Putting your Joomla Blog set up on the Frontpage

I have set up an example Blog to let you see some of the nice components you can read about at the Joomla Blog Components page

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

Building a Better RSS Feed for you Joomla Blog

If you have worked with Joomla, you know about its syndication function, right?

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

Creating Your own Blog category Menu

To separate your Blog form the rest of your Joomla based website, you should give it his, of her, own Menu module.

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

How to find a Joomla Blog template

So, you have got the categories and sections done, created you first post and it all went fine.
The Joomla Blog Layout options for your Blog menu is working fine, but as you look at the frontpage of your site, it doesn’t look like a Blog, does it?

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

The Joomla Blog categorie choice and Layout set up

If you want to setup a Blog, here is my first advice:
Setup a section like ” Blogging”,”articles” or something alike, then put in that section a categorie like ” Weblog” or “Blogging”.
Please do NOT use a categorie “Blog“… because some SEF components for Joomla take that as a replacement for ” Blogsection or Blogcategory!
And you do want to use a SEF Component, I will tell you later way.

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,