One chapter in the book is about Joomla! Blogging and RSS Feeds. This chapter is now made free for you to download!

Use this link Joomla! Blogging and RSS Feeds to get download the PDF file.

Here is a Summary of Chapter 5:

• Why blogging is good for your Search Engine Optimization strategy
• How to set up a blog section in Joomla! and how to build a blogging menu and RSS Feed
• Why the use of comments and interaction with your visitors is important, and how you can handle spam and comments by the integration of Disqus
• The use of RSS Feeds and how to improve your Joomla! RSS Feed, using the Google FeedBurner service
• How to claim your blog on Technorati, and a short introduction of the commercial blog component MyBlog from www.azrul.com

I hope this free chapter will give you even more insight in the possibilities of Blogging with Joomla.

P.s. And if you want to buy the book after finding this chapter useful, I won’t hold it against you…

The templates features some module’s in its footer that you could use for Related items, Recent posts and even for recent comments if you have a Joomla comment component and modules installed.

A great homepage setup like in their example makes this template one of a kind. I really like te colors and the way the modules are placed though out the page.

Joomla Blog Template

Reading some posts from www.goodwebpractices.com and www.alledia.com I wanted to see if the options in the advanced settings of the SEF Component sh404SEF would help to overcome these MojoBlog problems.

It did!! and it wasn’t even that difficult, so I thought I would share this with you, so you can do the same…

Getting sh404SEF Component and Module ready

First of is getting the sh404SEF component to show you its real strength!
If you installed and use the sh404SEF component (please use the latest release), you will see this basic configuration screen:

And you see nothing there that can help you… now just click on the item next to this screen that says “select advance parameters:

After this, you will see a screen with some more items to use in this great SEF and SEO Component:

As you can see now, there are to items on this screen that you can use to get some great stuff for you MojoBlog posts.

But before you can get to work on those items, you have to make sure of one other very important item to be published! 
The sh404SEF Custom module needs to be published!
You can find this module in the normal module overview of Joomla, and you only need to publish it.
The module is part of the sh404SEF Component installation, so you don’t need to install it yourself.

There are a lot of parameters below this screen, but you only have to set it to published, that’s it.

Creating the SEF URL

Once you have done the above things to get everything into place, lets start by creating a SEF URL for a MojoBlog post.

First go to the front-end, while making sure the site, or just the MojoBlog component is NOT showing SEF URLs. You need this to get the “old non SEF URL” to put into the settings.
If you have a post, it should say something in the last part of the URL like
“index.php?option=com_mojo&Itemid=63&p=5″
This will be different on your site ;-)

Copy this part of the URL and then go back to the sh404SEF Panel and click on:

And then choose “new” , this will bring up a field that will aks for that old URL and the new one.
Just copy the code from the previous step into the “Old URL” part and create a nice new one that should get into that place.
Please use “-” to connect the words
For the URL you can use the post title and you could leave out words like “and”, “for” and stuff like that for shorter URLs (Google ignores those anyway)
If you have set the option in sh404SEF that .html should be added to the URL, you can set it here as well.

Save the new URL and you are done with this part, you could check if it works already.
(Make sure the SEF Component is enabled an working again if you disabled it before)

Getting the Title and Metatags to  Work

You have seen another nice items in the sh404SEF Control panel… it says “Metatags”

Before you click on it, make sure you have the ”Old URL” you used earlier at hand, because you are going to need it here as well.

 After you clicked on the above icon , choose “new meta” from the upper right-hand menu.

You will get a screen like the one below:

As you can see, the first file is where your old URL should go.
Below that you have the fields:

• Title: where you can write your HTML Title that will be picked up by Google
  This title is different form you post title and shows only in the Title bar of your browser.
• Description Tag: make this into a nice commercial description for you post
• Keywords tag: Keep this few in numbers and make sure those terms are in the post text
• Robots tag: Come in handy you want to doe some Follow, NoFollow or Index, NoIndex stuff
  Otherwise you can leave it empty.
• Language tag: only useful for multilingual installations.

If you are satisfied with your lyrics, save it and go to the front-end, selecting the post you just worked on, in the source code of that screen you should see the Title, description and keywords you just entered…

One final thing remains, but that is out of you hands…. wait for Google or other search engines to re-index you page so you can check if what you did is indeed what the robots will pick-up…

If you want so see if things work on a live example, go to Hummerbie Mojo Blog and check some of the posts.

