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Integrate wordpress Blog In Joomla Website

wordpress and joomlaFor many the choice between Joomla! and WordPress comes down to personal knowledge. Many people will be inclined to stick with one or the other when it comes to website design simply because they spent so much time learning and perfecting the software and don’t want to bother to learn the other. Joomla! in particular has a fairly steep learning curve for the novice or part time programmer. For those already well versed in WordPress and simple PHP Joomla! may not take quite as long to get the hang of.

We have been using Joomla! primarily for website developement because of the advantages it offers with regard to content display. The main problem we have run into is that it does not offer a robust blogging system that can come close to the speed, flexibility, and robustness of WordPress. To remedy the situation we have learned how to completely integrate WordPress into a Joomla! website installation so that you can get the best of both worlds!

Before getting into detail about how this is done it’s important to understand exactly what Joomla! and WordPress should are best at. For basic sites or Blogger only sites one may not even need to bother with Joomla! as WordPress has evolved into a fairly sophisticated CMS in it’s own right, however it still is not as complete in this regard as Joomla!

joomla blogJoomla! is probably the best CMS (content management system) available to designers today. Because it is open source it has support from thousands of talented programmers that have added to the core functionality of Joomla! in what seems to be a never ending variety fo ways. Joomla! is a module based templated CMS platform. This is where it shines over WordPress as Content can be placed in any of the preset module positions that are designed for both static and dynamic content. There are many pre-made templates available for free that allow unbelievable flexibility in the way that content can be displayed through your web portal.

joomla administrationAdditional functionality such as community management, message boards, ecommerce, rating systems, twitter interations, facebook integrations, etc.. are all very simple upgrades for a Joomla! installation. Once one fully understands the incredible power of the CMS platform, the ease with which it is manipulated and added to is incredible. Designers are free to make custom templates and easily port WordPress or basic HTML websites into Joomla! templates. All of these features mentioned are free to anyone with the time and the talent to learn how to master Joomla!

Joomla!, for all it’s great flexibility still has some shortcomings. One of the most obvious shortcomings is it’s inability to produce a serious blogging platform that would rival WordPress. There are several plugins available that try to provide blogging integration for Joomla, but the only one that even attempts to rival WordPress is still in beta and is not free.

wordrpress blogWordPress has long been known to be the king of blogging software. Many people today use WordPress to manage their entire website. WordPress is complete capable of being used in this way. In the future we expect that WordPress will be developed to rival Joomla! in it’s ability to be used as a complete and fully functional CMS. For the time being WordPress is limited in it’s ability to fully function as a dynamic web portal in the way that Joomla! is. Today one can setup a complete website designed using wordpress software complete with static web pages and Blogging functionality, even ecommerce and more. WordPress is faster and more lightweight that Joomla! which is always a plus for a web design. When it comes to a fully functional Blogging system there is no match… WordPress is king.

If you are looking to build yourself a small site or one that is geared specifically toward being a Blog, then this article may not be for you since a pure WordPress installation will be just fine for your needs. If you require the full functionality of Joomla! for your website deign, but still want to have the power of WordPress Bloggings software integrated into your website design… then please read on!

The best part of both Joomla! and WordPress is that they are both free open source software. Anyone with the skills to master the software can design stunning websites completely free of charge. This is why both of these softwares are so popular around the world today.

wordpress administration

There are many plugins that will provide blogging features for a Joomla! website, but some people require more!

In order to install WordPress onto a Joomla! installation we recommend installing the software into a subdirectory such as yourwebsite.com/blog. This will ensure that none of your Joomla! files will be conflicting with the WordPress files.

Once the WordPress files are complety installed simply continue to setup the WordPress installation as you would any normal WordPress install.

Now you will have access to the WordPress blog by visiting your blog URL at mywebsite.com/blog. You can customize the WordPress template through your admin section of your WordPress installation. Customizing the WordPress installation to match your Joomla! website may be the most challenging part for people that are not well versed in PHP code and website design. You may need the assistance of a professional in order to exactly match the WordPress template to your Joomla! website template. For an experiened website designer however, this will only take a short while to complete. If you need assistance with this please contact us. We will write a tutorial on how to completely customize the default WordPress template to match ANY Joomla! template in the near future. In the meantime please contact us directly if you need asssistance.

