Ask the Expert: Joomla
Event details
Your Joomla expert is Ryan Ozimek. Ryan is the founder of PICnet, a web development firm that has led Joomla development for the nonprofit community since 2004. He leads PICnet in the development of Soapbox, an on-demand Joomla offering for nonprofits, and sits on a variety of working groups in the Joomla community. Ryan also heads up the official nonprofit forum in the Joomla community and provides the core developer team with strategic insight from the NPO and NGO end-user communities to help strengthen Joomla's mantra of ease-of-use.
Ryan is joined by Johan Janssens. Johan is the lead developer of Joomla, and has lead the development effort of Joomla 1.5. At the age of 10, Johan began programming very simple games on his Commodore 64 and the first x86 a few years later. Later on he learned himself to program in C/C++ and PHP. His interest in electronics and programming led him to a masters degree in e-media. He actually set out for a career in game development but slowly wandered off into Open Source.
Joomla
Event Materials
Following is a transcript of our chat:
Holly: OK then - let's get started! A couple of reminders:
1. This is our very first Ask the Expert session - so welcome and thanks for trying out this experiment with us!
2. If you want to display your name during this chat, just enter it in the Name: field above the text entry box and click on the "Change" button
nhr: any way we can make the chat window larger?
Holly: 3. Feel free to submit your questions at any time.
Holly: I'll do my best to make sure that Ryan and Johan get them all answered.
4. The chat window is what it is. A fixed width, sadly
I'll make it wider next time!
Any other logistics questions right now?
erin: This is a great idea, Holly... I'm glad NTEN is doing this.
Holly: Excellent - with that.....
Let me turn this over with many thanks to Ryan and Johan!
nhr: can you review the history of Joomla's development
david ii: If we launch a site on Joomla 1.x, how difficult will the migration be to 1.5 once it is stable?
Ryan Ozimek: Thanks Holly, nice to see everyone! I'm Ryan Ozimek from PICnet, and I'm happy to be chatting with all of you today about Joomla. I've got Johan Janssens, the lead developer of Joomla here with us as well!
Johan: /me waves
Ryan Ozimek: I figure it might be best to answer a few of your pre-questions now...and let the discussion ensue! So without further ado...
Ryan Ozimek: PacSci asked...: "Basic Joomla info, best ideas for hosting, how to convince management of the benefits of oss, etc."
JoomlaConsultant: Joomla usage has exploded...I have many clients interested in Joomla Certification - for users/admins. Are there plans for this or will it likely be provided by a third party entrepreneur <g>.?
Ryan Ozimek: For starters, Joomla runs nicely on a LAMP stack, meaning Linux (or other Unix derivative), Apache, MySQL and PHP
hosting for it should be relatively plentiful, since the shared hosting market really focuses on this niche
Ryan Ozimek: it also runs on Windows servers as well, so all you MS holdouts, you can use it as well
Now, how to convince management to use OSS...hmm...
erin: sorry for silly question, but what's oss?
david ii: open source software
Sarah Davies: open source software
Ryan Ozimek: that might be a bit bigger of a question to chew on, i'd recommend looking at www.nosi.net, where NOSI has a lot of resources on Open Source Software
erin: gotcha, thanks
Ryan Ozimek: alright....let's see...David asks....
"Would like to learn about the capabilites of Joomla and how they compare to other CMS systems such as Drupal."
erin: That's my question too.
Ryan Ozimek: great question, I think that Joomla and Drupal are similar in many respects, and what you start to see as the differences are very interesting...for instance...
Ryan Ozimek: many people speak highly of Joomla's user interface, that the administrator is easy to use and easy on the eyes....
Ryan Ozimek: but that's just the surface. the best place to get more detailed information about most OSS CMSes would be at:
Ryan Ozimek: where you can actually check off the CMSes that you'd like to research, and compare them against about 20 or so variables.
Ryan Ozimek: I don't mean to cop out of that question, but I think the big answer is that Joomla's strength is in content management, and a framework on top of which you can build a wide variety of online applications or Web systems
Ryan Ozimek: David, was that a respectable answer to your Q?
Scott wrote, "Interested in differences between Joomla and Mambo"
David: Can you say anything more specific about strenghths & weaknesses?
Michael W: as well as for what's the best way to use joomla - what is its biggest advantage for a nonprofit looking for a new cms?
