New.Journalism.Review

I’ve co-authored the Top 50 Blog Techniques feature which appears in Issue 171 of Web Designer magazine (available now in all good newsagents in the UK  and in other countries). It contains 50 (count ‘em!) tried and tested tips to help you use: WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal and Squarespace.

Joomla! isn’t the most intuitive CMS, so many of my tips are to do with speeding up the process of adding content, locating module positions and creating sections / categories. etc. Four authors wrote the feature and each are experts in the individual CMSs, so it’s a really strong feature.  We didn’t get our bylines on it, which was slightly annoying. Apparently this is being corrected when the feature eventually appears online.

I just wouldn’t recommend this particular feature for absolute CMS beginners. To get the most out of it you’ll need to know the basics of how they work. If you want a quick intro to setting up a Joomla! site, order yourself a copy of Issue 165 instead. You’ll find  a feature that I wrote which takes you through setting up a reasonably decent-looking Joomla! based news site from scratch  and at almost zero cost – it’s so easy once you know how!

This month’s Web Designer magazine includes a tutorial on How to Build a News Site in Joomla! written by me (Steve Hill). By following the 24 steps, readers should end up with a decent looking news site. Well, that’s the general idea.

The tutorial will be particularly useful for charities or schools who are seeking to create a website quickly (I reckon it can be done in 2 to 3 hours!). But it’s well worth a read by anyone looking to create a decent site for (almost) zero cost.

If you read the tutorial and it worked for you, then I would love to hear about it. And if it didn’t work for you – I’m sorry! Let me know, and I’ll try to help out.

Web Designer (Issue 165 – Cleaner Code) is available now from all good newsagents in the UK.

Also, the issue has a wonderful feature lamenting the sad demise of GeoCities. Alongside Tripod, it was the site that got many of us interested in web design in the mid-90s. We’ll miss you GeoCities!

WORDPRESS FOR A "NEWS" SITE?

WordPress
just seems to be getting better and better all the time. Like Joomla!,
WordPress is free and there is plenty of online community support. 

Like many people, I thought that WordPress only produced sites that look like blogs. In fact designers have been coming up with templates that look like news sites for ages (and really sexy-looking news sites as well). Perfect for any small business, charity or university student project.

SOME GOOD WORDPRESS TEMPLATES FOR NEWS SITES:

• Revolution 2 Theme

• Bram.us (list of newsy WordPress templates).

WHAT'S GOOD ABOUT WORDPRESS FOR NEWS SITES:

• I use WordPress for a site that is used by Level 1 students.  It
  allows me to introduce students to the idea of the CMS and how
  information is organised online.
• WordPress allows multiple users 
• The WordPress interface is far more intuitive than Joomla! (more on that later).
• Like Joomla! it has loads of great extensions/ add-ons / widgets – whatever you want to call 'em!

WHAT'S NOT-SO-GOOD

• Poor categorisation - WordPress only has a shallow hierarchy
  for organising stories. You can  file stories into main categories, but
  that's about it. I don't believe (and I could be wrong) there is not
  the deep level of sub-categories you get in Joomla!
• Adding sections to the navigation bar – This involves
  a trip into 'template manager' and you need to make changes to the
  code. In this area, one tiny slip or mistake and you are sunk. In
  Joomla!, it's very easy to adjust menus headings using menu manager.
• Manage Posts in WordPress is weak – compared to article manager in Joomla! You can't sort posts or unpublish through this manage posts section (you have to go into each article – correction. This is now solved). When you have hundreds of posts and you need to locate some information, this can be a problem!

Links:
Creating a student journalism site on a tight budget – using WordPress to create a news site.
NewsWire.NZ - what can be achieved using a fantastic WordPress template.
WordPress a CMS for Journalists (Andy Dickinson) 

Templates are a series of files which control the presentation of content (articles that you create). So you want an attractive looking news site to match that of CNN.com, but at the fraction of the price? Well, this page will help.

When
you install Joomla!, you will see that your site has a default
template which is pretty ugly-looking.  It also contains
dummy articles full of text about Joomla! – eventually you will want to
delete these articles as well, but don’t do it now.

CREATING A TEMPLATE YOURSELF

This
isn’t particularly easy for the non-coders of the world. You need to know
about CSS and PHP. You can’t just use Dreamweaver to create a
dynamically-generated page.

If you are into creating a template yourself then you  need to get hold of a books by Dan Rahmel (widely available on Amazon).

These
books explain how to create a template yourself. But I have a feeling
that even if you spent a month following this  advice, you still
wouldn’t have a site that looked as nice as one of the professionally produced
templates listed beneath.

ASK A WEB DEVELOPER TO CREATE A TEMPLATE

Choosing a good web developer isn’t  easy – see questions to ask a designer

You need to be very precise about how you brief developers / Joomla! designers. A precise brief will save a lot of heartache later on.

