PHP-CSS-DIV-CMS Joomla-Java Info

Wordpress vs Joomla, part 1

09.05.09

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.

One of the great things about working at Simplweb is helping people quickly and easily launch their Joomla websites. Two recent launches we had have been a news website about Haiti and a small business Veterinary Hospital in Waterbury, VT. Two very different sites. Infohaiti.net provides up to date news from Haiti in a high article volume blog type format, and all in the french language. Waterburyvethospital.com is a small business brochure site for a brand new vet clinic that aims to establish their web presence. In Joomla 1.5, you always knew what version of Joomla you were running at a glance. It was located in the upper right corner of your screen. Unfortunately, in Joomla 1.6, that very handy feature is much less obvious in the default Joomla administrator template. It's down in tiny letters in the footer. Simplweb is excited to announce their new Mailchimp integration now available for all customers! Simplweb brings power to the people, content management website power. This month another powerful feature has been added to the lineup, one critical to success for a modern website, email marketing and newsletters. After much consideration, Simplweb choose to offer a Mailchimp integration to their client websites. It's used by people like Gawker and The Economist, and with its free 2000 subscriber plan it's the best solution out there for email newsletters.

Left to right: Phil Locke, Robert Deutz, Alice Grevet, Jacques Rentzke, Javier Gómez, Marijke Stuivenberg, Andy Tarr, Ryan Ozimek, Dianne Henning. Attending JAB but not in the photo: Paul Orwig

From May 6 - 8 in Kerkrade, The Netherlands, 220 Joomla! community members gathered at the unforgettable JandBeyond conference. Among them were 10 members of the Board of Open Source Matters (OSM). We came as community members to connect, network, and meet again or for the first time many of the people who make the Joomla! Open Source project such an exciting place to be.

The large turnout of OSM members allowed us to share experiences and goals as a group with the attendees, and to talk as a group about impressions and lessons learned from this event. I think everyone will agree that JandBeyond was an invaluable experience in every way!

A high point for all of us was standing together during Ryan's well-attended "State of OSM" session. After he presented achievements from the past year, various members shared OSM goals for 2011.

The goals included increased revenue sources, a new online shop, trademark team streamlining and improvements, upcoming conferences, a Joomla! Supporters club, PR and awareness initiatives, and the simplification and documentation of processes. The presentation was followed by questions from the community about revenue spending and leadership dynamics.

The following is a summary of the question and answer time:

Community: What is the purpose of raising money? What are the plans for that money?

OSM: We want a cushion so that when good ideas come up we will be able to respond in a timely manner. We want to be able to enact good ideas coming out of the community.

Community: Some ideas for the spending of increased revenue:

A Summer of Code funded by Joomla
Getting all of OSM, CLT, and PLT together in one place for the world community to talk about the goals of Joomla
Pay a consulting firm to do an analysis for security and performance
Give a portion of surplus to charity. (OSM: We donated money to SFLC this year)
Do a targeted prize contest with specific requirements with a cash prize to the winner

Community: Would you consider contracting paid development work again?

OSM: We would not do it the way it was done before. If we do consider it again, it would be only for a very specific task.

Community: Congratulations on your structure and leadership but who is going to influence the other parts of the leadership?

OSM: We can use leadership by example. There are processes being put into place that give opportunities to understand, influence and encourage. There will also be a joint summit in July.

Community: There is a perception that OSM can give active guidance.

OSM: It’s not OSM’s role to be the teacher and the others to be students. We can only lead by example. The theme of the weekend is community. The community has to come together and work together.

Community: The community feels excluded.

OSM: The leadership is working on getting better communications and clearer channels.

Community: OSM went through organizational training but what about the other teams? Did they get anything from that? It should be that if you are going to be a part of the leadership then you should have professional development.

OSM: OSM was fortunate to be offered a training opportunity. Gunner will be working with leadership skills at the summits.

Community: The way the groups are growing is positive because it spreads out the work and reduces the perception of cronyism. It would be good to see that happening with the CoC.

A common theme that we all came away with was appreciating the chance to interact with so many community members and to listen and be heard.

It was a privilege also to have Louis Landry attend from the Production Leadership Team (PLT). He made himself available to talk at length with many attendees. There was much positive feedback about interaction between the community and the leadership throughout the weekend.

An energizing spirit of innovation, passion, communication and respect characterized this event.

