Setting up a Free Joomla Blog |  |  |  |
Setting up a Free Joomla BlogArticle Audience: Joomla Webmasters / Generic Users Joomla allows users to create a blog very easily. Functionality is available to make blogging simple to setup, although a number of tweaks are necessary to blog-enable your installation. We will show you how to setup a blog with the minimal installation of Joomla components. Using the Joomla Blog functionWhen creating a menu, one of the layouts you can choose is the Blog Layout. This displays all the items in a particular section (or sections), in a particular layout. So the first thing you have to do is decide whether you want to display information from all your sections, or else create a blog section. To keep control of your content, we suggest you create a blog section (and if necessary move any articles to this section). Once you have created the section, create a number of categories (topics which you will discuss in your blog). Even if you do not intend to blogging about different topics you still need to create at least one category. This is because when you create a content article, you must specify an category, otherwise you will not be able to save the article.
For my example I have created a Joomla Blog section, and Templates, Tutorials and News categories. For testing purposes create and publish a few articles (6 or so which you can delete later on).
Blog LayoutOnce you have setup your sections and categories, you need to create your layout and link the blog to a menu item. Go to the Menu Manager, and create a new menu item (in your main menu) or any menu you want to link the blog to. Choose the Blog - Content Section, and then choose the Blog Section you have created previously. Remember to change the page title of your blog to the name of your blog, and use the rest of the parameters to choose how many columns you want to display. Typically a blog contains a single column, so change the Columns parameter to 1. Other ParametersColumns - the columns determines how many columns will feature in each row. If you want more than a single column, set the number of columns here. #Leading - This parameter determines the number of full width articles to display. Articles displayed in the Leading will have the Intro text displayed. This setting overrides the columns parameter i.e. if you have decided to have 2 columns and 1 items in the leading intro you will have a layout as follows: Article 1 - Full Width (Row 1 - Leading) Article 2 (Row 2, Column 1) Article 3 (Row2, Column 2) Article 4 (Row 3, Colum 1) Article 5 (Row 3, Column 2) #Intro - the number of articles whose Intro text will be displayed (excludes the number of items in the Leading parameter). #Links - the number of links to articles to display (excludes the number of items in the Leading and Intro parameters). Items showed in the Links section will feature just the title of the article (with no Intro text displayed). You will need to experiment with these values to find your optimal layout. Blog Categories Besides the number of "lead" articles i.e. the items displayed when you click on the blog link, you should provide a link to the rest your blogging articles. To do this you should create a menu link for each category. To do this create a Add a New Menu Item, but this time instead of choosing your section, choose one of your blog categories i.e. Blog - Content Category. You can either create a full blown menu item, or ideally create a child menu item for your blog section. Each of the above parameters apply also for the each blog category, therefore set these up according to your preferences. If you create a child menu items, the will get a menu similar to the following. As you can see we have defined the menu item to be a child of the Blog Section menu item. Blog ArchivesYou should create a Blog Archive menu item if you are planning to ensure that any items which have been archived can still be accessed. The archive menu item is similar to the other menu items with similar parameters, with the only difference being that only items which have been marked as archived will be shown in this section. CommentsThere are a number of commercial comment components. The most popular, and most functional is the JomComment component. Setting up the comment component should be fairly easily, and we will skip this part. Blog FeedsOnce you've established a good amount of content, and a regular user base, the ideal thing is to keep your users updated with any new content that you blog about. This is done through Syndication. The default Joomla installation is only able to syndicate content which appears in the frontpage, thus we once again opt for a 3rd party component. This is the RSS Feed Manager by Run Digital. You simply install the component, and in its setup you choose which Section / Category to provide a feed for. A feed URL is then created, and you can check that this works by copying and pasting the URL into your browser. It is a good idea to customise the names to suit the content of your blog. Search engines (Google in particular) seem to have an affinity for feeds, so it is a good idea to provide as much information as possible in your feed. Once you have published the required feeds, you need some way of displaying these feeds to your users. The mod_html component is a good tool to publish these. The code in mod_html should be something as follows: <a href=http://www.dart-creations.com/index.php?option=com_rd_rss&id=x ><img src="http://www.dart-creations.com/images/stories/rss.gif" alt="DART Creations Feed"/></a><br/<a href="index.php?option=com_rd_rss&id=x" target="_blank" target="_blank"> You should publish the Feeds mod_html only in your blog pages, by choosing the appropriate pages as in the following image. With the above we have created a blog using just a standard installation and free joomla components. Commercial Blogging Components - MyBlogIf you think all the above is too complicated to setup and administer you can take a look at the following blogging component. MyBlog is a fully featured Joomla blog component. Amongst the features supported by MyBlog are:
Warning: Remember that 3rd party modules may compromise your site's security. In this case the risk may be even larger because code you insert may create additional vulnerabilites. Always make sure that your code comes from a trusted source.
