brian.teeman.net: Why integrate Joomla and Wordpress? | Extensions - brian.teeman.net
coffeegroup
· 3 months ago
I gotta say, WoJo is a lot of fun to use.
I wanted more than what Joomla! stand-alone could deliver; and I didn't want to cluster on a slew of extensions to get what I wanted. I use MyBlog with JomComment, and it's OK, but WordPress as a blog is in a whole other class.
MyBlog and WoJo are the two mega extensions that do the trick to extend Joomla! into the blog arena.
Tough to describe, but its (WoJo's) ease of use, combined with fast-growing add-on library and fast-growing developer community makes me feel like I did when I first found Joomla! It's a real joy to be using a tool that is at the forefront, and not just doing simple dot releases, but innovating.
jlleblanc
· 3 months ago
This is the sort of thing where I could see integrated logins as being useful. However, I don't see integrating the applications themselves as quite so useful. The whole point of WP is that it's dead-simple blogging: combining it with Joomla definitely doesn't make it any simpler!
David West
· 3 months ago
Considering there are a number of tools, add ins, etc, that duplicate everything Wordpress gives you, I'm not sure why the push for this either.
I do know many people do it, though. We even got handed it for use by a certain high level politician on their website, so it is definitely gaining in popularity.
brian
· 3 months ago
ya i agree. it thinks this stems from the fact that joomla in its past versions was not a great blog. it did not have the features that wordpress had for blogging in many cases.
This has changed completely in my opinion now, for example using the disqus comment system works well for comments, like you do here. There are plenty of RSS feeds that work well when integrated into feedburner,etc.
Joomla actually works well as a website with its own blog!
JaniceGJones
· 3 months ago
I am so glad you wrote this post because I too have the same question. I got an email yesterday from someone recommending this Joomla-Wordpress integration product and I just couldn't understand why I would need Wordpress if I can do everything I need for a blog in Joomla. Has it been proven then Wordpress is better at search engine optimization than Joomla? That's the only thing that would make me consider integrating the two.
Alex
· 3 months ago
I think it’s a consumer driven decision based on their experiences. Think about it for a moment. An average user will likely to have more exposure to WP as it can be setup free at a click of a button on the worpress.com. From that experience they will find out that WP is easy to setup and use. (I also think that WP is relatively easier to setup comparing to Joomla. Joomla requires more time to configure and install additional components to get it to do what WP does straight out of the box.) So when customers hear that WP is great for blogging and Joomla is great to manage content, why should not they ask for both?
I do not see the point to install both as Joomla can handle most of the stuff that WP is used for; however an average user may not know that. The solution is simple. Spend a bit of time educating your customers about the differences of those two systems. I have not yet had a client that have insisted on having those two systems working together after I’ve run through some basic differences between Joomla and WP.
Pat Lee
· 3 months ago
Amy Stephens is working on Tamka( www.tamka.org).It will be extensing Joomla's blogging capabilities.Seems real cool
Kristoffer Sandven
· 3 months ago
I have never felt a need to introduce another blogging software into Joomla. There are a lot of options (like MyBlog etc), but I just don't need it. For me, Joomla solves what I need to do. If you need to be able to use blogging tools like ScribeFire for instance, they connect nicely to Joomla.
And with the use of SuperBlogger, Disqus, social media bookmarking extensions, tag functionality etc I really don't see the need for introducing another way of doing my blogging.
Then again - I've never used WordPress, so I don't know what I'm missing out on - hehe.
spignataro
· 3 months ago
Brian,
Thanks for bringing up an interesting question - although I find that the topic of discussion is a bit mis-leading. Maybe the question should be - "What Makes Wordpress a Better Blogging tool inside of Joomla!?"
With this question I think you can find more of your question answered.
So lets go ahead and take a look under the cover:
1: Joomla! by default doesn't come with a great blogging tool - it never has and it doesn't look like there will be one coming down the pipe line. Why? Because it is a content management system - it is designed to control valuable content on the page. And when it does come to blogging there is very clunky tools and intergrations to make blogging happen for Joomla!. Mean while - with Wordpress for Joomla! 1.5 it is amazingly simple - just install the component and Wordpress it self is installed into your blog - you have an easy to use interface that all love from Wordpress for managing the blogs and it all interfaces nicely within the Joomla! templates that you have. So there is no need to have two sites / two template designs / two logings to manage - etc. I think more or less you need to think inside of the box instead of thinking to hard about it.
