I want my Joomla to be my blog (without installing the wordpress) but I still need it to be a site, where i can have independent articles, and eventually a e-commerce area (thats why i choose joomla, for the ability to do so many things with the site)

But this blog thing has still has got me confused. I have searched online and I get a ton of places that tell me I can have a blog on Joomla, but I can't find any that tell me how to make it. ,:-\

I can't figure how to make the front end look and update like a blog, with the ability to go to the article and make comments, rate, share with other social sites, and share via email, etc...

Also with the ability to update social sites when I post a new blog/article.

And the last thing, is to get registered users to have more exclusive content. And sign up for a monthly newsletter (when they register for the site).

is all this possible? Can you help me figure it out please? thank you

Emily Rose

p.s. how do you get a statcounter to work? I tried 2 so far that I can find, and neither of them did anything...

Hi,

Unfortunately I don't have a simple short "solve-it-all-at-once" answer.

First of all, all this is possible in/with Joomla, but it doesn't come with Joomla out of the box. You will need to use and install 3rd party extensions (extensions can be components, modules and plugins). Now for your questions.


This can be done in numerous ways. One way could be by Joomla itself and creating proper categories which you would like to make your blog. Say you make 2 categories, through the Joomla menu systems you point the menus to be a category blog. You make 1 menu go to Category A and becomes your A blog and menu 2 you point to the category B and becomes your B blog. Writing new articles in Joomla under the proper categories would be the same as "blogging". Another way could be by using a 3rd party blog component.

A collection of available 3rd party blogging systems can be found here: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... -news/blog

The the e-commerce part. Again, not by default available in Joomla, but again a 3rd party extension. The most commonly used is VirtueMart. Which creates a complete store within Joomla that has a lot of payment methods built-in. The address is: http://www.virtuemart.net


Commenting and sharing on other social sites. Very much possible again. I think Joomla is best explained as an empty shell that you can fill up. This time you will need to fill it with a commenting system and a social network sharing system.

Commenting systems: I use one here on the site which is called ChronoComment. It works flawless. Look at the bottom of this page to see it live: http://www.joomtorial.com/news/38-joomla-twitter-tools

ChronoComments can be downloaded here: http://www.chronoengine.com/

A collection of Commenting systems for Joomla: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... s-comments

As for the social network sharing, same thing again, you need a 3rd party extensions that puts in the little icons for sharing on Digg etc. Also known under the name "Social Bookmarking" A collection of that can be found here: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... ookmarking


This can be done by setting certain articles and categories not to public, but to registered. (and complete menus so that they do not show when visiting as guest and only popup when logged in as a member). Click on the picture below to see how.

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Newsletters, again, I am repeating myself, a 3rd party component. I like one in particular and that is called Acajoom, read more about it here: http://www.ijoobi.com/ They have a very proper free version. With it, you get a very decent component to create and send newsletters. A module so people can sign up for your newsletter.

Overview of available newsletters: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions ... newsletter

In combination with all this you might also think about the following components called Community Builder and JomSocial. The last one is not free, I am just showing you something like this exists. Not 100% familiar with jomSocial, but I do believe it will have a few things you want in an all-in-one package.

Community Builder: http://www.joomlapolis.com/
JomSocial: http://www.jomsocial.com/

One important remark: I am working with Joomla basically since the day it came out. I still try to keep Joomla working with OpenSource and free available tools for Joomla called extensions. It is not a golden rule that commercial applications for Joomla are better than the free ones. There are very good commercial products available for Joomla, but some of the best tools I work with are Open Source and free in use. Don't go out and buy all kinds of Joomla products. Look around on http://extensions.joomla.org for alternatives!

Thanks for all the great extensions. I already downloaded a bunch, but will be uploading them a bit later.

I have one more question if you will, how can i get a stat counter for all the pages? not just the articles?

thanks

For the statscounter, I am not 100% sure what you mean. Do you mean just a statistic where it shows the number of all your articles in the website?