Ryan Ozimek: sure David, I'd say that from our experience working with about 35+ NPOs over the past year with Joomla...
that it's strengths in comparison to say Drupal is in true CMS management...for instance...
david ii: whereas drupal is more 'bloggy'?
Ryan Ozimek: Drupal has a great history of community content development, where many people in an entire community drive content to the site...
David ii, you read my mind...
whereas Joomla comes from Mambo, which had a very top-down, controlled CMS approach for WEb managment
however, both Joomla and Drupal are moving towards "frameworks" which to me is a fancy way of saying...
"this can do anything you want it to, if you know how to develop on top of it"
Scott wrote, "scott: Interested in differences between Joomla and Mambo"
Ryan Ozimek: Johan, maybe you can take this one
Norman Reiss: so both products will need someone on staff to do customization or outside consulting help?
Matt Henry: i'm curious about that too
Johan: there are two parts two this question first of all the difference between Joomla! 1.0 and Mambo 4.5.2/3 are minor
Ryan Ozimek: @ Norman, you're right...if you want to do anything more than out of the box, you're right.
Johan: it's only since Joomla! 1.5 and Mambo 4.6 the project are diverging
Norman Reiss: why was Joomla split out as a separate product?
Johan: with major differences in philosophy and technology between in Joomla! 1.5 compared to Joomla! 1.0 and thus also Mambo 4.5.2/3
david ii: speaking of 1.5, how difficult is a migration from 1.0 to 1.5 expected to be?
Ryan Ozimek: @ norman, good question...
Ryan Ozimek: Johan, maybe you could sum up a lot of words about this in a sentence or two here
Johan: @norman : this might help explain it : http://www.opensourcematters.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1&Itemid=1
Ryan Ozimek: @David II: I've got your Q on my list for later...thanks
david ii: cool, thx
Johan: Joomla! didn't really split into a new product, more into a new community, the product is a result of that
Ryan Ozimek: thanks Johan
Ryan Ozimek: ok here's a good one: "i want to lead us in the adoption of a CMS, but i'm not sure how best to take the earliest steps"
Matt Henry: yeah, that was me
Ryan Ozimek: in my opinion, the best steps are to find the pain points
so, let's say the pain is that your time as a techie, or accidental techie is limited....
Ryan Ozimek: then, it makes no sense foryou to be making updates to the web site, and being a bottleneck, when the technology should be as easy to use as MS Word, so...
i always have our orgs tell us their pain points, and once listed, then it's easier to make a strong argument to decision makers
Matt Henry: i'm not sure folks other than me feel that as pain tho
everything starts in Word for them
then they email it to me and it's not their problem
Norman Reiss: seems that the popularity of blogs indicate that they're even easier to use than any CMS could ever be.
Ryan Ozimek: there will always be learning curves and technical needs up front, but those can dealt with over time.....Matt, gotcha. convert your pain into time/costs, and run that up to the top. if you can show that by using a CMS...
you can save time and do a lot more with the site, i think that would be a start to a winning case
Matt Henry: would it help to make one of our dinky daughter sites in joomla
just to show-and-tell with our orgs content
folks are always printing out page of our sites and marking the printouts in pen because they dohn't use dreamweaver
Ryan Ozimek: that's a great start, and there are low cost ways to do have a hosted solution as well, but in the sake of not being an advertiser, i'll pass on that for now. =)
Matt Henry: it's hateful and endless
laklare: Getting back to the Drupal comparison question, what the main reasons to use Joomla instead of Drupal?
Ryan Ozimek: here's one that's Joomla specific: "If we launch a site on Joomla 1.x, how difficult will the migration be to 1.5 once it is stable?"
erin: Laklare, I'm interested in that too.
Ryan Ozimek: @laklare....let's see...I'd say the first reason the top of my head is that Joomla has proven itself to be very userfriendly....
Ryan Ozimek: both in the administration of it, as well as in the community, which in one year has 60k registered forum users, 500K+ posts, and a whole forum devoted to NPOs
laklare: Ryan, is it developer-friendly as well? ;)
Ryan Ozimek: let's take that to the top dev....Johan?
Ryan Ozimek: my first response is yes, since here at PICnet we have 6 devs building custom Joomla components on a daily basis...but for the community, I believe 1.0.x is a great series to develop on, and 15 will be even stronger
erin: Yeah, I've heard (perhaps mistakenly) that Joomla has an easier user interface for nonprogrammers like me, but that it's more difficult to customize functionality... anything to that?