2: Wordpress comes with many popular plugins for blogging tools and comes with many blogging features that are not found with current Joomla! blogging tools - so it seems very natural and logical to make the integration. Not to mention when you combine the two you create the ultimate platform - Content Management and Blogging. It is the perfect mesh.
3: To many plugins / modules / shishcaboobs to make blogging happen in Joomla! - with intergrations unlike Wordpress for Joomla! - you have to install a comment system / blogging system / pinging system / etc. The list goes on - everything you want for blogging is built right within Joomla! - the integration built by 'corePHP' provides the tightest integration of the component. If you compare the feature list of Wordpress and the feature list of additions for the Wordpress for Joomla! provided by 'corePHP' you will see that there is no blogging tool that can stand against it.
4: Seamless intergration. It is so seamless on the frontend you wouldn't even know that it was wordpress within Joomla! - but Google knows - google loves Wordpress for the SEO factor.
5: So what are the benfits? - Single installation of tools - Powerful SEO - 1 interface for management - Single Login - Powerful additions to blogging provided by the Wordpress community - Kick ass integration.
I agree with you 100% For the last few years I have been freelancing, but doing almost all of my work with one marketing agency. Somehow the boss there heard that "wordpress is better at SEO".
From there on out it was all downhill. Every client site had to have wordpress deployed (sometimes multiple instances!). Inevitably the client never used the blogs anyway, so it was all a waste of my time installing and styling the wordpress installs to match the Joomla sites appearance.
As for Wordpress being such a superior blogging platform, all I really have to say is it really that hard to add a new article to a category? Install something to handle comments and enable sef url's and you get the same results. And you get to do it all in Joomla.
ivoapostolov
· 3 months ago
I also don't understand it. I don't understand why someone would be using WP if using Joomla! as a main site (god, there are K2, Zoo and more). But even if someone decides to use both, why integrate? Probably in case one of these being hacked, the admin will be sure that both are hacked.
Brian Teeman
· 3 months ago
Thanks guys for all your comments I see arguments for using wordpress for a blog but still dont see why I would want to integrate wordpress into joomla in order to do that.
spignataro
· 3 months ago
Brian,
Just ask the several thousand users we have. It is really left up to your own preference.
And to be upfront and honest - I said the same thing when it was presented to management. In the end - it was the utmost brilliant idea combining the two most powerful tools together.
(ps: K2 and Zoo are quite different animals (no pun intended) - so it is tough to compare these products with Wordpress and Wordpress MU. But what I can tell you is there is no multi-user blog component as powerful as Wordpress MU integration).
spignataro, I'm genuinely interested if there really are benefits to this. A few months ago I actually lost a customer who was one of those several thousand who had drunk the koolaide. I pretty much turned the job down, because it seemed like too much effort for their budget.
I know the drawbacks. 2 large interfaces with different terminology to learn and juggle yet with mostly overlapping features, two systems to template (that's right, if I want my blog to match my Joomla template, I have to delve deeply into two separate templatiing systems, right?), an extra 5MB+ of PHP bloat that I need to back up and migrate.
So what I'm not sure of are the benefits. IMO and as far as I've ever heard reasonably argued, Joomla has as good of SEO as WP. It also has some pretty substantial blogging features that are easy to implement. So what's left, automatic pinging of blog services? That's one of the few main features that WP has but to my understanding can't currently be had in Joomla. So I guess the question should be is pinging really going to get you that much more traffic that translates into real business? If it does to the point that all the extra work can justify this (and you can't just use WP) then perhaps you're right. Is there any other reason why these 3,000 are so excited? Please say, because I can't tell.
driggins
· 3 months ago
I'm using corePHP's WP integration for J!1.5 on my site and like it. Why integrate? I want to inspire my users to blog. The best method is to lower the technical challenges and using WP is the best method (I know of) to do this. For example, my users can choose to use any of the third-party, offline blog editor/managers. A user that is not enticed to edit content online can choose to use Blogo or Ecto, for example.