Once the WordPress installation has been made to look like the rest of your website (by modifying the header.php,index.php,footer.php,single.php, and comments.php files in the WordPress themes folder) you simply have to link the mywebsite.com/blog URL as an external link in your Joomla! menu.

Now you have the best of both worlds. A Joomla! website that is completely integrated with a powerful WordPress blog.

You can customize the WordPress blog with your favorite widgets and plugins just as you would any other WordPress installation. We highly recommend submitting a second Sitemap to Google Webmaster tools for your Blog since you will already have one for your main Joomla! website content.

Sit back and start enjoying the benefits of a well optimized website and powerful Blogging software which will help you in your efforts of dominating your market!

Example Joomla/WordPress Blog Integrations:

  • http://www.burnseo.com/blog
  • http://fivestarsmortgage.com/blog
  • http://www.nfmmortgage.com/blog
  • http://www.harddmoneyloans.com/blog


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This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 11:47 AM and is filed under tips and tricks, tutorials, website design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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  • Stuart
    I have a wordpress plugin that will import your joomla menu into a sidebar. Obviously this falls short of a full integration (users and search) but it is perfect as an add-on the approach taken in this article.
    The widget can be downloaded here:
    http://www.neonengine.com/repository?func=fileinfo&id=25

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  • great written article... Thanks for sharing this post.
  • Thanks for this post, it is brilliant written, easy to understand and to put in practice. :)
  • Congratulations to your successfull integration of Disqus with Wordpress blog on a Joomla site. I've been trying myself and it works, but not good enough. Nice blog though.
  • rrandr
    Hi,

    Once I integrate the wordpress into joomla like you suggest (as an external link) - how would I make the "headlines" or recent entries from my blog page appear on on my Joomla front page? In other words, i want to create a small frame on my main page that contains recent blog post headings only and users can click on that and it will take you to the main blog page. I notice you did this on yoru web site and some of the other sample sites also have this. Is this difficult to do / requires a lot of hacking ?
    Thanks so much for the great post and your help in understanding this.
  • Stuart
    use the rss feed from the wordpress site and a feed reader module on your joomla frontpage.
  • starnova
    Wow..what a great resource for someone that is looking to do this very thing..Me. I am not the most experienced in either Joomla or Wordpress however I have the time to invest to get the result I want. I am going to make a fun for all site with polls, games, and a lot of things. I had a site for 10 years and just want to have fun now. This is the Bomb!
  • The article is good as it gives information about Joomla - WordPress integration websites which is very useful.I like the article and hope to see more of such articles.
  • Mark Fuss
    When will the tutorial on how to completely customize the default Wordpress template to match ANY Joomla! template be completed? I am not very familiar with php, but I have a Joomla site and I would like to be able to easily integrate WordPress for free.
  • When this post was first published back in August, at the time WordPress (The CorePHP plugin) was still the best option for a blog for Joomla.

    However recently I have been testing out the new version of K2 for Joomla and it's truly amazing to use as a blog for Joomla. The options for customization are fantastic and in fact I am now using it for all kinds of content on my Joomla sites now in development.
  • Great post. I do have a question however: does a joomla user logged in on joomla site can post a comment on wordpress part of the site without logging in again?
  • I want to integrate Wordpress into Joomla.
  • Good article. I also use joomla for client sites and integrate wordpress for the blog but as you will see by my own blog, I decided to use joomla mostly as an seo experiment. I will be interested to read more on the joomla/wordpress subject in your future posts. Cheers. C
  • Did you use the same database for Joomla and Wordpress?
  • Sue
    We used Joomla! for our site, and Wordpress for the blog. Is there an easy way to get the blog content searchable on the main site?
    .-= Sue´s last blog ..Job Opportunities in your Inbox =-.
  • I love your articles, I have been checking out your site over the past few months, and I really like the content here. This is a great article. I think your design is excellent!!
  • thanks, I really liked the post!
  • Rafael Corral
    To me it comes down to the quality of solution I would want to provide to my clients and to the users of my clients. As Brian points out, as a user you only want one login per site otherwise your site has a usability problem. With $79 bucks you can have WordPress integrated in Joomla, automatically applies the styles of your site, as well as the menu, modules, etc. Users are seamlessly integrated as well with the WordPress dashboard. You can then go as far as getting AdminPraise2 which will make you feel like you are truly using a solution that combines WordPress and Joomla.
  • Brian
    I have to agree with Dan in regards to the CorePHP Joomla plug-in. While it's fairly simple to theme out WP to match your joomla template, what this "free" method does not do is integrate the database tables for the "users" between the two platforms. So, if you have something on your joomla site that requires users to log-in before they can comment on something (i.e.: a photo gallery plug-in, etc...) they will have to register on your website twice - once for the joomla login and once for the wordpress blog. When you use the corephp plug-in all that goes away because they have already taken care to "hack" wordpress to work from your joomla user directory - which is very nice.