Ryan Ozimek: 15=1.5
erin: (as compared to Drupal)
Johan: Joomla! is very developer friendly, actually that's one of the major goals behind 1.5, improving the code base to attract more professional developers
Norman Reiss: seems that any product can't be equally development friendly and user friendly at the same time
erin: It's understandable if there were a tradeoff.
Johan: and with professional we don't mean commercial, we mean people with a background in web application development that want to contribute to the community by building extensions
Ryan Ozimek: @Norman: Salesforce seems to be trying to do this ... and well I'd say
Michael W: how well can joomla integrate with CRMs like getactive's suite?
Ryan Ozimek: some of these questions might be big ones, that could dive into Mac vs. PC debates, but I think it's safe to say that Joomla is developer friendly.
Ryan Ozimek: @Michael: at PICnet, we're working on that now...as well as:
CiviCRM (done), DIA (done), and Salesforce (in progress)
Matt Henry: yeah, ditto that CRM question but for democracyinaction -is there any reason to lean toward Joomla or someone else because we use DIA?
Ryan Ozimek: all of these are open source as well for the community to handle
Michael W: but the for-profit platforms are going to take longer / be more of a process to finish?
Norman Reiss: What about integration with Convio or Kintera?
Ryan Ozimek: @Matt: right now, only Joomla has full integration with DIA, and when I say that, I mean completely pulling in data from DIA, directly through Joomla, no templates, server bounces, etc
laklare: Would you say that Joomla would be easier for accidental techies to administer and put content into than Drupal (once a consultant sets it up initially)?
erin: Again... another question I'm interested in, Laklare. Thanks for asking.
Norman Reiss: This was definitely what I got out of yesterday's Nten webinar - Joomla is easiest to setup.
Ryan Ozimek: @laklare: I think that it is easier to manage for acc-techs than Drupal, unfort i'm biased. =) however, this is not something novel in the market, that Joomla is easier to setup than Drupal...but...
i say that trying to avoid the Mac vs. PC debate. =)
definitely, if you want to download and install a CMS, Joomla 1.0.11 is easier than Drupal 4.7
Drupal is catching up with 5.0 beta now though
Norman Reiss: Laura Quinn's article at Idealware also goes into this topic
Ryan Ozimek: let me hit another qusetion here: If we launch a site on Joomla 1.x, how difficult will the migration be to 1.5 once it is stable?
Johan, can you hit this one?
Johan: sure
Ray: I've installed both, and Joomla is easier to install and somewhat easier to get started with right away... once you understand how the front page and so on works. Drupal seems a bit more open of a framework just now, more difficult to setup
Johan: we are working on a special migration component to migrate your content from 1.0 to 1.5, it won't be as easy as updating from a 1.0.X to another but we are trying to make it as easy as possible for people
Ray: I'm a user not connected with either Joomla or Drupal
Johan: feedback is always welcome on our forums
hgm: q - after setting up my first joomla site solo (in dev and production) it seems that all i need to do to have the live site work is to have the same components and templates installed and switch to the other database via the admin interface ...
is it really that easy or am i missing something?
Johan: some more info on migration can be found here : http://dev.joomla.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,33/p,107/
Ryan Ozimek: gracias Johan!
Norman Reiss: Holly, will a transcript be available of today's chat if I need to cut out early?
Holly: You bet -
I will post the chat
Norman Reiss: Great, thanks
david ii: Johan: is the migration on the order of stopping the old server, doing a dump, and importing into the new server? or does a lot of the original site have to be recreated manually?
Johan: technically the content needs to be migrated to utf-8, and some changes also need to be acommodate changes in the db schema
*to be made
Michael W: Is there a target date for when a stable version of 1.5 will be available?
Johan: does that answer your qn ?
Norman Reiss: what type of editor does Joomla use? Got impression yesterday that there are multiple options
Ryan Ozimek: @Michael W: always a good question in OSS world
Johan: hehe, is saw that one coming :)
Norman Reiss: Like MS releases software exactly when they plan to :)
Ryan Ozimek: we've got a great team working on the 1.5 beta to release candidate cycle...
david ii: Johan: i think so, i'm just wary of going to the trouble of setting things up on 1.0 if i'll have to turn around and replicate a lot of the same work on 1.5
Ryan Ozimek: and they're in the process of what I'd presume to be a 12 week bug hunt process and fix from the community (as of the beta release last month)...
so...
