Western Folklife Center: Joomla 1.5
Published May 17, 2011 | 
Western Folklife Center is a long-time client. When they first approached us in 2007, they were working with a store system that couldn’t handle their orders, using a content management solution that didn’t work for their needs and had trouble making any edits to their site.
We helped them evaluate open-source alternatives, plan a project to update their web site of over 900 pages, and migrated their web management system to Joomla 1.0 with VirtueMart for their store solution. Since then, we have updated their site to Joomla 1.5 and added a wide range of resources including Google Analytics, custom web forms and custom templates for both their main and their Cowboy Poetry Gathering microsite.
The Western Folklife Center site is a good size site; over 850 pages, multiple integrated systems, 3 custom templates, photo galleries, forms systems and VirtueMart. Also, a microsite within Joomla that uses Joomla’s multiple template capabilities.
Western Folklife Center is a really cool non-profit organization; they help archive, celebrate and store the folklore of the western United States. Their site includes cowboy poetry, exhibits, artwork, podcasts, radio shows and more. Go check ‘em out! They are one of our on-going clients who has a contract with us for maintenance and management.
Posted in Portfolio | 
Google Analytics, Joomla, Web Marketing, Website Analytics, Website Tracking | 
Leave a commentWhen to pick WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or another web system?
Published November 17, 2010 | There are so many Open Source systems for websites out there, that I thought I would take a moment to explain a bit about when to pick each one, they all have their strengths and weaknesses, pros and cons. There isn’t one “solves it all” type system, so if someone is telling you that, its because they would rather work with what they know, than what you need…
We’ll talk about a few of the big boys here (WordPress, Joomla and Drupal being the most obvious), and a few of the up-and-coming (ModX and Concrete5) here. Basically, when selecting an open source system to run your website there are several things to take into consideration:
- What does your site need to do for visitors? What features do you need, like a store, or login system?
- Who will manage the site? How much will ease of use impact them?
- What growth can you anticipate? What features might you want down the road?
- How important is custom design and layout?
If you want a site that primarily communicates to visitors, provides information, you are not too concerned with additional features, like a web store, mailing lists, forums or providing custom information to a selected group, then that’s one set of requirements, if you need a site that provides login, user accounts and gives people information customized just for them (like a site that looks up account information for them), that’s a whole other set of needs. Throw design and layout control into it, and it can be hard to pick the right system.
Picking the wrong system can hamstring your web site functionality, cost you $1000′s and delay you significant calendar time. As with most of our posts, if you would like some help, just contact us. We do requirements gathering and analysis, and can help make sure you pick the right system.
Here’s our take on a few different systems – don’t get caught listening to a technophile who loves one particular system and thinks it can be used to solve every problem. That’s not reality.
WordPress: Fantastic blogging system that’s got a bit of content management to it and literally thousands upon thousands of plugins, themes and extensions that allow it to do more. At its core, WordPress is designed to do one thing and to do it very well, manage a blog. Its concepts and design from the ground up is focused on managing posts and communicating about posts. It does that exceptionally well, and if that’s the core of what you want, posting information in a blog structure, WordPress is your platform, hands down. If you want something else, like control over page organization, user control to limit access to areas by group, changes in how information is presented, or a site that’s not generally “blog-feeling” then using WordPress to do it can get complicated and feel like a hack. For ease-of-use in setup, WordPress is a good pick. They’ve made plugin management and site management simple enough for a novice, but with that ease of use, comes limitations; its very hard to make WordPress do stuff differently. If you expect to run a site that communicates information, where posts can serve as news updates, you don’t mind that information model, and ease-of-use is a factor, go with WordPress.
Drupal: This is a *great* content management system and its track record is undeniable. Large scale sites like whitehouse.gov (yep, them), economist.com (yes that one) and fastcompany.com (no? Ok, so you’re not a business geek) run Drupal. It performs well, has an excellent cache system that sustains performance on large scale sites, has against 1000′s of extensions and has user-access control that can be find-tuned to allow person A to edit this set of pages, and person B to edit those without touching each other’s work. But the interface is confusing, the information model is challenging, and you need to understand code and website basics to install themes and extensions. In short, its a professional’s CMS. You can have someone set it up for you, but unless you know what model-view-controller (MVC) is and know how to link a CSS file to a PHP template file, you’re likely going to have trouble upgrading, extending or re-skinning it. Its a favorite or us freelancers who set sites up for clients, because content entry can be easy enough, and its very flexible, powerful and robust. If you expect to run a large-scale community site, need customizations, user access control, a powerful system that can handle large-scale sites, and you anticipate having good tech skills, go with Drupal.
