Wordpress+Joomla – A new way of blogging CMS’ing

As we all know its sometimes very difficult to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to being original and fresh in the world of blogging. To say that there are a few blogs writing on the same subject matter would be a huge understatement. So how does one do that? Stay ahead of the curve I mean? How about taking a completely new approach to blogging and rather than have your run of the mill cookie cutter blog you present you audience with a completely new experience. Recently a Joomla developer released an extension for Joomla called Wordpress+Joomla that has the potential to change the face of blogging as we know it.

For those that may not be familiar with Joomla, it is a CMS used by thousands of websites to create dynamic feature rich sites that include small product based commercial sites to intranets with hundreds and even thousands of users. There are some heavy hitters that use Joomla to build their web presents. MTV, Harvard University and CitiBank are just a few. The beauty of Joomla is its ease of use. You don’t need to know any code to publish a good looking site. So clearly Joomla is a winner among website developers and enthusiasts alike.

Add Wordpress to all of that and you have one very powerful tool at you disposal to build the blog of your dreams. The extension that I’m describing here is not a stripped down version of Wordpress. It is a fully functional version of Wordpress (Version 2.6.5) that integrates fully with Joomla. As a matter of fact, if you were blindfolded and put in front of a screen already logged in to the admin section of Wordpress, you would not think that it was anything else other than a stand alone version that you were working with. Every function with the exception of permalinks, which are coded in, are the same as in a stand alone installation.

You can design it in a couple of different ways, meaning, you can set it up so that the home page is the Wordpress part of the platform with along with the use of the Joomla modules that are used to design how information appears on the page, along with the Wordpress sidebar complete with blogroll, tags, calendar and categories. You then have the option of doing anything else with the Joomla part of the installation. Anything that you can think of you can accomplish. Video, music, downloads. Maybe you want to add a full feature forum, or how about starting your own community, with subscriptions to certain content. You want to publish a magazine or newspaper on page two? Sure no problem. Maybe you want to add a product or service unobtrusively with a drop down link off of the main menu? The possibilities are endless, if you can imagine it, you can accomplish it. You can also build the home page with Joomla alone and add a full featured Wordpress blog as an addon. You can even offer registered users to publish their own blogs. Really, the options that are opened to you make this the most exciting extension to come along in a long time.

If I had to look for a negative it would be this. As it is right now the categories in Joomla and the categories in Wordpress cannot be synced. You have to manage them seperatley. Thats not a big deal if you only use Wordpress for publishing posts and you use Joomla for static content. And the other negative at this point in time is the lack of Wordpress plugins. Currently there are four available. SEO-All-In-One, Akismet, Lightbox and Sociable. I have been in very close contact with the developer and I know for a fact that more will be coming out. Also if you can do some minor code edits you can easily convert a plugin to work with the installation.

All in all this is one heck of an extension that really does change a CMS into a publishing platform with endless possibilities and at the same time a blogging platform was converted into a fully functional CMS. Are you imagining the possibilities? I know I am!

Wordpress+Joomla is developed by corePHP and you can find more information at CorePhp.