I tried some of the J!-specific blog and found them lacking in comparison to what WP can do.
corePHP has positioned itself to capitalize on WP's momentum. Think of the development encircling WP at this time and you get the idea of why bringing that sphere inside Joomla! makes sense. The Blog admin control panel alone is sweeeeeeet.
The point made about multiple templates is right on the money. This is my biggest complaint and one I don't have time to deal with. Instead, I use the default, vanilla layout that was part of corePHP's extension and it serves me well enough. It's important to me that my web users have a seamless experience when reading articles and then moving to our blog. So, I settle for seamless and give up a little in template discrepancy. To me, it's worth it.
unleash.it
· 3 months ago
Can you integrate all of this with JomSocial or Community builder? Wouldn't most sites that let users blog also want Social Networking?
I can see the benefit of an offline editor and maybe a few of the wordpress plugins. But I think people should be realistic about the extra work and complexity before they get excited over that and a slick interface. Personally, I would add a substantial fee for a site that needs this extension. Also, don't forget if you're not an experienced web developer (or your client isn't) you're going to have to learn and deal with 2 separate and complex interfaces. Some people may take to this easily, but others have a terrible time. I know, because I teach this stuff for a living.
I still think by far it makes sense to go with either Joomla or WP, depending on your needs, except maybe in rare cases.
PufferMedia
· 3 months ago
Indeed, this was the first reaction I had when I started seeing tweets about WP for Joomla: Why? And in 99 cases out of 100 I can't see the benefit; I would certainly try to talk any client out of it (if only because I personally think the WP templating system is an unintuitive and needlessly complex way of 'skinning' a CMS). I agree with everything you and the comments have said.
But for that 1 case out of 100, well, I'm facing it on a personal project. About 5 years ago I started a blog using a custom, self-hosted WP install. And while I don't keep up with the blog anymore, I still use the URL. Now I want to expand to the 'brand' to do some other things, things that WP doesn't do particularly well without a lot of 'hacking' and bending, things that are a treat on Joomla with a few well-chosen extensions. But I don't want to throw out 5 years of blog posts or have to cut/paste, reformat, re-up the pictures, et cetera. I'd rather just roll it up into Joomla and run it from there.
So, yeah, if a client came to me with a blog they'd been maintaining for more than, say, a hundred posts, and didn't want to pay someone to transfer all that info or were comfortable already with the WP blogging paradigm, i would rather just incorporate that into Joomla. Certainly I would try to elucidate the drawbacks of parallel templates and installs but if there was an easy way to just bring that existing blog into the new site it seem it would be the way to go.
All that said, I haven't really looked at the nuts and bolts of how this works, so I could be off in even this one scenario.
Brian Teeman
· 3 months ago
Thanks for sharing that. That is the first comment that actualy suggests a good reason for the integration.
abtop
· 2 months ago
To my mind, it suggest a good reason for a WP-to-Joomla conversion solution.
lafrance
· 2 months ago
thank you for this post I though was my dementia or stage 1 Alzheimer that made this totally useless. If I wanted wordpress for a blog why would I not get a free copy? A few users ask me this question maybe you know the answer as wordpress is free under it license is this not a copy violation also?
dpk
· 2 months ago
Yup, there's no sense in welding WP into J!. Calling on two databases from two content management systems to render a single page is obscene. Having a WP section of a site built with J! or something else might make sense--possibly more to convenience non-technical users than for any great technical reason. If the bulk of a site needs Joomla to handle a complex layout, specialized applications, and so on--and if that's not going to change much, or it will be maintained by techies, you might have the main publishing area running in WP because any fool can learn to use it fast--AND update it to new versions with a single click.
Phil
· 2 months ago
Thanks for this. I have spent hours looking into this and I was really close to trying to integrate these 2, but now I'm thinking twice. I guess my main concern with hacking together a proper blogging component in Joomla is that some of the extensions are liable to be discontinued, causing my blog to break. But I guess I can just fix it. I figured the good thing about WordPress is that it isn't going anywhere. But ya, synchronizing users and themes and having separate databases and software installations. Perhaps should be last resort rather than first.
Phil
· 2 months ago
I'd like to reply to my own post, as I've now been playing with various commenting extensions. The problem I am finding is that there is no great solution for pingbacks and trackbacks. And making a blog "do follow" is essential to my business. What are the solutions for this? That is why integrating wordpress looked so good to me.