    The downside to this however is that you loose the "speed" that wordpress is known for because it's loading inside Joomla. But it's not a huge difference on most systems.
  • A very nice niche blog, and a good design there sparks Simplicity yet complex algorithm of the internet. Thanks man You rock
  • Seth
    Hello, I am currently working on a website for a friend and I'm almost done with the theme integration, but I hit a snag. The Main menu... It will be the only menu in the blog taken from Joomla and I don't really know how to integrate it. Do I just install Wordpress into the same MySQL database as Joomla so I can integrate the functionality of: ? Ineed this site up ASAP and that's the last part.
  • Seth,
    you just have to put the code for the menu into the wordpress PHP files. You edit the header.php of your Wordpress theme with the menu and other header details. Put the body of the website into the index.php of the wordpress theme. Put the footer info into the footer.php files of the wordpress theme. You can stick the sidebar call in the index.php file probably with the rest of the content.

    If this is confusing please shoot me an email or his me up on chat and I'll walk you through it.
  • Joomla Develpor
    Really it is new for me. I never heard about this me. Thanks for such a post.
  • Mark, this is a nice overview of SEF and CorePHP / WordPress for Joomla:

    http://vimeo.com/5618897

    Dan
  • Thanks for the post. I currently have a website that uses the corephp wordpress component. When I set joomla to SEO friendly URLs my wordpress blog no longer filters categories. Any idea why?
  • thank you! I really liked this post!
  • joomla themes
    Really awesome post about joomla themes. A+ to this post. thanks for posting.ly awesome post about joomla themes. A+ to this post. thanks for posting.
  • Zmurringo
    Good work, it is much pleasure to read your interesting posts
    regards zmurringo
  • John, agreed, K2 is really nice I had tried a beta a while back and it wasn't quite ready for prime time but I believe many of the bugs have been worked out. Also nice from JoomlaWorks is Super Blogger.
  • Frudo
    Hello Chris,

    You have done nice job.I like you way to integrate Wordpress Blog into Zoomla.I agree with your ideas.
  • I have been playing with the new K2 component (http://k2.joomlaworks.gr/) for joomla 1.5. It actually seems like a very promising alternative to having to embed wordpress into joomla. Being a joomla component, K2 will use the template that you have chosen for your site, so there are no extra modifications necessary.
    .-= John Serra´s last blog ..Windows Dosya İndirme Penceresi =-.
  • Nice job Chris. You are exactly right about the fact that Joomla is the ultimate website tool. It is really something that improves the user interaction with the website but can be difficult to work with if you aren't quite advanced with its features and coding languages.

    However, Wordpress is mainly a blogging CMS but simplier to use. But when placed together, it can become a major player. Nice article. Passing it along.
  • nice template, good job.. i also doing template in joomla and its fun working with it..
  • This is the first free method I've seen that integrates a Wordpress Blog into Joomla.
  • I actually use the CorePHP component on a few sites and it literally saves me hours of coding and customization. As I mentioned it's a one click install that gives you a WordPress full install and theme which inherits the look and feel of your Joomla site.

    For me the 89.00 is well worth it and it works great, you have the WordPress interface right inside the Joomla admin after a click of the mouse, you never need to leave Joomla to do anything in WordPress.

    The Joomla admin user is immediately recognized as the WordPress admin right after installation.
  • Dan,

    There are a couple of pay modules for Joomla that will integrate Wordpresss such as the one you mentioned. They all require customization to make them integrate with your Joomla website anyway. Why not just do it yourself for free!

    From the site you linked: Note: Most themes will need some edits to work inside of Joomla!
  • For true Joomla - WordPress integration, I like using a Joomla 1.5 component from CorePHP http://tr.im/viBP which actually integrates users as well as look and feel with a one click install, it's that simple. It's well worth the 89 bucks, save yourself some time and effort.
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