Category Archives:
Open Source App

There're multiple article updates about how to configure blog via joomla platform. However, is joomla really good choice for blog website purpose? How we'll benefit from the solution and how to proceed with the best practice? We'll introduct the most popular blog extensions for joomla and check what would be the best choice for blogging.

About Joomla
Joomla!(www.joomla.org) is the most popular content management system software which you can use for user management, article management, web development and any other web application purpose. The art of joomla is it's great core structure and thousands of components and plugins directory. The usage of joomla is only limited by imagination!

How to setup blog via Joomla?

Joomla initial setup is pretty clean so you can fully customize the rest configuration. In order to configure blog for joomla site, we need to install some blog extensions. Just refer to http://extensions.joomla.org and search "blog" and it will provide a list of available blog components to work with. Just pick up the best one based your requirements and install it from your joomla backend panel. To install a new component, please follow instructions below to proceed:

Login to joomla site admin panel -> select Extensions -> Install/Uninstall -> Click the Browse button and select the extension package on your local machine -> Click "Upload File & Install" button.

Once installed, you would be able to configure it by following official documentations.

Best Joomla Blog components

If you make a search from extension directory you will see more than 10 pages results for joomla blog. The most popular and latest updates will show up on the first page. Here we'll check out two most popular choice as suggested by joomla site: Easyblog & Joomlablog.

Easyblog is simple and powerful commercial blog extension developped by stackideas site. This software is featured for clean layouts and powerful integration. Easyblog can be used for personal/company blogs and even team blog purpose. It has social plugins included like twitter, facebook, linkedin etc.

• Official site/plan: http://stackideas.com/easyblog/plans
• Demo: http://stackideas.com/demo

JoomBlog is a fully-featured and easy-to-use Joomla component used to set up a blog directory on your web site. It's light weight and fully integrated with your joomla site by using any available functions such as CSS styles. What really makes this component outstanding is its "Free wordpress to joomla" converter. If you have used wordpress and would like to transfer to joomla, this converter will migrate over all articles in few seconds.

Official site: http://www.joomplace.com/joomla-components/joomla-blog-component.html

Why joomla is not suggested for blogging?

As we see from joomla extension directory, most good blog components are commercially provided and it's not cheap to get. You also need to renew license every year in order to keep it alive. While there're lots of great free blog softwares to work with, there's no reason to just pay a lot for just an extension. There're indeed some free blog components but obviously too simple to use and not suitable for professional blog creation.

Another weakness is about site management. Joomla comes with lots of function for various website purpose. However, there's no dedicated setup for blog configuration, any customization will needs to be done via component itself. In case you need to edit source file, you might have to reflect changes from multiple directories. It's absolutely not good choice for start users.

But when you need blog solution on joomla site? It's perfect solution only when you have an existing group site developped by joomla and you need to add blog function to it. For this case, you don't have to manage an extra site but just add a component to existing website structure. It will simplify your website management and maintenance.

Best Blog Software

Wordpress(wordpress.org) is the best choice for dedicated blog site creation. WordPress is used by over 20% global sites by both personal and enterprise groups. You can customize a simple wordpress installation to any kind website using wordpress themes/plugins. By up to date development, wordpress is more than a basic blog platform but a powerful core structure for any kind website creation. You can use wordpress for blog site, CMS site, enterprise site and even ecommerce site purpose.

Another advantage of wordpress is almost 100% web hosting service is compatible with it and most hosting servers are optimized purposely for this software. Some leading hosting providers like webhostinghub and arvixe even proud themselves by providing the best wordpress support.

Fast development of wordpress makes everything possible. While the wordpress was solely used for blog purpose, now you can fully customize it for any website purpose like CMS, Forum and even Ecommerce by various themes and plugins! Is it good idea to use wordpress for ecommerce store? How and what would be the limitation in doing so? This article clears out all your doubts and give your guidance on how to setup ecommerce store in right direction.

Why WordPress for Ecommerce?

