I am putting together a plan to setup multiple blog-ish sites and I would love to use Joomla, BUT I have the following reservations:

-Joomla Still doesnt have Tags, Multiple Categories for a content item as a standard feature.
-SEF is still as riddiculous as ever to implement
-Multiple Banners (controlled through Banner Component) are still not a standard feature

I love joomla, but I think some of these little things have to quickly be taken care of, or else people might start turning to other CMS's just to get minor features.

Such is life.

I think the mnor features can be found as add ons. Of which there are tons.

I think Joomla! has got the balance right. The developers have looked at what are the most common features, and have incorpoated those in the basic package. Why force upon users a ton of features that few are going to need?

Steve F J wrote:I think the mnor features can be found as add ons. Of which there are tons.

I think Joomla! has got the balance right. The developers have looked at what are the most common features, and have incorpoated those in the basic package. Why force upon users a ton of features that few are going to need?

The problem comes in when you want to deploy multiple sites, and have to not only install loads of plugins, but also manually adjust settings agian and again... 

I would like to know who doesnt want Tag capabilities? Who is content with the single section/category setup ? Who doesn't want Standard SEF? And even if there are some who dont want it.. the features could be enabled or disabled like everything else.

You make it sound like it is just so simple to implement...

Why don't you tell us all what the best way to get all that easily is?

Asphyx wrote:You make it sound like it is just so simple to implement...

Why don't you tell us all what the best way to get all that easily is?

Your Right....  check out:
http://tagschema.com/blogs/tagschema/

I guess there are alot of considerations to make when putting together a new element of any CMS... but nonetheless the fact that we dont have them yet causes for me to have reservations. 

You want tags then here is what you do....

do a search for any TAG you might like on your Joomla site...
Say you want a listing of all content based on author....

Do a search for the author in question...
when the search page is finished loading you copy the location bar link and then create a new menu item static URL with that address in it...

Instant tag!

What you want in the way you want it requires a complete redesign of the schema...
Thats not something that can't happen but until someone actually can write the code and design the schema that can do it you won't see it!

Point I was making was it is easy to say we should do this...
what is hard is actually doing it!

Those are YOUR requirements don't make the mistake of thinkning your requirements are what everybody needs.

This is why there are add-ons.

Look at the vast range of components, modules, and mambots available. Each person who wrote them, and the people who use them rate them as indespensible "should be in the core".

Imagine how huge and slow (and slow the development would be) if the core team also had to add in your requirments and everyone elses?

OpenSEF like com built in, phpAdsNew like com built in, additional tag properties builtin, photo gallery builtin, community builtin, forums built in.

no one would use it, it would be rubbish.

The way it is now you can choose what suits you, and which implementation suits your needs for you.

This is the best way.

MOD EDIT (unixboymd) - Edited for language

Apologies, where I come from that word isn't considered bad language, won't use it again

Maybe best place to put that suggestion is on the "Wishlist" forum? I've lobbed a few suggestions in there too, all in the hope that Joomla! keeps moving fast-forward.  Hard to believe it's only a year old, and already spread faster than a rumor at a Rotary meeting.

Phil Taylor has a nice tags component on sale, you can see it working on his (or my) site..
There's quite a few SEF solutions around.
If you're worried about multiple site, make one local install which you update, then synch with the live sites.
Don't use banners much, so no idea about that.

For my blogging purposes I have switched to wordpress. I worked on a script to help move posts from Joomla to Wordpress 2.3.2

If anyone is interested:
http://azeemkhan.info/2008/joomla2wordp ... wizard-v3/

P.S. i did not give up on Joomla, I still think Joomla is better for full blown websites esp for non-profits and continue to use it for that purpose.

But for blogging purposes it just wasn't cutting it.

Just so you know, since one of your concerns was deploying the same extensions over and over to several sites... you must not have found JoomlaPack or JoomCloner.

These are methods of taking a standard installation with several add-ons, and deploying instantly to new locations.  All the settings, database, etc goes with it.  Unlimited duplication.

Azeem wrote:I am putting together a plan to setup multiple blog-ish sites and I would love to use Joomla, BUT I have the following reservations:

You want multi-blogging sites in one install. I think you are using the wrong version. Wordpress is really only meant to be for single users (even though there is a role permission). You should be looking at http://mu.wordpress.org/

yeah you guys are right about group blogging and deployment of multiple installs.

But one of the points I made in this post was that features that are standard in other CMS's you have to jump through hoops to setup on joomla. Especially when it comes to features a blogger would want to have standard i.e. Tags, RSS feeds that can show images and yes even youtube embeds! SEO built in! Wordpress is a pleasure to work with in this regard.

Its not that something like SEO cant be done in Joomla, Artio has worked well for me.

Again as I said before Joomla is great for Organizations, non-profits, Companies etc, but not for bloggers.

I also have had a very good experience with Community Builder for building a membership based portal.