You are here: Home / Archives for joomla

WordPress or Joomla: Which CMS Should You Use?

May 3, 2010 By Jon 2 Comments

The end of the first decade of the 20th century was a time of real breakthrough online. Perhaps more than any other respect, the way in which this breakthrough was most obvious was the increase of user-generated content. As the decade ticked on, more and more people were moving from becoming internet users to putting their own sites up. In many cases, this was achieved by the huge increase in choice and availability of blogging platforms – of which WordPress was one of the firsts. It could be said that Joomla has taken the WordPress model one step further.

While the people running both companies, and the users who align themselves specifically to one or the other, will argue that their site has its own specific identity and is very much a stand-alone entity, there can be no doubt that

WordPress and Joomla have many similarities. Both can do a lot of the same things. If you want to create a blog, you can do it with WordPress or with Joomla. If you want to make your site more general, then both platforms make it possible. However, there are many Joomla users who will not use WordPress, and as many vice versa – so what is the dividing line?

Many of Joomla’s supporters will indicate that it is “more than just a blogging platform”, either stating or implying that that is all WordPress is. And although this is not exactly true, there is enough of a grain of truth in it to make it an issue for some. WordPress gained most of its early adopters by being a very user-friendly site for bloggers, and has since diversified. On the other hand, Joomla was created after the development of WordPress and has to its advantage the fact that it was developed to be more right from the start.

There is some truth to the suggestion that the sites are similar enough to be used almost interchangeably while being different enough to have their own specific identities and attract people who will use one, and only one of the two for all of their site-creation needs.

For what it is worth, the two sites do specialize enough to give them their own defined position:

  • If you wish to create a blog, or a specific “user generated” site, then WordPress is better, and is conceived with your needs in mind.
  • If you wish to create something more individual, then it is better to use Joomla.

It would also be entirely fair to point out that if you have been using WordPress all this time and have found it to meet all your needs perfectly well, then a switch to Joomla will be more hassle than it really is worth. And, of course, vice versa.

One thing that might help you make up your mind is by looking through sites created using each application and deciding based on the ones which you find most applicable to your needs. Both are certainly good, user-friendly sites and won’t let you down.

Filed Under: Joomla Basics, WordPress Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Will Joomla Mean The End Of WordPress?

April 29, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

Joomla or WordPress? Which one is better?

The Internet is an arena of innovation, and is constantly seeing changes which make the experience more interactive, more diverse and more user-centered. The trick in the world of the Internet is to keep moving because you can be relevant one day and obsolete the next.

There has been no shortage of people claiming that because of Joomla’s greater range of applications, it will supersede WordPress and make the older system unnecessary, but is that true? While no-one could deny that Joomla is more versatile and powerful, surely WordPress has enough to hold its own?

What Joomla has in its favor is that it is certainly more adaptable for the dedicated user. If you want to put together a website for business purposes, the wide range of components and modules allow you to take it in pretty much any direction you want. However, there is a certain danger to this for a user who is not as technically-minded as others. If you found yourself at the seat of a rocket ship with a dashboard full of flashing lights and buttons, you would have to ask yourself if you could get it off the ground without causing a lot of damage – and this is similar to a novice using Joomla.

One might say that the benefit Joomla has over WordPress is that you can do more with it, while the disadvantage to Joomla is that, well, you can do more with it. The more you can do with something, the more you can do wrong – and that is more responsibility than a lot of people want. When things go wrong with Joomla, they are harder to fix. WordPress, for its part, is staggeringly user-friendly. Joomla is more adaptable, but WordPress is certainly more of a sensible option for plug-and-play purposes.

WordPress is fantastically easy to maintain. If you just want to blog, then you can be set up and working in a matter of moments – as long as it takes to register, create a title for your blog and start writing. With the huge range of widgets available – which are almost uniformly simple to install – you can add to your blog and make it easy to find online, as well as being easy to navigate. Joomla may be more adaptable, but it is one thing to say that and quite another to say that WordPress is rigid and fixed.

This is not any kind of attack on Joomla. It is a fantastic content management system – and that’s the point. Joomla and WordPress can easily co-exist because they have enough things making them different to appeal to separate markets, as well as being beneficial for different things in the same market.

WordPress is not going to shrivel up and die because Joomla is here and more adaptable. All that is going to happen is that the content management market will expand. Bloggers will still need a tool that lets them plug and play – if they want more features, they will go to Joomla, but there is still a need for WordPress.