Wordpress started as simple and powerful blog platform. Over 10 years development, most functions are greatly improved but its operation panel still ramins the same. It's quite rare from all existing software projects. You might find lots of good reasons to convert a wordpress site to ecommerce store such as

• Simple Setup. Most of the time you just need to add plugins for shopping cart setup.
• Easy management. You don't have to deal with lots of tech stuff from its simple admin panel. Products/clients and payments can be handled quickly from list view.
• SEO friendly. Your product page can be fully setup by following seo guidance with friendly urls. Products uploading is the same process in publishing blog posts.

In a word, it's simple and easy to setup your shopping cart via wordpress based its user friendly admin panel and powerful plugin galleries. Especially when you have very basic requirements for simple store setup such as paid downloading or donation like site, wordpress simplely provides the best solution.

Best WordPress Ecommerce Plugin

There're multiple well rated plugins for wordpress cart site creation, however most of them are commercially provided and actually not cheap to get. We highly suggest check out the WP e-commerce solution which comes with free version to work with. You can pay for premium support and additional fuctions such as payment gateways, spam filters and shipping plugins etc.

Generally speaking, you have to get various plugins in order to setup a full functional ecommerce site with wordpress and almost each plugin is commercial product. The final costs will be pretty high while its started for free.

Best Shopping Cart Solution

As read from above explanation, you finally have to pay for a full functional cart site. Unless you really have to use wordpress for ecommerce site setup, we highly suggest check out the leading shopping cart solutions that're dedicated for ecommerce purpose. Many of them are provided free and addon services are pretty affordable to get. What most important is there're lots of online help resources to check with incase you need guidance for setup as well as for trouble shooting. If you need a professional cart site and keep it in safe hands, a dedicated ecommerce platform is highly recommended. We list out the most popular choice below by editors for your reference

Open Cart(www.opencart.com). Leading open source shopping cart software with php/mysql scripting. Open cart is supported by thousands of communities in different languages. The simple and powerful navigation help with your store setup in few minutes. You can add various free or paid modules to setup a powerful online store. More details can be found on this open cart page.

VirtueMart(virtuemart.net). It's a module of joomla for ecommerce purpose. Although its developed as a module, it has all popular functions included in its design and full functional as a dedicated software. The big advantage using virtuemart is you can make full use of all available joomla features such as content management, user management and newsletter management etc. You can also add blog/forum features to your store for news update and user interaction. More details about this product can be found on this article posting.

Nopcommerce(www.nopcommerce.com). The best open sourced asp.net shopping cart solution. It's programmed by .net and sql server technologies on windows IIS platform. Comparing to other .net cart softwares, nopcommerce is some part new but it got good growth in the past few years in co-operating with leading sponsors and communities. Nopcommerce has frequent updates and new version release based user experience. If you're asp.net developer, you can fully customize it or even create your own products based its core structures. Learn more about from this nopcommerce hosting article.

From side by side comparison, wordpress can not reach the art of above dedicated ecommerce solutions. It might be good for simple store purpose, but once your site grows up, you will have to swtich to other platform. For long term business purpose, we highly recommend above solutions instead wordpress just because of simplity.

This article will give out comparison between Joomla and Drupal – two of the leading cms solutions on internet. Both joomla and drupal are powering millions of personal and enterprise websites for it's safe design and rich templates/module resources. Because you can get most your work done by either solution, sometimes it's hard to determine which one to deal with. Here we compiled a list of pros and cons to both software including code structure, safety, hosting server compatibility and support resource etc. You will get more clear guidance in choosing the right one.

Joomla Introduction

Joomla(www.joomla.org) is one of the oldest open sourced content management solutions which is featured for easy and user friendly. You can use joomla platform for enterprise website, ecommerce site and content management site creation. Joomla comes with a bunch of modules and extensions to help with your website customization. Till today, there're over 1,5000 extensions in its galleries and still add hundreds of new ones per day.

Drupal Introduction

Drupal(www.drupal.org) is dedicated for content management purpose and provided under GPL license. You can use drupal for enterprise website and blog site creation as well as online contents management. Unlike all other content management system, you can assign different user roles via drupal so your data is well protected to avoid unthorized access.