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This tutorial is very good, helped me a lot.
Thank you!
I recently stumbled accross the following website: zzz.joomlacmssolutions.com which is offering all kinds of joomla services, templates and products. Has anyone out there tried their templates and can show me outcome. I really like what they are doing. I contacted them and they are just about to launch as a ecommerce site so maybe someone out there has tried their tempaltes?
a) is a good idea to still create a blog section with categories if you plan on using either MyBlog or the new, free JooBlog? or is that all done when you install these programs?
b) I take it if you want multiple bloggers you need MyBlog (or perhaps JooBlog?).
Well if you are considering using one of the blogging components, then I would only perform the settings (creation of categories etc) after I have installed the component.
As for multiple bloggers, I know MyBlog can do it, though not sure about other components
Great Info, geart site!
I am using 1.5, but when submitting , the full list of categories appear instead of only allowing blog catagory;How can I restrict user to submit only to blog catagory?
Thnaks
I've found very interesting idea on blog:
Using of Joomla! as base for developing of web-based applications can speed up developing process:
nolinkspls://blogs.helion-prime.com/ vasiliykiryanov/2008/05/07/cms-based-web- applications-fast-way-for-creation-of-web-based- solutions.html
Want to secure the blog site name
HillDemsForMcCain.
What do I need to get started to set up this name? Do I need to pay Godaddy or is there a free way to secure this blog name?
ira.l@sbcglobal.net
I have setup blog in my site zzz.shweta.lotlikar.in following your advice.
Thanks
Shweta
Hi Shweta,
glad you found the tutorial useful and helpful 
Hi,
I am looking for a way for question emails that I receive to automatically post on my blog, and then when I answer the question, I can post the answer on the blog. Is there a way that when the question email is forwarded to me, that it can be simultaneous posted to the blog?
I'd suggest using a Comment component such as JomComment (linked above). Its not exactly what you require, but comes quite close to what you need.
Hi, I'm trying to set up blogs for 3 or 4 users on my site, I found the above info very useful...but does this way mean the blog content can only be added from the backend, i want to make it simple for my bloggers so would like to allow content to be added from frontend, can you help?
thank you
In Joomla 1.0 there was a component JA Submit, which allowed you to submit content via the frontend. I'm sure a similar component exists for 1.5, and would sort your problem.
It's 1.0 i'm using, thanks for the reply, will look into but was hoping there was a way without installing a component. i like simple :-)
Any instructions on how to
You simply install the component, and in its setup you choose which Section / Category to provide a feed for. A feed URL is then created, and you can check that this works by copying and pasting the URL into your browser.
Have you installed the RSS Feed manager and tested it? It should be simple enough to configure. Otherwise explain which part you have difficulty with.
Hi Dart - I am really sorry but I have never done it before - I set up the admin items like the article, downloaded the RSS folder and uploaded it to my ftp site but from there, I do not have a clue. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for the guide it was very helpful to get our Blog up and running, still needs some work.
Australian Web Hosting.
zzz.xko.com.au
Hi Dart,
Thank you very much for your nice tutorial. It really helps me lot.
This site has all been created using the steps above. We've used MyBlog in other sites though ... and it is still highly recommended.
Greetings !,..
Thank you very much for your nice tutorial. It really helps me lot.glad you found the tutorial useful and helpful
Ioffersearch.com Blogs - Just another Ioffersearch.com weblog
Thanks
Really a good tutorial i am very much interested in blogging and Joomla can make blogging very easy and effective.
Thanks for the tutorial its really helpful
actually im newbie with joomla so i want to know how to installing the joomla..i've heard that if we installing iis we cannot install wamp or xampp..im a right??before this im already try 2 install wamp but its not working..
Do all comments automatically post to this page, or does the Administrator have the option to read the comment first before allowing it to post live?
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how could i delete table when i uninstall my plugin. i already try to run delete query from my uninstall.myplginname.php file.. but its not work. when the install.mypluginname.php file run then i able to create the table but i want to delete that table when i uninstall that plugin so any one have idea..
:s
I am using Joomla for my SEO and goes nicely and like to use more functions thanks for this article
how can i get this blog module