Filed Under: WordPress Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Editing an Existing Joomla Template

April 20, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

One of the joys of using Joomla is that it can be all things to all people. For someone who has a firm understanding of CSS and HTML, Joomla is a system that allows you to keep all of the information in one place and manage everything from a central location. For someone who knows as much about CSS and HTML as the average person, Joomla is a way of creating websites that look impressive in order to display their original content in a way which viewers will find pleasant to look at and easy to navigate. This is due in no small part to the ready availability of Joomla modules.

For people who have some knowledge of CSS and HTML, there may be some concern over an existing Joomla template – the ones which are packaged with the basic Joomla software and the ones which are downloadable from the Internet. Possibly, the modules will be lacking a little something – the images that are included may not be appropriate for their site, or the text irrelevant. If this is the case, editing the Joomla template should be easy.

Editing the Joomla template further is possible if you have more knowledge of CSS and HTML. You may find, for example, that the template you have seen looks all but perfect, but is the wrong color or is imperfect in some other way. Although you want to keep the majority of the coding, you would need to change some of it to achieve the overall look you want. If you are going to do this, you should start by making a copy of the original template. Many people have made the mistake of starting to modify and then losing their place, and end up destroying one good template without creating anything usable.

Joomla templates are different from many others in that the templates feature separate content and design files. This means that depending on how much you want to change, you can usually do what you need to without an excessive amount of disruption.

If you just want to change the images in a Joomla template, then it really is simple. When you open the .zip file that the template came in, you will see a folder titled “images”. Literally all you have to do to change these images to others is overwrite them with your own. You then save the template under a different name (as a .zip file) and install the “new” template.

To change more fundamental elements will require some more knowledge. If you want to make content changes – and this includes displaying information on the right side of the screen or the left – then the index.php file will need to be changed. If you want to make stylistic changes, the file you are looking for is the CSS file. If you go into the index file and entirely remove the references in that file to the CSS one and then display the website, you will see that it is “text-only”. This is why it is important to be careful with the CSS of your site – changes to this dictate how your site looks.

A handy tip when editing an existing Joomla template is to have two or more tabs open – one showing the template itself and the other showing the changes you are making. Refer between these screens to see if your changes are having the desired effect.

Filed Under: Joomla Templates Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Helpful Joomla Tips And Tricks

April 17, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

A content management system like Joomla is as beneficial for what you can do on an ongoing basis as it is for the original creation of a website. When it comes to troubleshooting your website “in progress”, there is an array of tips and tricks that will make the process a lot easier, and this is just one of the reasons why Joomla has become such a popular site for people who would otherwise find the maintenance of a website to be a headache they could do without.

The following are some of those tips and tricks.

  • For sites where you have a registered list of users, Joomla allows you to block problem users rather than delete their account. This means that you can “suspend” users rather than simply banning them.
  • Joomla separates the HTML for content and design. This allows you to make smaller specific changes without having to change the whole coding of your website.
  • If you are using Joomla for sales purposes, then you can install a PayPal module into an article, allowing you to streamline your sales process by keeping the sales content and the payment screen on the same page.
  • During the spells when downtime is unavoidable, you can display your own “Site Offline” page which is relevant to your site. This allows you to make the experience more personal, and to include updates on when the site will be back up and why it is down.
  • Joomla allows you to edit your “favicon”. This is the little icon that shows up on the corner of a tab in your web browser. Therefore, instead of having the default Joomla favicon showing, you can have your own personalized one, making for a more distinct site identity.
  • When writing articles on Joomla it is possible to include an alternative title. This title will not be seen by your readers but is used for SEO purposes – so if you want to have a specific title showing to interest or amuse your readers, and another one to attract search engine “crawlers”, you can.
  • Although it might be tempting to load a “splash” entry page as the first thing people will see when they come to your site, forget about it. You can have one of those on a set-piece secondary page if you really must, but these pages have no text on them and that means that search engines will wander on by – ruining your traffic numbers.
  • Always fill out the Meta Description and Meta Keyword fields when you are updating a page on your site. As a default, these are loaded with Joomla-specific information and it means that when people search for the terms which apply to your site, they will find … sites that are not yours. Even if your site does show up, there is a chance that the description underneath will read “Joomla – the dynamic portal engine and content management system”. Which won’t make them visit, most of the time.
Filed Under: Joomla Maintenance, Miscellaneous Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How To Embed Things in Joomla Content

April 6, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

One of the biggest selling points of open-source content management software like Joomla is the endlessly customizable nature of the software. One way in which this can help you as a content creator is that it is possible to “embed” a range of different online content in your articles or on your Joomla page. There are so many reasons you might want to do this. Someone using Joomla for a business page might find that embedding a PayPal client on their page is a wise move, because it will make it much easier to begin and complete a sale on the one page.