Joomla vs Drupal -for Ease of use

Joomla wins for ease of use comparing to drupal. Joomla comes with powerful GUI design and easy navigations to each functions. You can customize the global configurations via mouse clicking and few typing from admin panel. Most features can be turned on/off directly by ajax control thus you don't have to go to code behind to make changes. From admin panel you are able to manage website templates, install/uninstall modules & extensions, monitor user activties, publish/unpublish articles. In a word, you can complete over 90% works there without having to touch the code behind.

Drupal is some kind complex to play around. Drupal is simple to navigate but you don't have too much options to make further customization. The drupal wins on code structure where you can configure different user roles so each user can only manage their own stuff but not affect others. It's a little hard to setup your site just by default installation because of the simplicity. You need to play a lot from code behind and make lots of changes to fulfill your needs. On this point, you have to be a developer or programmer in order to use drupal in the best way. Developers and make full use of the core platforms for any website creation.

Joomla vs Drupal – Online support resource

Joomla wins too for online resources. Joomla is supported by lots of communities from each corner in the world by multiple languages. It's available in English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, French and more. You can find your local support community easily no matter where you're located. Besides all those supports, there're also lots of joomla modules/extensions to customize the platform for different website purpose. Most of the time, when you pick up a template, it has everything included so you don't have to search for extra extensions. For example if you find an ecommerce template it comes with products management, customer management and billing management. It's almost a full functional store so what you need to do is to upload products and setup payment gateways to accept online orders.

On the other hand, drupal is mainly supported by its official forum where most people are developers. They discuss on how to add custom codes for various functions because very limited tasks can be done through GUI operation. The module and template resources for drupal are also very limited so if you're not familiar coding, drupal would not be perfect choice for your website development.

Joomla vs Drupal – Hosting Server compatibility

Both joomla and drupal are php/mysql powered software thus most hosting servers should work properly. However, the latest Joomla(3.1) and Drupal(8) works with PHP5.3+ and Mysql5.0+ only. Means if you're going to take advantages of the newest software release, you must find a decent hosting provider who can meet up with all basic requirements. Who provides leading hosting solutions for joomla and drupal? We highly recommend WebhostingHub and Arvixe for small to large size website hosting.

Webhostinghub(www.webhostinghub.com) is leading in webserver speed and code security. Their max speed zone configuration on two datacenters will drive your website in most possible fast speed. They never oversell their server space so you can always expect the same performance on website unless you have outgrew their service. Only $3.99 to start with and you can enjoy 120% faster speed than most other shared hosting service!

Arvixe(www.arvixe.com) is your best choice if you require affordable and feature-rich hosting solution. Arvixe will provide you free domain registration and unlimited mysql databases. Their support genius have deeply optimized their hosting servers based joomla and drupal tech requirements and have done great pressure testing to make sure their servers be able to handle medium size websites in right direction. If we sign up arvixe 2 years upfront, we can enjoy 30% discount for only $2.8/mo!

Joomla vs Drupal – Best practice

We have created websites on both joomla and drupal platforms since 2007. Our sites vary from blog to enterprise site and ecommerce stores. From our personal experience, both solutions are great depends your management skills. Joomla is highly suggested if you would like to setup website in quick time and don't want to deal with lots of coding customization. Instead, if you're doing web development for clients and need to deal with various requirements, drupal would be perfect choice because you can edit code behind directly without having to start everything from beginning.

Virtuemart Overview

VirtueMart is an Open Source E-Commerce solution (a Component or Plug-in) for the Joomla Content Management System. It can be run as a Shopping Cart or in Catalog mode. Both Joomla and Virtuemart are free for download and use. Joomla provides the Core System for VirtueMart so we can easily use a complete shopping cart solution together with many other components/Modules like Forums, FAQ, Guestbooks etc.

Virtuemart is a powerful shopping cart solution that work with unlimited products and most payment gateways. Especially when we like to integrate the cart with our enterprise website without dealing all other technical issues, virtuemart is perfect choice. Virtuemart is actually the best choice when you're CMS friendly developer.