P.s. One more tip… the “Old URLs” from MojoBlog contain the last code &p=10 (or another number) and that last number correspond with the post ID from MojoBlog. So if you know that number, you can use the old URL you copied and just change the last number.

Let’s say you want your Joomla Blog categories to have a different Template then the rest of your website, how would you do  this?

First you have to create a menu item that holds your section, or the categories like you did in Creating your Blog Menu 

Now go to “Site” -> “Template manager” -> ” Site Templates” and there select the template you want to use.
Then click the “Assign” button in the upper right menu of the screen.

Now you can select the menu item(s) that should show the different layout.

After that, you should see something linke the screen below.

Go to the Frontpage of your website, and try the link yourself, look if it works…it does…!
If you want to reverse the process, simply push assign again and choose the top choice “None”.

So, where could you run into trouble and how to fix it…. for this to work, you should select two (or more) templates that have the same modules like ” left”, “right” end other positions you want to use, since you can only assign a module to one position.

If you have a template that works the wrong way, you could try to chance position calls in the index.php of the template (via the HTML editor in your template manager) .
For example, your want your menu to appear in “left”, but your new Blog template only has a ” right” column.
Go into the Blog template HTML and simply change “right” into “left” and see how that works out.

I know, it is so simple, you just don’t think about it this way… 

Especially with the mojoBlog component as the frontpage of the website.

To get the mojoBlog, or any other component, to load on the frontpage instead of the Joomla frontpage you have to do two things.

First, create a menu item linking to the component.
Second place this menu link in the main menu above the Frontpage item!

The first menu item of the mainmenu is always the one that shows up on your website.

So, here is the example (in Dutch) with the Red Evolution Scrapbook template. De Joomla Blog

If not, go publish the module called “Syndication” but most likely you hae seen it on the Frontpage after a new installation of Joomla!

Click on the RSS 2.0 icon and look how it turns out…. o, and the articles you see there are ONLY from the frontpage!
Here are some screen shots of you standard Joomla Syndication option.

As you can see, there are no layout options, no images, just text..
Why, becouse the standard Joomla syndication components strips all html coding from your articles… so you beautifully crafted pages from you Joomla blog gets scrabeld to just text.
And it takes only articles that are on the frontpage.

Improving your Joomla Blog Feeds

But there is help, via a great component called DS-Syndication!

DS-Syndication is installed like a normal component and comes with some great features, like a button maker for your RSS Icons, but there is a lot more that this component does.

Like giving you the oppertunity to create feeds for each section or categorie, or bundeling more sections or categories end even create a feed for a section and than exclude a categorie… oké this might be a little overwhelming I guess.

So lets take a look at some screen shots of this component:

Like there is the Button maker, which is Fun, but not why you should use this component:

Are there is also a Ping manager and a Ping functionality build in, Ping is just ping…

Setting up the good stuff for your Joomla Blog

Now we go in the into the functionality why you want this component…

Configuration of your Feed(s) from your Blog section and / or categories.

First you can see how to get to the screen and then I will tell you about some of the settings to use:

Now after this you get a big screen with lots of settings:

And in more detail!

So there it is, a lot of settings to choose from, most of them can stay the way they are, but some of them you really should change!

• RSS Type: leave this or set it to RSS 2.0
• Number of messages:  set it to what you want, for SEO purposes choose a number like 12 or higher
• Frontpage only: You should really set this to NO, unless you really want a special frontpage feed!
  becouse this means really just get the stuff from the frontpage.
• Section: This is where you can make the difference.. select the section you crated for Blogging!
  Remember the post about Blog categorie and Layout  ? well, the section you created there is the one to choose here!
• Exclusion: If you really want, you can exclude a categorie from getting into the feed, like a special FAQ categorie.
• Categories: This is were you could single out one or more categories for your feed, Just make sute you use the real categorie titel! For more cagories, fill in each titel separeted by a comma.

Leave the rest the way it is as standard.

You see, you can now have several feeds for each section of for each category, just setup a new feed.

You want to check how the feed looks, just click on the Feed URL:

You should see the articles form your blog with all the layout and images in tact, just as you want them to be!

There is also a special module you can install that shows you all the feeds you created, but I suggest you run your feeds through www.feedburner.com for optimal settings.
Feedburner will take you feed and ping the right services for you!
If you want to read how this is done with this DS-Syndication component, please read my article on Running your Feed though feedburner.