Another thing you might want to do, if you are a business with bricks-and-mortar premises, and would benefit from walk-up customers, is to embed a Google Map on your Joomla page. At a glance, people will be able to see how to reach you – and Google Maps is one of the most-used sources of such information on the Internet. Having a map embedded on your website will not just mean that people who are coming to see you will know how to get there. It will provide a very visual marker of where you are which may put the idea of visiting your premises into the mind of a customer.

Embedding content on a Joomla page is really easy – assuming it has been made available as embedded content. Google Maps is an example of a site that makes its content available for embedding, and another example is YouTube – if you have the capability to make and upload video content then YouTube is the premier hosting site for you. If, for example, your site is all about cooking, you can make a recording of you preparing a meal according to a recipe, and post the video on YouTube. You can then embed the video on your site – saving you the strain of hosting it personally.

To update your site, you will usually type the information into a text editor. Let’s say that you have a video that you want to embed from YouTube. Disable the WYSIWYG editor on the text editing page. You can write introductory text – in the example above, as it relates to a recipe, you might type the recipe itself into the text editor and then say “To see this recipe in action, watch me cook this dish in the explanatory video below”. Then, from the YouTube page for your video, take the text in the box after “Embed” (on the right hand side of the page, beneath the video description, and enter it into the test box in its entirety.

The HTML code will embed the content within the article you are writing, or on the page you are editing, and anyone reading your site will see the content in its intended form. Research has shown that people tend to stop following a chain of links on, at the latest, the third link – so if you provide the content on one page, as this method allows, you stand a much better chance of converting vague interest into specific interest.

Filed Under: Joomla Content Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Creating an Article in Joomla

March 25, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

Probably the most popular usage of Joomla is by content creators – particularly writers – who know what they are good at and know that it is not web design. There has for some time now been a wide range of blogging platforms which allow good writers to create content and display it in a way which makes it easier on the eye. However, up until now that has rather been the problem. There is a certain amount of (largely unjustified) snobbery directed at blogging which has had the effect of discouraging some people from reading and others from writing blogs.

Although some people view Joomla as a blogging platform – and it certainly can be if you want it to be – it does have the advantage over a wide range of other sites in that it is really a lot more than just a blogging platform. Although the stigma attached to blogging is an unfair one, if you are capable of writing informative and interesting articles, you may find that they are better displayed in another way. Joomla allows this kind of versatility and is, for that reason, very popular among content creation experts.

When creating an article in Joomla, the first place to go to is – unsurprisingly – the “Add Article” button. This will take you to the “article composition” screen, where you will be presented with a range of options for your article. On a step-by-step basis, you create your article as follows:

  • Enter The Title: This will be the heading for your article, and will show in bold at the top of it. Search engines give titles more prominence than the body of the article, so it should be a relevant title. You may also add an “alias”, which will not be seen by your readers but will be used by search engines.
  • Select A Category: You have the option here to choose a “section” and a “category” for your article. This is helpful for navigation (for your readers) and for categorization (important for search engines).
  • Type Your Introduction: When you look at articles written online, you will note that often, after a paragraph or two, there is a link saying “Read More”. This allows the display of your site to be tidier, while still making it easy to find and read longer articles. Your introduction is everything that is included before that point.
  • Write The Rest Of The Article: A major point in Joomla’s possibility is its ease of use. When you want to move from the introduction to the main article, you click the “Read More” button. In the text box this will be illustrated by a red line underneath the intro text, so you know what is in the open and what is under the link.
  • Say Who Wrote The Article: On the right-hand side of the screen there will be a section for information about the author. Into this you can type an author alias (which may be your real name, if you wish). If you leave this blank you will be identified as “Administrator”.
  • Update Metadata Information: This is not an obligatory step, but allows you to include keywords and a description which will get you a better search engine ranking.
  • Save Your Article: It won’t display unless it is saved.