Best Virtuemart hosting

As virtuemart is part of Joomla, the best virtuemart web hosting provider are mainly referring to a decent joomla hosting service. Arvixe is primary recommendation for the best virtuemart hosting provider by us. Not only because of their affordable & 100% virtuemart compatible hosting plans, arvixe offers a bunch of bonus for virtuemart shopping cart purpose. With only $4/mo we get Joomla auto installer from cpanel as well as development tech support. The arvixe hosting server is optimized to work the best with virtuemart.

Arvixe virtuemart hosting advantages

• Free domain name for life
• Multiple domain hosting supported
• 99% server uptime guaranteed
• 60 Days money back guaranteed
• 24×7 tech support for virtuemart!

We personally used this cart for hobby with arvixe and tried to install virtueMart on Arvixe hosting server. The process is simple and fast. If you're still looking hard for the best virtuemart hosting solution, we highly recommend you check out arvixe. With 60 days money back guarantee and trusted by over 150,000 global clients, arvixe hosting can be used for your shopping cart site with zero risk.

In case you need more options to choose from, we collected the TOP 5 virtuemart hosting providers that will work with most website requirements. Just take a look then determine the best one for you.

#1 Arvixe Arvixe is selected the best virtuemart hosting. Arvixe linux hosting plans are fully virtuemart compatible with multiple plans to choose from. Arvixe virtuemart hosting comes with 24/7 tech support, 99.9% Uptime & 60 Days Money Back Guarantee! 20% official discount is offered by yearly registration! Read arvixe reviews.

#2 Siteground Siteground is another recommended virtuemart hosting provider for excellent customer support and afforable hosting plans. Besides all traditional hosting features, siteground designed very good tutorial for Joomla & Virtuemart. They setup multiple datacenters to ensure your website best performance everywhere in the world. Read siteground review.

#3 Inmotion Inmotion Hosting is rated the best for their server speed and no overselling policy. By offering $24 discount for yearly purchase, their service is never expensive as people talked about before. Further infomation about inmotion speed could be found on this fast web hosting article.

#4 Hostgator Hostgator is TOP 10 largest hosting provider and offers 100% virtuemart compatible hosting plans. Trusted by 10 millions global sites, hostgator is recognized as honest and stable web hosting provider. Their service is also industry standards followed by many hosting companies. Make sure to claim this hostgator 25% discount coupon!

#5 Bluehost Bluehost is 100% virtuemart compatible hosting provider that has been offering reliable hosting services since 2001. The coolhandle business is grown up not by advertising everywhere but by customers' mouth!

Virtuemart Installation process

To install VirtueMart on an existing Joomla website, you need to install the core Virtuemart component and module. The installation steps are easy and intuitive. There's a good documentaion on this official page. http://docs.virtuemart.net/tutorials/30-installation-migration-upgrade-vm-2/80-installation-of-virtuemart-2

Once the installation complete, from Joomla Administrator, go to Components -> VirtueMart and click on the [Go directly to Store] button then start to build your store!

Virtuemart advantages over other shopping cart solutions

Virtuemart is developed as component of Joomla CMS while most other shopping cart softwares are working indepenently like Opencart, zencart or oscommerce. Therefore we don't have to make lots of changes if we just want to have a store on existing website. Being a Joomla component, virtuemart never failed to offer outstanding ecommerce solutions for either personal store or enterprise shopping cart purpose. It comes with following outstanding spotligts

• With meta tags for seo
• Short and long description
• Unlimited child products and derivated levels
• Product pattern (Parent product used as pattern for child products)
• Reviews and ratings
• Completly anonymous checkout
• Add your own currencies for fixed currency rates
• Ddiscounts based on time, category, shoppergroup, country, and state
• Tax based on time, category, shoppergroup, country, and state
• Discounts, tax have their own currencies (for duties)
• Multi-language packages support
• Paypal, SystemPay, Payzen, Klarna, Cash on delivery included
• 1 click checkout
• Order tracking for anonymous users

Virtuemart resources:

• Virtuemart Official: http://virtuemart.net/
• Virtuemart Extensions: http://extensions.virtuemart.net/
• Virtuemart Templates: http://www.virtuemarttemplates.net/

Please note that you can extend your VirtueMart shop using Plugins, Components, Templates and Modules!