Joomla: For a long time, Joomla was our “favorite” content management system at Techivity/VorpalJack and with good reason. Joomla bridges ease-of-use between Drupal and WordPress, provides good site control over things like menus and objects on a page. The template system is easier to customize than WordPress, the administration interface is more intelligible than Drupal, and there are again 1000′s of extensions and templates out there. Again, it does have weaknesses. It has a limited user-access model, so its very hard to control access to content items or other resources on a user or group basis. The plugin and extension management system, while easier than the one in Drupal, is much harder than the one in WordPress. Performance-wise it does well enough, but its not tested on the large-scale sites the way Drupal is – but ease-of-use…well, I’ve had clients whose computer skills were very limited managing their sites in Joomla. If you need a content management system that provides more customized ways to organize and present information that WordPress, is easy enough for the uninitiated, and you are not concerned about controlling information by user, Joomla is a great choice.
Here are a few of the up-and-coming cms and website systems. As a whole, the issue with this group is that there’s not enough community support yet to have the quality and breadth of extensions:
ModX: A great content-management system with really health engineering design, careful management, and next-gen tools, ModX is a bit confusing (like Drupal) on the admin side unless you code websites, then its a dream come true. Uses Smarty for its template system, so if you don’t know what that is, you won’t be skinning it. ModX is a good choice if you’re hacking together a website for a client that is a basic site, but has to be custom organized, and its a great choice as a foundation for acustom system.
Concrete5: Much like ModX but a bit easier to use, Concrete5 is a wonderful cross between open source and commercial. The core system is free, but you can buy extensions right in the admin interface. Its easier to use than ModX and Drupal, maybe even easier than Joomla, but its speed and performance comes into question on sites with higher traffic, so be wary of choosing it for a major site. Again, a great system to hash something together for a client.
Ok, there’s a perspective. Come talk to us if you want advice.
Linking WordPress, Facebook Pages and Twitter
Published February 24, 2010 | This is an incredibly long blog post that shows how to link a Facebook Page to Twitter, and a WordPress Blog to a Facebook Page so that when you update your blog, it automatically updates your Facebook Page and your Twitter account.
I had to do something similar for a client and decided it was cool enough to want to do a blog post about how to do this.
This took a lot of experimenting to because there are so many different WordPress plugins and options to connect WordPress to Facebook or Twitter. Honestly, I think this is probably the easiest way. Here are the requirements that I followed:
- Easy to learn and use, neither I nor my clients have lots of time to invest.
- Automatically update a Facebook Page and Twitter from WordPress
- Not update my personal Facebook profile, just my Facebook Page.
Seems simple enough, right? It wasn’t. I think because of the number of plugins and options available.
So, here’s what I did, with what I hope are fairly simple screenshots and steps to help those of you along inclined to do this. Of course, if you want some professional help, feel free to contact or call me (801-274-8490 is the office line 
.
These instructions are for linking a Facebook Page to Twitter, and then a blog to your Facebook Page. They are more oriented for a small business owner than for a personal blog. If you don’t have a Facebook Page, and you want one, check out the post on creating a Facebook Page.
First, get your Facebook Page talking to Twitter
This was pretty easy. There’s a Twitter application that Facebook put together to link a Facebook Page to Twitter. It does not work to link a personal profile (you have to add it to a Facebook Page).
So first, log into Facebook and open your Facebook Page (note that if you want your personal profile to talk to Twitter, you can add this application to your personal profile. These steps add it to your page.)
Log in to Facebook.
Make sure you have, or create a Facebook Page
In the search bar up top, enter “Twitter”
The first link that comes up should be an application, click on it
- Select the Twitter App
Selecting the Twitter Facebook App will open the Twitter application page and you’ll have to select on the left side to add the app to your page.
- Click “Add to my page”
A web pop-up will open showing a list of pages in your Facebook account. Click “Add to Page” for each page you want to send its wall updates to Twitter.
