of static HTML pages as well.  That cheap host might offer these settings to help you run a Joomla site but that's just not enough.

The beauty of a CMS or Online Application Toolkit like Joomla or Drupal lies in the functional scalability they offer - you'll want to be able to grow your site in time but your hosting package could seriously cause headaches at those growth stages, requiring more effort than is necessary.  Its really worth shopping around for a host that will be there to support you along the growth path your site takes in the future.

Things I suggest looking out for:

• The ability to maintain your own php.ini (so you can set your own maximum file size for uploads, amongst other things),
• A package that scales in hard disk *and* other system resources with time,
• Shell access & ftp access to your server,
  
• Previous experience hosting Joomla and other Open Source php/mysql CMS' - ask the host to give you a few URLs to sites they host

Remember, its never too late to bite the bullet and spend 2 days switching over to a new host .  if you need help, head over to the joomla forums to look for pros who can do it or offer advice.