Joomla! Forum - community, help and support

So I am looking for some unbiased advice here, hopefully with some pros and cons of each.

I am building a multi-user blog that will need front-end submission and all the usual stuff, admin approval, social network pinging, comments with (reCpatcha or equivalent, maybe even akimset and the like?), nice layout and design, etc.

Here's what I have been considering and my thoughts.

MyBlog - i have used it, it seems good, I dont like the weird blog menu that appears above the blog, not wild about the templates.

EasyBlog - seems like more features than MyBlog which is a plus. Also dont like the weird blog menu but I think it can be turned off. It says it has lots of templates but I cant see them before I buy. I can customize templates but it would be nice to have something very close to what I want to save time. How easy is EasyBlog to customize?

K2 - Might take a long time to set it up the way I like it. Their blog demo is looking nice these days, but I wonder if that template is available? I think it probaby isnt. Aain I can make my own but it is time consuming. Also, K2 doesnt have trackback or pingbacks unless you pay so its not free anyway with what I want to have. (http://demo.getk2.org/item this layout looks clean and very nice to me)

Zoo - Nice and clean layout, I wonder what features there are though? Hard to see it all without installing and spending a day playing with it.

Some things I want to consider:

-I dont want users to be able to make up whatever tags they want, I ant to have a defined set of tags and they pick from them. This would be ideal for me, but its not a deal breaker if the blogging component doesnt have it.

-I am using a YooTheme template, so Zoo will fit right in, but not sure about all the features.

-I have been leaning toward EasyBlog but I am concerned about the look and layout of it.

So, anyone built a user blog and how did it go? What did you use?

Thanks.

Am I in the wrong section with this? Over 800 views and not a single reply, I know there is interest or it would be clicked so much.

Anyone got any opinions on this?

I have used K2 and EasyBlog. Both of them allow us to submit articles from front-end. I have seen some blogs created from K2 before and yes, I like their clean designs, too. Such as http://www.joomlablogger.net/ and http://brian.teeman.net/

However, we choose EasyBlog for a blog which is easy to build -> http://www.joomlashine.com/blog.html . It is quite easy to customize EasyBlog and the support team there is enthusiastic.

Yeah I am goign to go with EasyBlog I think. I have spent some time over the past couple days trying to get Yoo Zoo to be a decent user blog. Frontend submission work ok but there often seems to be problems with various elements.

For example, having the blog author (who must be logged in to even submit a blog) be a field you can enter in the blog post is a bit problematic. Especially when the button you press to add an author to an article doesnt work.

It might be a good CCK but the documentation is pretty lacking, and the support is hardly support at all. You can post questions on their support system and it will go days and days with no answer. I plan to use ZOO for a different project on this website but for the blog, looks like EasyBlog is my choice.

In our opinion, EasyBlog's support is good - Fast, helpful and dedicated

Easy Blog is good, but I think it creates lots of duplicate urls.
I would recommenced K2. It comes with all the blog features; yet free.

Moreover, templating and integrating it with social and many other extensions K2 is much easier.

Don't overlook doing it without any extensions - the Joomla core does a very nice job, the only thing you really need is a comments plugin and there are a few available. We've done quite a few this way, although only for our own staff, it shouldn't be any different to allow other users to add to it.

Craig

almamun wrote:Easy Blog is good, but I think it creates lots of duplicate urls.
I would recommenced K2. It comes with all the blog features; yet free.

Moreover, templating and integrating it with social and many other extensions K2 is much easier.

EasyBlog doesn't actually generate duplicate URLs (Not sure if you are using the latest version) but even if it does, there's still canonical URLs that is being added

But yes, K2 is a fine component too (in my opinion)

Great Thread! so I don't need to test them one by one.

An article about Joomla blog extensions for your choice: http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2PvUE0/ww ... d-one.html

I prefer Easy Blog , because i am used to it, but maybe it is not the best...

I concur, Easy Blog would be my first choice as well..

Another vote for EasyBlog here. Have used K2 and other blogging extensions, and prefer EasyBlog over all of them.

PolishedGeek wrote:Another vote for EasyBlog here. Have used K2 and other blogging extensions, and prefer EasyBlog over all of them.

Me too

I think zoo is the most suitable !

I think is K2.

I personally like Easy Blog. Here are its top features:

- Support multiple bloggers in one EasyBlog extension
- Blog remotely from Windows LiveWriter, ScribeFire or MarsEdit
- Migrate blogs from Joomla articles, My Blog, K2 or Wordpress
- Bundles with built-in blog comment system; supports Facebook Comments
- Share blogs to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and more
- Manage images, files and other medias with group media sharing
- Display news from other websites/blogs via feed imports
- Post blogs from Gmail or Yahoo! Mail to appear in EasyBlog

I have used; MyBlog, EasyBlog, K2. I have complaints from these and my overall experience is appreciable.