Brian Teeman
· 2 months ago
Thats an argument for using wordpress for your blog not an argument for integrating them
Phil
· 2 months ago
By integration, are you basically talking about syncing the users? I am not as concerned about that, but certainly I would want to have Joomla and Wordpress share the same aesthetic. I need Joomla for its features, but I want the blog to be my front page (By the way, I'm not arguing for this, I'm just trying to figure it out for myself. I see big disadvantages to all of these methods.). I'm thinking that putting Wordpress in a Joomla wrapper is an SEO nightmare, so I at least think the templates should be the same. Am I wrong? Or is this more acceptable to you? Thanks for the help...
JoeJoomla
· 2 months ago
I know I'm late to the party here on this one but 'better late than never' is what I say today.
I see integrating WordPress inside Joomla! kind of like combining MS & Apple's operating systems in order to get something that gives you the best of both worlds. That's a bit silly in my opinion but there seems to be a lot of people that see it different. The guys that created the integration jumped on a trend and seemed to hit a home run with the crowd.
I don't miss anything about WordPress in regards to my Joomla! blog but that is probably because I am so familiar with Joomla! that it's doing everything for me that I need it to. The Disqus commenting system has taken the Joomla! blog to a whole new level. Even some WordPress sites are using Disqus for commenting which tells you that WordPress's commenting isn't the be all and end all of commenting systems.
I really think this is a matter of 'it's not what you have, it's what you do with what you have'. If someone needs a content management system with a blog component you would think they are technically savvy enough to deal with Joomla! and not just need a simple WordPress blog.
I don't have anything against WordPress, it's a great system. I just can't imagine why someone wants to maintain two systems.
joomlaguy
· 2 months ago
I LOVE Joomla!, but I seriously can't see why anyone could think that it's any kind of decent solution for blogging. It lacks ease of use, good tagging and many other useful features that any other good blogging tool has. Every time I have tried using Joomla! for a blogging tool it feels like I'm just trying to put a band-aid on something that needs a bigger fix. It is adequate for web content but don't fool yourself into thinking Joomla! is a blogging tool any more than Wordpress is for full web page content. The integration between the two is simply beautiful in my opinion. I used the 1.0 integration a few years ago and loved it, although it definitely lacked in many areas. The new integration is truly the best of both worlds. My SEO has greatly increased and how much better can it get than to be able to pull my Wordpress data into Joomla! modules? I am really trying to understand the argument here, but it feels like die hard Joomla! fans trying to persuade people to use it for every possible solution when it clearly wasn't developed for all possible solutions (at least I hope they didn't actively attempt at making a one stop shop, including blogging, because they clearly missed the mark if they did).
LatteLibrarian
· 1 month ago
Ok, at first I did feel that using both Joomla and Wordpress would not only be redundant, but overly time consuming.
I do use K2, and I almost let it handle the multi-user blog portion of my site. My site is a community portal with a split down the middle between technically savvy and technophopic. My users (the beta testers so far) are all more familiar with Wordpress than Joomla. They found what I had done hard to use as it was going against what they were comfortable with.
I installed WordPress MU, and the feedback was great. My users are now in an environment they are comfortable with and I get the best of both worlds without having to spend all my time trying to make Joomla behave like Wordpress.
My choice was a usability one. It suited the purpose and audience of my site. I am very happy with both.
All Comments
I wanted more than what Joomla! stand-alone could deliver; and I didn't want to cluster on a slew of extensions to get what I wanted. I use MyBlog with JomComment, and it's OK, but WordPress as a blog is in a whole other class.
MyBlog and WoJo are the two mega extensions that do the trick to extend Joomla! into the blog arena.
Tough to describe, but its (WoJo's) ease of use, combined with fast-growing add-on library and fast-growing developer community makes me feel like I did when I first found Joomla! It's a real joy to be using a tool that is at the forefront, and not just doing simple dot releases, but innovating.
I do know many people do it, though. We even got handed it for use by a certain high level politician on their website, so it is definitely gaining in popularity.
This has changed completely in my opinion now, for example using the disqus comment system works well for comments, like you do here. There are plenty of RSS feeds that work well when integrated into feedburner,etc.
Joomla actually works well as a website with its own blog!