Now you will need to navigate back to your Facebook Page and click on “Edit Page” in the upper left.
Under the “Applications” area if you scroll down, you should see the Twitter Application, click “Edit” under the application and if you get the page asking to Allow the application, click the Allow button.
This will open up a Twitter login screen within Facebook (if everything has gone well so far):
- Log in to Twitter within Facebook
At this point you will have to allow the Connection in Twitter. You still need to allow your page into Twitter.
- Click on the Facebook App in Twitter Connections
Once you are logged in to Twitter, click on “Settings” and then “Connections.”
On the connections page, click on the Facebook app.
The next page will show a Facebook logo with an arrow pointing to Twitter and a large green button that says “Link a Page to Twitter”
Click on the large green button.
Again, a list of your Facebook Pages appears, with the pages on the left and a button “Link to Twitter” on the right.
Click the “Link to Twitter” button for your page, which will open the options panel for the Twitter Facebook Application
Ok — Finally, you should be all set. Again, if this was confusing, and you want some help, don’t hesitate to contact me.
If you want to double-check, you can go into Twitter, click on “Settings” and then click on “Connections.” If you see a Facebook connection notice there, with a “remove access” option, you’ve done it.
Connect WordPress to your Facebook Page with Networked Blogs
Now that we’ve finally got your Facebook Page updating Twitter, now we can connect your WordPress Blog to your FaceBook Page, for this we are going to use the Networked Blogs Facebook App.
Again, go to your Facebook account and log in (or stay logged in) and in the search bar type “Networked Blogs” – the first one in the list, where it says “Applications” is what you want.
- Click on the Networked Blogs application
That should open the application page, and on the left, you should see a link that says “Add to my Page” click on that link to open a web pop-up with a list of your pages. Click “Add to Page” for the page you want to link to WordPress.
Now, go back to your page (click on the word “Facebook” in the upper left to go back to your home page and click “Ads and Pages” again), and click “Edit Page” on the left.
Scroll down and look at the list of Applications. Networked Blogs should be on the list.
In this case, you have to allow your blog permission to post to the wall, so click on “Application Settings” and open the “Additional Settings” tab and check the box that says “Publish recent activity to my wall.” and click “Ok”.
Now we’re going to add your blog to Networked Blogs. Click “Edit” under the NetworkedBlogs Application. If you are following along with these instructions, this is probably the first time that you are running this, so you’ll have to Allow it access; if you get a page that starts with “Allow Access” click the button that says “Allow.”
This should open the networked blogs setup page.
You will get a form to fill in with information about your WordPress Blog. Fill out the information and click “Next” – if you get an offer to check out a promotional widget, you can (and should) uncheck that box and click the next button.
NetworkedBlogs will ask if you are the author of the blog. Click “Yes” (assuming you are), now you have to go through a verification step.
Choose to verify using the widget, open another browser window, log in to your WordPress blog and open “Appearance” and “Widgets”. Put a text widget on one of your side panels.
Switch back to the networked blogs interface and from the “Copy the following HTML code” box, select everything, copy it, switch back to your blog and paste all that code into your text widget. Save the widget.
Switch on back to the Networked Blogs interface and click “Verify Widget” – if you copied the code correctly, you should see a green box indicating you are verified. Click that “Next” button to show the NetworkedBlogs configuration page.
We are ALMOST done here. ALMOST. This has been an incredibly long blog post, hasn’t it? In the future I think we’ll choose smaller topics
So here is the NetworkedBlogs page once you have it installed into your Facebook Account, and you’ve got a blog set up properly:
Ok, now you want to click on the right side where it says “Feed Settings” – this is the final step to syncing your blog with Facebook, and thus, with Twitter.
Once you click on “Feed Settings” you will see an interface listing all your Facebook Pages – pick everywhere you want your blog to publish its updates.
After you pick the options you want, Networked Blogs can publish a test post for you. Go for it, you’ve worked hard, publish that test post.
If it doesn’t show up, step back through and check all the settings. Feel free to post a comment here with questions or to contact me for some professional help.
Posted in Social Networking | Facebook, Facebook Page, Facebook Pages, Joomla, Social Media, Website Design, Website Strategy, WordPress | 6 Comments