What you need you designer to do is: negotiate design concept with you (i.e. what it will look like). They will then go off and create appropriate screenshots, graphics, icons and then install the template on your server and
configure it. It obviously helps if you have existing art work (e.g. company logos) that you can supply.

You need to ensure that your freelance designer (or web design company) has experience in creating Joomla! templates and they have a solid online portfolio of work with previous clients.

They obviously need to have knowledge of MySQL, CSS and PHP. It is well worth posting a job on freelance sites like PeopleByTheHour.com or Elance. You get a mix of design students (who may do you a template for free if helps them build a portfolio) to Web professionals.  It doesn’t really matter where in the world the developer is based – most things can be explained via email or over the phone.

INSTALLING A FREE JOOMLA! TEMPLATE

There are a lot of people who
are willing to give away their lovely template designs for you to use
for free.

You will find a bewildering array of free options at Joomla! 24 or Best of Joomla!

The
more recent templates will be specially written for Joomla! 1.5 ( the
latest version of the CMS, although 1.6 will appear soon). You can use older templates (not written
for version 1.5), but they may only work in legacy mode – which is very easy to set up.

A few free templates that would be okay for a pretty basic news site:

• CB-SAND (for Joomla! 1.1) – FREE. This is obviously a bit old now, but I found it very easy to tweak it to create a nice looking template for a news site.
• Themza FREE- I use this for a sports site . Two really good sports news templates
• Mistra Blue – it looks a bit like the website of the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera.
• DaBronze – FREE
• DailyPraise – FREE
• Phoca – a series of good free templates

There is no reason why you shouldn’t download and install a few. You can then play around with the positioning of modules.

In Joomla! go to extensions – install / uninstall and upload it.

Go to template manager to make your newly installed template default.

PAID-FOR JOOMLA! TEMPLATES (AND CLUBS)

Some really nice news templates…

• Sportsline and Newsline (YouJoomla!) – LOVELY!
• IT Newsy (Ice Theme)
  
• The News II (Gavik)
  
• NewsLink
• Media Mogul (Rocket Theme)
• JSN Epic (two versions Basic = free Pro = paid-for)
• Magazine Plaza (From Template Plaza)

You can usually buy the templates separately, but if you feel you need ongoing support, often via email or message boards, you may want to join a template club. This will usally give you access to other templates by the same company.

Joomla! Club Membership Costs
(these are the cheapest membership packages/correct at time of writing):

YouJoomla!
$45 for 3 months membership

Ice Theme
$49 / 3 months

Gavik
$51 / 4 months

Rocket Theme
$50 / 2 months

Template Plaza
$39 / 4 Months access

A few things about the paid-for / template clubs:

1. These
templates are dead sexy and do include lots of pre-installed modules
and plugins. For those that are relatively new to Joomla!, they will
suggest doing a clean-install. I.e. you install the version of Joomla!
they provide, which also includes all the modules/plugins you need.

2. Some of these services, like YouJoomla!, will install their templates to  your server space for you.

3.
Check what you are getting. With some sites you can download individual
templates for around $25,  but that can be poor value for money in the
long run. You may only get limited tech/forum support and it may not
include all the modules you need.

So you have decided to choose Joomla! for your news site? (good choice!). Most commercial web hosts will host Joomla! for you. And if you go with one that offers the Fantastico suite of software, you will be able to install Joomla! in just one-click.  

NOT SURE YOU LIKE JOOMLA!? – THEN HAVE A FREE TEST

If you want to have a play around with Joomla for free – you can find it hosted at Jhost .  It doesn’t allow you to upload your own template, but it does allow you to play around and understand the interface. Or you can also have a play at the official Joomla! Demo Site.

CHOOSING A HOME FOR YOUR JOOMLA! SITE

To host Joomla! you don’t need a lot – just a webserver that supports MySQL and PHP. Both WordPress and Joomla! are written in a scripting langauge known as PHP.

Most news sites these days are not static-HTML, but are dynamic. MySQL refers to the database that is at the heart of the CMS. You don’t need to know a lot about this stuff, only that your hosting company supports it. 

You probably won’t be able to host it with
the free space you get with your ISP account. 

INSTALLING JOOMLA!

Take a look at -How to start a Joomla! site

 Downloaded the latest version of Joomla!.

BUDGET  UK JOOMLA! HOSTING COMPANIES

1. 1&1: You will probably need One and One Business package
2. Heart Internet: One-Click install of Joomla! and  WordPress on the Starter Package
3. FastHosts: Probably will need the Developer package

BUDGET  US JOOMLA! HOSTING COMPANIES
1. GoDaddy: The economy plan one-click install at $4.99 a month
2. ZZ Hosting: The $3.90 budget plan has one-click install for Joomla!
3. SiteGround: The $5.95 a month package offers one-click install for Joomla! SiteGround also has an impressive list of templates (see next page)

The story of my early attempts to find a host can be found here