I do not see the point to install both as Joomla can handle most of the stuff that WP is used for; however an average user may not know that. The solution is simple. Spend a bit of time educating your customers about the differences of those two systems. I have not yet had a client that have insisted on having those two systems working together after I’ve run through some basic differences between Joomla and WP.
If you need to be able to use blogging tools like ScribeFire for instance, they connect nicely to Joomla.
And with the use of SuperBlogger, Disqus, social media bookmarking extensions, tag functionality etc I really don't see the need for introducing another way of doing my blogging.
Then again - I've never used WordPress, so I don't know what I'm missing out on - hehe.
Thanks for bringing up an interesting question - although I find that the topic of discussion is a bit mis-leading. Maybe the question should be - "What Makes Wordpress a Better Blogging tool inside of Joomla!?"
With this question I think you can find more of your question answered.
So lets go ahead and take a look under the cover:
1: Joomla! by default doesn't come with a great blogging tool - it never has and it doesn't look like there will be one coming down the pipe line. Why? Because it is a content management system - it is designed to control valuable content on the page. And when it does come to blogging there is very clunky tools and intergrations to make blogging happen for Joomla!. Mean while - with Wordpress for Joomla! 1.5 it is amazingly simple - just install the component and Wordpress it self is installed into your blog - you have an easy to use interface that all love from Wordpress for managing the blogs and it all interfaces nicely within the Joomla! templates that you have. So there is no need to have two sites / two template designs / two logings to manage - etc. I think more or less you need to think inside of the box instead of thinking to hard about it.
2: Wordpress comes with many popular plugins for blogging tools and comes with many blogging features that are not found with current Joomla! blogging tools - so it seems very natural and logical to make the integration. Not to mention when you combine the two you create the ultimate platform - Content Management and Blogging. It is the perfect mesh.
3: To many plugins / modules / shishcaboobs to make blogging happen in Joomla! - with intergrations unlike Wordpress for Joomla! - you have to install a comment system / blogging system / pinging system / etc. The list goes on - everything you want for blogging is built right within Joomla! - the integration built by 'corePHP' provides the tightest integration of the component. If you compare the feature list of Wordpress and the feature list of additions for the Wordpress for Joomla! provided by 'corePHP' you will see that there is no blogging tool that can stand against it.
4: Seamless intergration. It is so seamless on the frontend you wouldn't even know that it was wordpress within Joomla! - but Google knows - google loves Wordpress for the SEO factor.
5: So what are the benfits?
- Single installation of tools
- Powerful SEO
- 1 interface for management
- Single Login
- Powerful additions to blogging provided by the Wordpress community
- Kick ass integration.
It really isn't hard to see why this is a powerful integration - see the comments here (They will tell you why): http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/news-pr... and http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/news-pr...
In summary - having a mashup of the two provide you with a superb powerhouse for a site.
Try it - might make you say "HOLY COW - WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THIS" - cause we get that alot!!
Cheers and happy blogging!
--Steven Pignataro
CEO 'corePHP'
http://www.corephp.com
From there on out it was all downhill. Every client site had to have wordpress deployed (sometimes multiple instances!). Inevitably the client never used the blogs anyway, so it was all a waste of my time installing and styling the wordpress installs to match the Joomla sites appearance.
As for Wordpress being such a superior blogging platform, all I really have to say is it really that hard to add a new article to a category? Install something to handle comments and enable sef url's and you get the same results. And you get to do it all in Joomla.
Probably in case one of these being hacked, the admin will be sure that both are hacked.
Just ask the several thousand users we have. It is really left up to your own preference.
And to be upfront and honest - I said the same thing when it was presented to management. In the end - it was the utmost brilliant idea combining the two most powerful tools together.
(ps: K2 and Zoo are quite different animals (no pun intended) - so it is tough to compare these products with Wordpress and Wordpress MU. But what I can tell you is there is no multi-user blog component as powerful as Wordpress MU integration).
Kindest regards,
--Steven Pignataro
CEO 'corePHP'
http://www.corephp.com
I know the drawbacks. 2 large interfaces with different terminology to learn and juggle yet with mostly overlapping features, two systems to template (that's right, if I want my blog to match my Joomla template, I have to delve deeply into two separate templatiing systems, right?), an extra 5MB+ of PHP bloat that I need to back up and migrate.
