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. 

Comments (9) >>

joomla 1.5
written by Harris, February 06, 2008

Hey there, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one having the EXACT questions and solutions as you are describing. Do share your tips w/ us about how to blog w/ 1.5 I agree, that J1.5 is a great CMS and a lot better than 1.0.x, I'm using a WP install as my blog site, but would love to switch to J1.5, actually at the moment I'm kind of having some issues about making it work the way I want to. I'm considering the implementation of some blog module, like "MyBlog" or "Mojo". But if there is a better way in doing this, I'd greatly appreciate your tip. Keep it up Harris

Agreed...
written by John, February 07, 2008

I'm eagerly awaiting your next post because I have yet to find a way implement J1.5 as a blog site that is to my liking. There are many plug-ins and add-ons out there that can "make it work" - but many of them are for 1.0. I have a lot of multi-media content that I want to host and then provide links to from within my blogging...and a CMS seems to be a better route to go than, say, Wordpress. But my biggest concern with Joomla is that it seems difficult for the end-user to FIND a blog post unless they know exactly what they are looking for in advance. Perhaps it's my noob-ish understanding of Joomla, but it doesn't seem robust in terms of categorization or displaying information in anything but a "flat" section/category layout. Some of my content would be of interest to people search in 5 to 10 different categories of information...but it seems like if I use Joomla that anyone that searches in the 4 to 9 categories that my content is NOT listed under (but still relevant) will not find it. Again...maybe I'm just not getting the whole "assign it to 1 section / 1 category" concept but I just can't seem to make the information easy to find...

Can't wait for your next post
written by flotoonie, February 10, 2008

Nice blog! Every time I want to research something about Joomla this site pops up. I too blog with Joomla in my own cumbersome way and I can't wait until Fantastico adds Joomla 1.5 to their install list. Look forward to reading your next post!

Interesting post, will read the next one
written by Nico, February 12, 2008

I started a little joomla 1.5 blog myself, and so far I'm not that happy. I wished I waited a bit longer for the right plugins to be available. For intance, I have tried to get my smart SEF url's to work for SEO friendly URL's, but that didn't work out. Now I'm using the crappy core sef url's. Also, Joomla doesn't really seem to care about "pinging" your new posts to the internet. I don't understand the whole concept of pinging, all I know is it gets traffic to your blog and thus, it's SEO. And then there's all the other blog features you have to miss out on, like tag clouds and what not. However, Joomla has it's upsides and for those I'm not going to change. Over time the plugins will become available and things will come together. http://www.prohealthblog.com

...
written by Rick, February 20, 2008

Hi, thanks for this series. I am looking to switch my volunteer community website from Frontpage to.... something and am looking into Joomla. As usual, I want to do as little "coding" as possible so my time is spent producing content. So far it is tough to find a cms or blog engine that will do posts, media, calendars and classifieds "easily".

Waiting For Components To Catch Up
written by Church Website Design, March 13, 2008

We have been developing joomla websites for over a year. We love the 1.5 idea, but some of the less popular components and modules that we use are not out for 1.5 yet. We are going to wait until all of that catches upl

Joomla vs WP
written by Joomla Blogger, April 09, 2008

After seeing the new joomla admin section, I have decided to move most of my sites to Joomla. I have always loved it, but turning it into a blog was rather cumbersome. Now it's easier and really enjoying it. The only problem I have with it is trying to use rss with the sef components. I have yet to fix that issue and can be annoying for a blogger. If you have any ideas, I am willing to listen.

Also wating for catchup
written by Western Australia Joomla Developer, May 16, 2008

Got to agree about J1.5 being great but there just isn't the range of plugins available for it like there is for 1.0. It's changing quickly but so far I've not been able to build a live site with 1.5. I've always had to fall back to 1.0 because I needed a particular component.

...
written by Grant, June 13, 2008

Blogging with Joomla! used to be horrible now it's just bad. Joomla is best at just creating documents and putting them in a very limited category structure (why only two levels of nesting?). However Joomla! 1.5 made that task much much nicer than Joomla! 1.0. It seems like there are a lot of people who want to blog with Joomla but the tools to do so are very slow coming out. I think the Section/Category limit is horrific. It's really my last major gripe toward Joomla core. If they can fix that so we can have tagging or unlimited nested categories then the rest would be just to create all the components that we need. I just need a nice interface to add blogs, multiple category support (like wordpress), decent comments, pingbacks, etc... These tools have been available forever in other open source software packages but for some reason they never seem to make it to Joomlas. I just bought MyBlog and I'm installing it now so we'll see if this gets me closer. Grant

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