Using Joomla

Blog: Blogging Functionality Built In

• Extension: N/A (built into Joomla)

• Cost: Free

• License: GNU/GPL

Of all of the extensions we’re spotlighting here, this is the only one that’s actually built into Joomla. In recent years, blogging has only increased exponentially and blogs even sometimes blur the lines of what we’ve come to understand as writing a “web log.”

There are one or two extensions out there that add blogging functionality to Joomla, but we feel they’re not worth the cost since you can blog in Joomla without them. Joomla has three menu types that will facilitate this functionality:

Category Blog Layout

This menu type displays the intro text of articles that are in a given category.

Section Blog Layout

This menu type displays the intro text of articles that are in a given section.

Front Page Blog Layout

This menu type displays the intro text of articles that have been flagged to show on the front page.

Most often, you would choose to use the Category Blog Layout menu type.

By default, the articles will display the most recent article first. This is how blogs are typically ordered. The only settings we feel you should consider changing are the numbers in the Parameters (Basic) section:

#Leading: 0

This would show X number of full articles at full-page width. We prefer not to show full articles on this page since they can be very long. Setting this to 0 just tells Joomla to disable this feature.

#Intro: 5

Depending on your site, 5–10 usually works best. This tells Joomla how ...