The State of OSM Address - Ryan Ozimek from jandbeyond on Vimeo.

To post a comment on this article please visit the thread on the J!People site: http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/1198-Open+Source+Matters+at+JandBeyond.html?groupid=579

For some reason Joomla core has never natively been able to create custom forms - I'm not sure if this is due to it originally (pre-1.5 releases) allowing non-article content types to sit in the usual database tables that comprise your site, or something else... However, for years there have been multiple extensions floating around that could let you create forms out of basic elements, like text, email and file fields.

The most basic use of such extensions would be to get rid of Joomla's too-simple contact form system.  To do just that it seems that today there are a good 4 or 5 extensions sitting in the extensions directory that could help you out, though the more digging you do the more you'll find discrepancies between them.  Choosing the right form extension should be done with a balance of features to look for, such as:

• A highly active and focused extension developer,
• A multitude of fields already supported,
• A large user base,
• Development of the extension with long-term focus; if the extension has been created to allow the developer to just create 1 or 2 forms on his/her website, it may not be able to do more in the future (given that their initial need for it was satisfied).

Back in 2007 I mentioned the release of a new extension called Fabrik - after spending some time comparing notes between a bunch of form components just now I am back in love with it!  You see, Fabrik takes the approach of forms being essential things for application-building - meaning that with Fabrik, you can create forms to not only email somewhere but store in your database which in turn can be displayed as lists through your site - you you can, for example, use it to build things like a custom library listing of books.

Fabrik was around before last year's CCK-in-joomla copycating began and is interesting in not replacing Joomla's core article content-type but side-stepping it with a flexible system for handling custom content that supports custom theming and additional plug-in support (yes, you can make your own field types).

Already available fields for forms created with Fabrik include; user details, captcha (with recaptcha!), text areas/fields, file uploads, images, database joins and more (including text displays to annotate fields - for 'help' purpose)...

I highly recommend popping over to http://fabrikar.com and checking Fabrik out... Be sure to also pour through their forums to answer any queries you may have before installing/getting started.  If you think there's a simpler, more powerful, or otherwise better form extension out there drop a comment below!

Get Further with PHP
March 4-6, 2009 / Montreal, Canada

This is an invitation to meet me, Michelle Bisson, at the PHP Quebec 2009 Conference as I will be a guest speaker.
I will be speaking at 11:00 Wednesday, March 4th, 2009.

Come and network with others who are are interested in learning about Joomla.

Conference Topic:

Joomla! Web Site Development in a Few Easy Clicks

Joomla! is used and loved by millions to build web sites from simple web sites to corporate web sites. Learn the basics of using Joomla! with this step by step walk through demonstration of creating your first Joomla web site.

• Page Creation (simple layout and blog layout)
• Menu Navigation system
• Working with modules

http://conf.phpquebec.com/en

Conference Location:
Hilton Montreal Hotel
900 Gauchetiere West St.
Montreal, Canada

Google Map >>

 

Joomla! Booth:

 

As well, PHP Quebec 2009 was kind enough to allow us to present Joomla! at their Job Fair even though Joomla is not hiring.  Do stop by at our booth to ask me a few questions about Joomla! 

Starting at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 5th, 2009

As well, do look for me between sessions.  I look forward to meeting you.

- Michelle Bisson, Joomla! Core Team Member

 

Follow @compassdesign on Twitter and you might just find yourself winning awesome prizes from Joomlashck and Simplweb - over a $1,000 given away yesterday. How do you get in on the next Tweetaway?

Last week we held our first Tweetaway, and it didn't disappoint. Over a couple hours we gave away more than $1,000 worth of prizes, including:

[...]

A while back we wrote a blog post asking the community to nominate people that they felt would be good candidates to join the Community Leadership Team.

From those nominations, we are pleased to announce that we had selected six people. Four people accepted our invitation, while two chose to instead focus on their current volunteer roles in the community. We thank all of the people that we invited for their kind and thoughtful responses, as well as the Joomla Community for the many excellent suggestions.

So, to not keep you in suspense any longer, please join us in welcoming the following new CLT members:

Isidro Baquero - Related with Joomla since Mambo days, he owns a blog about Joomla in Spanish (www.gnumla.org). He started collaborating actively with the Joomla project during early 2010, when joined the moderator team as local moderator for the Spanish forum. After that, he continued to increase his involvement, joining JPeople community managers team and the JCM as Spanish editor during 2010, and becoming JPeople Communications Manager during 2011. Also, during 2011 summer he joined Joomla Tweet team and the Spanish Translation Team.