So what I'm not sure of are the benefits. IMO and as far as I've ever heard reasonably argued, Joomla has as good of SEO as WP. It also has some pretty substantial blogging features that are easy to implement. So what's left, automatic pinging of blog services? That's one of the few main features that WP has but to my understanding can't currently be had in Joomla. So I guess the question should be is pinging really going to get you that much more traffic that translates into real business? If it does to the point that all the extra work can justify this (and you can't just use WP) then perhaps you're right. Is there any other reason why these 3,000 are so excited? Please say, because I can't tell.
I tried some of the J!-specific blog and found them lacking in comparison to what WP can do.
corePHP has positioned itself to capitalize on WP's momentum. Think of the development encircling WP at this time and you get the idea of why bringing that sphere inside Joomla! makes sense. The Blog admin control panel alone is sweeeeeeet.
The point made about multiple templates is right on the money. This is my biggest complaint and one I don't have time to deal with. Instead, I use the default, vanilla layout that was part of corePHP's extension and it serves me well enough. It's important to me that my web users have a seamless experience when reading articles and then moving to our blog. So, I settle for seamless and give up a little in template discrepancy. To me, it's worth it.
I can see the benefit of an offline editor and maybe a few of the wordpress plugins. But I think people should be realistic about the extra work and complexity before they get excited over that and a slick interface. Personally, I would add a substantial fee for a site that needs this extension. Also, don't forget if you're not an experienced web developer (or your client isn't) you're going to have to learn and deal with 2 separate and complex interfaces. Some people may take to this easily, but others have a terrible time. I know, because I teach this stuff for a living.
I still think by far it makes sense to go with either Joomla or WP, depending on your needs, except maybe in rare cases.
But for that 1 case out of 100, well, I'm facing it on a personal project. About 5 years ago I started a blog using a custom, self-hosted WP install. And while I don't keep up with the blog anymore, I still use the URL. Now I want to expand to the 'brand' to do some other things, things that WP doesn't do particularly well without a lot of 'hacking' and bending, things that are a treat on Joomla with a few well-chosen extensions. But I don't want to throw out 5 years of blog posts or have to cut/paste, reformat, re-up the pictures, et cetera. I'd rather just roll it up into Joomla and run it from there.
So, yeah, if a client came to me with a blog they'd been maintaining for more than, say, a hundred posts, and didn't want to pay someone to transfer all that info or were comfortable already with the WP blogging paradigm, i would rather just incorporate that into Joomla. Certainly I would try to elucidate the drawbacks of parallel templates and installs but if there was an easy way to just bring that existing blog into the new site it seem it would be the way to go.
All that said, I haven't really looked at the nuts and bolts of how this works, so I could be off in even this one scenario.
If I wanted wordpress for a blog why would I not get a free copy?
A few users ask me this question maybe you know the answer as wordpress is free under it license is this not a copy violation also?
I see integrating WordPress inside Joomla! kind of like combining MS & Apple's operating systems in order to get something that gives you the best of both worlds. That's a bit silly in my opinion but there seems to be a lot of people that see it different. The guys that created the integration jumped on a trend and seemed to hit a home run with the crowd.
I don't miss anything about WordPress in regards to my Joomla! blog but that is probably because I am so familiar with Joomla! that it's doing everything for me that I need it to. The Disqus commenting system has taken the Joomla! blog to a whole new level. Even some WordPress sites are using Disqus for commenting which tells you that WordPress's commenting isn't the be all and end all of commenting systems.
I really think this is a matter of 'it's not what you have, it's what you do with what you have'. If someone needs a content management system with a blog component you would think they are technically savvy enough to deal with Joomla! and not just need a simple WordPress blog.
I don't have anything against WordPress, it's a great system. I just can't imagine why someone wants to maintain two systems.
I do use K2, and I almost let it handle the multi-user blog portion of my site. My site is a community portal with a split down the middle between technically savvy and technophopic. My users (the beta testers so far) are all more familiar with Wordpress than Joomla. They found what I had done hard to use as it was going against what they were comfortable with.
I installed WordPress MU, and the feedback was great. My users are now in an environment they are comfortable with and I get the best of both worlds without having to spend all my time trying to make Joomla behave like Wordpress.
My choice was a usability one. It suited the purpose and audience of my site. I am very happy with both.