That’s it! You have created your first article in Joomla.

Filed Under: Joomla Content Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Creating a Basic Template for Joomla

March 3, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

One of the reasons that using Joomla makes it easy to create a website is the availability of templates that take care of all of the background stuff, so you can concentrate on the content. There is undoubtedly a consideration here, that any template you use will be someone else’s – and may not be quite what you are looking for when it comes to making your website yours. If you are fairly confident with coding, you can create your own templates and use Joomla the same way you do for content – as a management system which keeps everything in one place.

To create a (very) basic template for Joomla, you simply need to have an FTP client – or know how to use the File Manager of your cPanel – and the basic template files that make up every Joomla template. These files are:

  • Index.php – this creates the main body of your template, positions and a path to your stylesheet.
  • TemplateDetails.xml – this is the file that the Joomla software needs to read the information in your template
  • Css/template.css – this is the stylesheet itself. That means it carries all of the information that decides what your website looks like.

There are three basic templates that come with the Joomla application, and to see what the above files look like you can open any of the template files and familiarize yourself with the content of the files. There is a lot of detail in each of these and to list it all here would take up too much space, but if you are familiar with HTML code it will be recognizable to you.

In the index.php file, you will include any code which specifies the position of content – whether that be page titles, meta descriptions and tags, and so forth. It is this file that will govern the layout of your website.

In the templateDetails.xml file, a lot of information is required so that Joomla knows what to show. You can write this code yourself, or base it around the already-existing code for the templates that came with the software. The information in this file will tell Joomla which version of the software the template has been written for, what it is called, who created it and when, as well as a great deal of other information. This is where the licensing information is kept.

The final file that you need to edit is the CSS file. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet and is responsible for the colors, fonts and graphics used on your site. When you are editing the index file you will need to place a line of text pointing to the CSS file, so that your website knows where to load the stylesheet file from.

There are many guides on the Internet which will inform you on how to edit the specific information in the three separate files, and it is worth familiarizing yourself with these guides before you attempt to create any intricate template for Joomla. To begin with, it is worth simply playing with the code to see what kind of changes are possible.

Filed Under: Joomla Templates Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ongoing Maintenance To Your Website Using Joomla

February 22, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

There have been services and systems designed to make it easier to create and maintain a website for almost as long as there has been an Internet to put them on. This is a system that has evolved over the years and will continue to evolve, too. Without a doubt, there is no shortage of software packages that you can use to make website creation easier – so why choose Joomla?

To answer that question, it is worth looking at what the other sites provide, and how Joomla stacks up when compared to them. Perhaps the most notable reason for using Joomla is the fact that, as a newer service than the others, it has come from a position of seeing how the other sites work and improving upon what is already available. Early efforts like Microsoft Frontpage – packaged with some versions of Windows – and Adobe Dreamweaver, certainly made website creation easier for the novice. They were, however, still aimed at people with a more than basic understanding of web design.

Joomla has benefited from the increase in popularity of “widgets”. This means that you can add to your Joomla package as and when you want by downloading a widget – or, to translate the jargon, a secondary service – that is aimed at making a specific element of the maintenance easier. If, for example, you want to add more features to your site, it often fell to you to either write the code for it, or find it elsewhere. Now, widgets exist for a vast range of maintenance aspects. There are as many as three and a half thousand add-ons that can be used to make Joomla more effective.

As Joomla is open source software, it is also free of charge, and so for the most part are its add-ons. Instead of spending what can amount to hundreds of pounds on dedicated software, using open-source software is the most sensible option for anyone who is using the software to build and maintain a site without absolute knowledge of how to design websites. Not only that, but the number of Joomla users has led to a strong online community which ensures that, even if you don’t know how to correct a problem, someone else will have faced it before and be able to enlighten you.

Perhaps the major advantage of Joomla is the versatility of the software – both the primary Joomla package and any add-ons you may download allow you to create anything from a basic blog site to a macro-site packed with different features, and to add and take away as you see fit without damaging the integral usability of the site. You can make changes when you want and see how those changes will affect the look and the quality of your site, allowing you to get it right without having to spend all day honing one niggling factor. As your site becomes more established you can turn it into almost anything you want to, and without needing to gain a diploma in software engineering.