Johan: 1.5 will be released when it's ready, this is how opensource development works, more in details that means when the trackers are empty and the different questions have been answered
Michael W: that is good enough i think - i was wondering weeks/months/years
thanks!
Ryan Ozimek: i'd guesstimate early next year
Michael W: great
Norman Reiss: Is there enough room in the market for so many good CMS products or will they eventually be consolidation?
JoomlaConsultant: resubmitting a question from 1:00 as it seems to have been overlooked and training/certification is the number one request from my clients. Are there plans for "official" Joomla Certification for admin/users? Any ETA?
david ii: who said all the CMS products were good? :-)
Johan: i can tell u that it will be monhts not years, currently we are working on a second beta which is coming closer to being ready, after that we will have a better idea of the way towards a first release candidate
Ryan Ozimek: @JoomlaConsultant: I don't expect the Joomla core project to handle an y official certifications.
if you're asking if there will be a rubber stamp on "certified for Joomla" products or add-ons, correct?
laklare: I have a question about forums...right now the Drupal forum module is pretty weak and integrating phpBB into Drupal seems to be possible, but difficult. How would you recommend getting a nice forum on a Joomla site? Is it easy?
Ryan Ozimek: Norman wrote: "what type of editor does Joomla use? Got impression yesterday that there are multiple options"
the Extensions directory has 8 lkisted there:
david ii: does joomla have any versioning for documents? (searches for it in the user manual come up negative) might this functionality be offered in a plug-in if not the core product?
Ryan Ozimek: that's extensions.joomla.org there's a variety to choose from that aren't there either.
my favorite: JCE
@laklare re: forums: You're right, I'm not a big fan of Drupal's integrated forum either....on the Joomla side...
hgm: how is JCE better than tinyMCE? i noticed it was created just for Joomla right?
Johan: @David : Joomla doesn't offer versioning for documents and currently none of the document management extensions offer this feature
at least not that i'm awara
Ryan Ozimek: remember that the core team is really focusing on the core framework, and the forum is separate. forum.joomla.org runs off Simple Machines Forum, which we use a lot as well for clients.
david ii: Johan: whoa, bummer
Ryan Ozimek: it also integrates with VBulletin
Michael W: what do you mean by versioning of docs?
Norman Reiss: I have to leave but thanks for having this chat
david ii: Johan: is there a 'trash can' or some kind of more primitive protection against accidental deletes/edits?
Johan: @David : I can tel u that the new docman version will be supporting versioning, only downside, i need to get to coding it :)
Ryan Ozimek: @David: I know my team is working on versioning for content items, and have a work in progress that is working well....as for document management (like PDFs) we use DOCMan (made by Johan!)
beat me to it!
David: yes, there is a trash can for content protection
easy to revert in case you trashed something accidently too!
@hgm: how is JCE better than tinyMCE? i noticed it was created just for Joomla right?
david ii: okay, good to know something is available
Ryan Ozimek: tinyMCE and JCE are both third party WYSIWYG editors, =that have been integrated into joomla, not made just for it....I like JCE for our clients because it has the most amazing addons out of the box
for instance, great document, image management directly in the WYSIWYG editor, etc
and, a full plug-in structure to build your own editor plug-ins, very powerful with a strong community around it alone
david ii: Michael W: versioning is a mechanism whereby each different version of a given document is saved over time so you can revert back to older versions
hgm: i had just meant JCE seemed joomla oriented but cool thanks will try it out.
david ii: very helpful if someone accidentally erases something or makes a copy/paste error, etc.
Ryan Ozimek: hgm: sorry, you're right, JCE runs on a WYSIWYG editor called MoxieCode I believe....but JCE implementation is specific for Joomla
JoomlaConsultant: Many companies (like mine) and individuals provide training for Joomla administration/end-users. Back in the Mambo days there were plans to have certification guidelines. I hope that is clearer.
Michael W: thanks david ii!