You can also see some real live feed on the site of SEO for Open Source CMS

The DS-Syndication component is brought to you by www.joomlafun.com and can be downloaded from http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/dssyndicate/

Have fun building a Better RSS Feed for you Joomla Blog!

Technorati Tags: , Joomla Blog, blogging, DS Syndication, Joomla,, Joomla Component, RSS, Feed, Syndication,

These are video animations about why you want to Blog:

And how people are going to use the RSS Feeds you will be creating with Joomla!

Have Fun!

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Information, Joomla, RSS Feed, Syndication,

To do this you simply create a new Menu Module.
You can do this by going into your Administrator panel and choose Menu -> Menu Manager, you now see als the menu’s that are already in the system.

Click new, and Fill the two fields with the text of your choice, but please don’t use just Blog ! because this could get you into problems with some Sef components…

If you think your done, think again… the module is created, but not active yet.
You need to publish the module via the Module menu, Site Modules that is also where you decide to give it a place on your Site front-end.

As you can see, there are several options for you menu, just like all the other menu options.

From here on it is your choice on how to put the categories in from you Blogging section.
You did create a Blog section and categories? Otherwise read the beginning of the Blog categorie post again.

Create tables, or Blog layouts, within the menu as you see fit, but please be consistent enough for you site visitors!

Starting with you Blog section on the Frontpage

What if you really just want to use Joomla for Blogging… you don’t want to start with the standard Frontpage!

No, you want to show your your Blogging section and the latest Blog content from different categories, wouldn’t that be great?

And it is possible, with just one menu item, in the main menu…

Create a new menu item in the Main menu and link it to a Blog section choice, select all the Blogging categories to show and set the layout values you want to use.

Now move the just created menu item up the menu ladder until it is in first position , above Home!

Check the preview of your site and see how Joomla uses the First item in the main menu to start your site with…
You Blog section just as you wanted it.

For your menu, you get something like the menu below, where your visitors can directly go to their Blog category of intrest.

Technorati Tags: Blog, blogging, Joomla, layout

So I your really want to get a great looking Joomla based Blog, then the template should also be a bit Blog-styled.

Now here are a few templates that you can use for Blogging with Joomla.

The first one is a free template form www.redevolution.com with great old fashion feeling to it.
The template has some simple module positions that will allow you to look like a pro blogger.

But if you want something more clean, then maybe the Newswire version is more your thing:

This template also has some Blogging like features like the Double Menu positions on the right-hand side of the template.

Or you could use a free template like Haiku from Rockettheme, a template that will give some peaceful meanings to your Blog, or so you might one to think so. 

Or of course you want to go full out and buy a Professional template that has a high Web 2.0 ring to it or is more glossy and up-to-date with glossy looks.
Like this one from Joomlashack.

Which ever way you want to go, make sure you have a template and images to match the topic of your Joomla based Blog.

That way people are more likely to see what your Blog is about at first glance, thus making it easier for you to get subscribers to your feed, and as that number rises, your are on your way to successful blogging with Joomla.

Technorati Tags: blogging,, commercial, , free, , Joomla, , positions, template

If you are not so familiar with the Joomla content structure, take a look at Understanding the Joomla Content Structure

Now Lets take a look at the first Joomla menu choice if you want to add a new menu item.

The Blog Content category…

If you select this item you are given several options in the sidebar, lets go over them and see what they mean.

First you have the Option #leading:
This is set to one, which means the just one article is posted in the top section of the page.

Then there is the option #intro:
This shows the number of articles dat will be visible below the leading part, and is depended of the next value the Columns, so here they are split into two columns

Attention! The number of #leading and the number of #intro items are added together, so in this case you have a total of 5 articles on you blog page!

#links is the number of links to other articles in the category that will be shown below the other articles and these are shown as links, but with the text of the title as link.

Category en primary order are there to change the order of the articles if you wish to.
You can use the drop-down selections to take your pick for your favorite ordering.
For a real Blog you could set these to the default, that means the newest first.

Pagination is the way Joomla shows that there are more articles in this categorie and you can go through them bij going through the pages.

Below you can see how this works out in the layout of the Blog categorie page created by this menu choice:

As you can see, this standard layout is not always the most practicle…

If you like to have more articles on your Blog starting page, then you are better off going for 1 Column en a higher number of #leading articles.. so if you want to layout your one favorite page layout, experiment with these setting until you are satisfied with the results.
You will see, it’s fun to learn how to Blog with Joomla! 

Technorati Tags: Blog, Blog Layout, blogging, , Joomla, Joomla Blog,