WordPress and Joomla are the two most popular Content Management Systems and are used to create innovative and functional websites. When WordPress came into existence in the year 2003, it was majorly created with an intent to provide the users with a flexible blogging platform. And hence it includes all the features that a blogger would need.
Joomla on the other hand, is considered to be one of the most flexible CMS platforms for building websites. Joomla is a great platform for making CMS websites as well as building community-based websites with user logins. But it is not that great for many other purposes like blogging, e-commerce, web-to-print system, etc.
But thankfully there are ways to overcome the blogging limitation by using some blogging extensions/components. These extensions can be of great help when you are blogging with Joomla.
Given below are four different ways you can include the functionality of dynamic blogging in your Joomla website.
1. The Joomla! Core
Joomla Core has greatly improved functionalities for bloggers. Joomla has nested categories that make it easy to store articles. It is much easier to manage content from the Administrator's backend. If you combine it with extensions like Komento, Joomla is a perfect blogging platform. In case you have a favored commenting system like LiveFyre and Disqus, you can integrate a third-party extension that can help you to do that.
Joomla has an enhanced ACL (Access Control List) in its latest version which provides varying access to information if the blog structure is complex. It also has a powerful system that offers flexibility to advanced users. Many Joomla templates (both free and premium) are available for this platform.
2. K2 Extension
K2, also known as Content Creation Kit is quite compatible to Joomla as it is easy to customize and lets you add customized fields. A CCK enables you to create custom content types and if you have a blog with specific fields like details about products, reviews, etc, CCK will work well for you. It is easy to create entries that have images, sections for different sizes and colors as well as reviews. The K2 template structure is built in such a way that front-end modification becomes easy.
The example above is from our movie blogger template - the Hot Cinema. It's based on the K2 component and can be used for blogging about movies.
3. EasyBlog Extension
EasyBlog is the most unique platform introduced by StackIdeas. It is better to use the latest versions of Joomla if you have this kind of website. When you integrate EasyBlog, it provides you with several blogging features like advance media management, inbuilt comment facility and integration with social media.
EasyBlog enables you to create an RSS feed through which it becomes easy for you to post on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. You can also directly integrate it with newsletter extensions and social extensions like Community Builder.
4. WordPress for Joomla
We already talked about comparisons between WordPress and Joomla, it is important to talk about the WordPress For Joomla extension which is created by CorePHP. In their own words: "We’ve merged the most well-accepted blogging platform - WordPress with one of the most popular CMS and have crafted a robust blogging component for Joomla!". With the help of this component, you can integrate WordPress into a Joomla installation. The best part about this tool is that it makes it simple to create multiple blogs within one Joomla installation.
The above are some ways of integrating a blog in Joomla. If you know of other ways to incorporate a dynamic blog in Joomla do let us know in comments.
About Author
Pratik Shah is the Creative Director at Brush Your Ideas. It is a company that offers a Magento Product Designer tool and ready to integrate the Web-to-Print Magento store. Pratik holds expertise in the e-commerce and web-to-print technology-related subjects. He often contributes with his articles on different forums.