Filed Under: Joomla Maintenance Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How To Install Joomla: A Tutorial

February 2, 2010 By Jon 2 Comments

Joomla is frequently referred to as the Internet’s most user-friendly and beneficial Content Management System. To benefit from its capabilities you need only download it and install it on your servers. Of course, that’s easy to say, but what if you are not familiar with content management software? How to install it? Is it something that is difficult to do?

A lot of people will find that existing tutorials on how to install Joomla presuppose that certain things have been done when they have not. The absolute first thing you must have done before you seek to install Joomla is to have web hosting on one of the Internet’s many web host servers. If you do not already have that, then search on Google for “cheap web hosting” and select one that is suitable for your purpose.

Once you have web hosting for your site, you should have access to your “cPanel” (short for control panel). Whatever the URL of your site is, the URL for your server will be the same, with “/cpanel” on the end of it, and will be accessed by entering your user name and password. Usually, your hosting service will have a module known as Fantastico. This is the easiest way how to install Joomla. If you have Fantastico on your web hosting, then you need only open it and click the Joomla link that will be there. On doing this, you will be taken through the setup process and have access to Joomla instantly.

However, not every server has a Fantastico module and if this is the case, then you will need to manually install Joomla. This is a longer process but, if followed correctly, does not need to be particularly long-winded or problematic. Firstly, check that your web host meets the following requirements:

  • PHP 4.4.3 or better
  • SQL 3.23.x or better
  • Apache 1.13.19 or better

If it does not, then you will need to get these requirements in place – it will not be difficult – and then download the set up file from Joomla.org. It will now be on your computer in whichever file you have downloaded it into. You now need to log into your cPanel and upload the Joomla file which should still be in “.zip” form. You can unzip it in your cPanel by clicking on it and then clicking “Extract” on the cPanel toolbar.

As long as this process has taken place, you then need to check everything has been done correctly. You do this by going to http://www.yourdomain.com/Joomla_folder (although obviously putting the name of your site into the URL above). If any errors have been made, they will show up on the screen in red. You can either correct them manually or, if you don’t know how, contact your host. Assuming there are no errors, or that all errors have been corrected, you then go to the configuration mode, where you set up your site.

Setting up the site is done by following a range of options, which are concerned with configuring a database and setting passwords. Once this process has been carried out, you are ready to run your site using Joomla to update it.

Filed Under: Joomla Setup Tagged With: , ,

Setting Up A Site For Someone Else With Joomla

January 17, 2010 By Jon Leave a Comment

It is unavoidably the case that to make a success out of your business these days, you are going to need some web presence. Even for reasons beyond business, there are many people who want to have that online capability anyway, for reasons from blogging to campaigning. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that setting up a website is just like speaking a foreign language – some people can do it naturally, while some people cannot ever do it no matter how much effort they put into learning.

Some people will find it difficult even when using a content management system, such as Joomla. It may well be the case that a friend – who may be an excellent salesman or a truly honest politician, but a complete novice when it comes to the Internet – needs to set up a website and, although they have no idea how to and you are no web designer, asks you to help.

The best bet in this case is to use Joomla. It is probably fair to say that there are three levels of internet literacy:

  • There are those who are fluent, and can do anything with a bit of code.
  • There are those who speak only the basics, and need help to get anywhere.
  • There are also those in the middle who will find that with the right materials they can put together a pretty good understanding and create something worth using.

Let’s assume that you are from the third group and your friend is from the second.

What you are looking to do is put together a website that may not entirely be the absolute height in online quality, but is nonetheless worth reading, easy to navigate and contains the right content. Your first step has to be finding out from your friend what they want their website to say. A short consultation is advisable, aimed at finding out things like:

  • Who they want to read it
  • How many pages they want
  • The key points the site needs to cover

In doing this, you can plan the website to some degree before committing it to the Internet. It means that you are able to get in place a vision of what your friend wants their website to look like, say and do. Once you have planned the content for the website, you can then set about using Joomla to make the website itself.

Before you actually construct the website, you will need to pay for web hosting. It is possible to get this for free, although free web hosting is notoriously unreliable – but you don’t need to spend too much money on any supposedly “better” hosting providers. There are some perfectly reliable and efficient hosting sites which will do everything you need them to for a monthly fee in the region of $6.50. One of these will do the job perfectly. Once this is done, all you need to is install Joomla and start updating the site – you can be active within hours if you have something relatively simple to put in place.

Filed Under: Joomla Setup Tagged With: , ,
Next Page »