If that is the case, follow these guidelines, there is a built-in statistics feature in Joomla:

1. In the administrator part of Joomla go to > Extensions > Modules
2. Once there, click on "new" at the right top


3. In the window that opens, click on statistics.


4. Now you are in the settings of the newly created statistics module. Give it a title. At the filed "position, give it a position which is in your module, right/left or anywhere you want it to appear. At the module parameters on the right side, you can set several things, play around with that a bit.


I have only set "site info to show and then it shows a member count and a count of all content items in the entire site. In my case 20 as can be seen below.


After you have done this, be sure to click "save" on the right top.

Experiment a bit with the module position so that the module shows in your website where you want it. Looking at your template, I assume the best is left or right.

I have also checked the site http://extension.joomla.org for you, but there is not an equivalent of this. There is one, but that is for the older Joomla version 1.0.x and not 1.5.x

I hope this is what you meant.

ok that works great! thanks

Ahhhh, yes that explanation helps me a lot.

There is a built-in feature in Joomla. Same prinicple as the previous one. Create new module, but this time choose the module called: Who's Online"



It shows you how many guests/members are online. Again at the right side, there are some configurations you can set in the parameters.



Although this is basically half your question answered. It does not show how many visitors have visited your site. The funny thing is, the hit counter is part of that previous module I mentioned. Statistics. If you set it like this as shown on the picture, it shows hits on your site only.



So by publishing these 2 modules together, you get what you want.

I installed cronoscomments, finally got them to show up correctly, but the text next to the comment boxes is black and my background is dark, so you can't read them. when i highlight the text it doesnt look like the text on the rest of the template. do you know how i can fix this so it shows up in a different color?

Hi,

I see what you mean. Hard to read that way

OK, now you are asking for it! Starting with Joomla often leads to getting involved with other aspects of html and in this case CSS (=Cascading Style Sheets). In this case the Comments component's style (look & feel) is being offered by a certain css file. Inthere it has a setting which is very easily changed. If you know where that is!

I think you want it to look something similar to this:



That is not hard to do. I am not aware of your knowledge with html and css, so please inform me.

I assume you have access to FTP. I also assume you have something of an html editor like DreamWeaver (and if not, Notepad could come to the rescue. NOT Word >> Notepad)

Through FTP find the file in components > com_chronocomments > style.css

I do a lot of online editing, which means I edit the file through ftp itself. In your case we do it the safe way. Before you do anything. Make a copy or duplicate on the ftp server of style.css and rename it to style.css.orginal This way, if anything goes wrong, you can always rename it back to what it was and you are saved.

Download the file style.css to your desktop. In the file you look for this particular piece of code:



Change #CCCCCC into a lighter coler like #FFFFFF (which is white) or you could also change it into the site-wide light blue you use: #87ADBA

So that code now has become:



Now on your desktop you save the file style.css. Then through FTP you put (upload) the file style.css into the folder components > com_chronocomments, when asked, you overwrite the file style.css

Again, I find it important that BEFORE I go and make changes to a certain file, I always make a copy of the original and rename that original on FTP. That way you can always go back. Make that a common practice, that way you can always revert to the original should anything go wrong.

P.S. I suggest you choose that blue-ish colour, if you choose white, the submit comment button-text becomes invisible. Blue (as it is one of your favourite colours I read in your 25 random things about yourself), will suit just fine.

Hi,

I tried to vote on the Poll. I get an "Invalid Token" message. This could be a few things.

In your administrator part, under the menu: Site > Global Configuration and then the "System Tab". Do you have (on the right side) Cache on "No" or "Yes".

If you have it turned on "Yes", please turn it to "No" and save your settings. After that, go to the menu called: Tools > Clean Cache. Once on that page, select the top checkbox on the left so that all items below it get selected and then click on the right top "Delete".

Let me know when you have done this. I think your Poll is not functional because cache is "On".