Milena Mitova - With more than 8 years of online marketing experience and a broad set of technical and project management skills, Milena uses her expertise in SEM (search engine marketing), analytics, and landing page optimization to create high-impact Joomla websites.
She works as an online marketing manager for FalconStor Software, Inc. and manages her own web design company - Complete Website Care. She also volunteers as an author and team member of Joomla! Community Magazine.

Olaf Offick - Olaf is an Internet Engineer (M.Sc.) working in Galway, Ireland. He is the founder of Learn Skills, a company providing high quality Learning Management Systems (LMS / LCMS / VLE) and Educational Materials to businesses, schools and government organisations. In the Joomla! community, Olaf currently works on the Joomla Forum team as a Global Moderator and forum Adminstrator.

Sander Potjer - The involvement with the Joomla community started back in 2008, as co-founder of the local Dutch community www.joomlacommunity.eu. In a short period they established a solid community with an active team of volunteers. The volunteers contribute by providing news, translations, documentation, forum support and by organization the Joomla User Groups (14 in a small country!) and the yearly Dutch JoomlaDays.

As you can see, these new members not only add to the skills and experience of the CLT but also bring representation from our International community, something that we feel is very important for our commitment to Internationalization which we discussed in depth at our recent summit.

Isidro, Milena, Olaf and Sander - Welcome! We are so very excited to have you on board of our team and we look forward to working with you. Thank you for taking on this added responsibility on top of all that you do already for our community.

If you would like to say your own welcome or note of congratulations, or have any other comments or questions, we welcome those in this thread on the Joomla! People site.

[edit - minor typo - 08/16/2011 - Wendy]

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!

The Joomla! Extensions Directory Team is proud to announce a new set of guidelines for the once Top Secret Editor's Picks!  With no new selections since 2008 and only 8 current listings, it's was past time to review our procedures and add new ones.  Throughout discussions many ideas were brought up on how to handle the selection process.  To bring in community involvement, a nomination form has now been created.  The criteria for selection is listed on the nomnation form below.  The nomination process closes in 7 days, so make sure to get yours in quickly!

Selections will be announced by the end of October 2010 and the process will repeat every 6 months.  If an Editor's Picks is currently listed, that does not mean that it will be listed in the new round of selections.  Additionally, team members with listings in the directory have self-excluded from the selection process.  You may nominate as many as you wish!

A total selection of up to 60 Editor's Picks will be chosen (about 1% of the entire listings).

Happy nominating and good luck!

Joomla - A User's Guide is the best selling book on Joomla, has been translated into over 6 languages, and is the highest reviewed title on Joomla at Amazon.com. Now you can get your own signed copy by signing up for Joomla hosting at Simplweb. About 6 weeks ago Brad (S&I) posted a call for volunteers on the Joomla! homepage. We, from S&I, received quite a number of applications and there were very suitable applicants among them. Our goal, to get two new webmasters for the community.joomla.org site, improving site maintenance in overall.

I'm very pleased to announce that this call for volunteers worked out great. We can now introduce to you Airton Torres and Paul Orwig as the new webmasters. Both have already jumped in with enthusiasm, performing their new tasks as webmasters. Two partial quotes from there biography:

Paul has wanted to become more involved with supporting Joomla! as a direct result of how much both the software and the community have helped him and in turn the users of websites he has developed. He also has wanted to follow the great example which has been set by so many others who have freely given of their time to make Joomla! such a successful open source CMS.

Airton started developing small personal websites in 2005 while learning HTML and CSS. When his older brother asked him, in 2007, to create a web site for a Soar Flight Club he was a member of, Airton started looking for a CMS and found Joomla. After setting the web site up, he started to use the community forums to get help and was soon giving back to the community, sharing the little knowledge he had gathered so far.

If you as a community member have any ideas, question, or for example want to blog on the community site just post a request on the S&I forum and it will be picked up from there.

As a result of the recent Production Leadership Team (PLT) meeting at the end of July, Joomla's release cycle has been clarified. Joomlashack is having a great sale until midnight Friday June 3rd! Get 20% of the Joomlashack Developer club or Joomlashack University and 10-15% off templates and extensions.

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...

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