Ryan Ozimek: @JoomlaConsultant....i remember that too....but i think tha'ts the big difference between Mambo and Joomla, in that most of these things like certifications aren't mixed in with the Joomla community right now
but again, i'm not a Mambo expert =)
Peter Russell: @ certifcation in the Mambo days had been promised by Miro, we all know how that ended up
Ryan Ozimek: Miro is the company that developed Mambo in its inception...
and Mambo code is where Joomla started.
just for all you who didn't know. =)
david ii: is the licensing around mambo clear enough that we can use joomla without fear of Miro doing some legal smackdown and spoiling the party?
Ryan Ozimek: we've got about 10mins left....any big questions that you're still burning to have answered?
Johan: @David : absolutely
Ryan Ozimek: (let me call the lawyers)....Johan, any answer to this one
Peter Russell: Yes sorry for the presumption about Miro. Legally we are protected very well. Under the guidance of the Software Freedome Law Center
erin: What are the three biggest reasons to choose Joomla over Drupal, especially for "accidental techies"?
Ryan Ozimek: thanks Johan and Peter!
Sarah Davies: david ii, I believe it's under a GPL v2 licensing, preventing any impending smackdowns
hgm: my q about switching databases to take a site live - rephrased. Is using the admin interface in Joomla (site Global Configuration) really all you need to do - that is no actually touching the config file?
Johan: Joomla! is legaly advised by the SFLC which are the co-authors of the GPL license, all necessary precautions have been taken to avoid any mishap
david ii: thank you, i like smackdown-proof products
Peter Russell: rofl
Johan: lol
Ryan Ozimek: @Erin: you've packed a hard one there...let's see....I'd say the following (knowing my Drupal friends will be reading this soon!)
1) ease of administrator use
hgm: or Joomla admin interface writes to config - easier for semi techies like me
Ryan Ozimek: 2) ease of installation at beginning and of add-ons
3) a massive community with a very open arms support to the NPO world (I actually run the NPO forum at Joomla)
JoomlaConsultant: If it helps <g>...supporting clients using Joomla is easier than supporting clients using Drupal.
Peter Russell: Comparing Drupal and Joomla is like comparing an Zune to a iPod. Different stokes for differnt for different folks.
Ryan Ozimek: @Peter: agreed
laklare: Thanks so much for your answers. I've got one more...are there any plans you've heard of for private companies to offer preconfigured Joomla hosting in the way that civicspacelabs and bryght are planning for Drupal?
erin: Thanks--that helps
Ryan Ozimek: @hgm: my q about switching databases to take a site live - rephrased. Is using the admin interface in Joomla (site Global Configuration) really all you need to do - that is no actually touching the config file?
david ii: how easy do you think it will be to maintain code customizations across version upgrades? i'm guessing 1.0 to 1.5 might be tricky, but what about 1.5 going forward?
Ryan Ozimek: yes, you're right...all you need to do to switch db servers is to edit the config file, which can be done in the admin under Global Configuration.
hgm: sweet - thx for the verifcation, seems too easy
Ryan Ozimek: darn, wrong paste....
Johan: @David : from 1.5 upward to goal is the keep a very high level of code compatibilty, this is one of the reasons we are taking a bigger step with 1.5, rather do it only once then split over multiple minor versions
Ryan Ozimek: regarding on-demand version of Joomla for NPOs...
david ii: Johan: cool, that was my guess but it's good to hear it
Ryan Ozimek: PICnet runs Non-Profit Soapbox, at www.nonprofitsoapbox.com...
which is Joomla on demand for NPOs
it's similar to CS and Bryght for Drupal, but all Joomla
and we're building components for NPOs that are integrated directly into CRMs, like plug-ins for DIA which will be released before year's end
and fully stock it with event registration, best of breed 3rd party components, etc
(done with shameless plug)
Holly: OK folks - we're coming to the end of our hour....
Were there any unanswered questions out there?
resubmit!
If not, Ryan - do you have any parting words?
david ii: thanks johan and ryan!
erin: thanks! :)
Ryan Ozimek: Thanks to Johan for making it on this chat from Europe, and to everyone else here for your time. Visit www.joomla.org if you have any follow-up questions...
Sarah Davies: Thank you Holly and Ryan and Johan, that was extremely informative, I think Joomla! is great
erin: very helpful
Holly: thanks to YOU all, and Ryan and Johan especially!
Ryan Ozimek: the forum is friendly to us NPO accidental techies. =)
Holly: I will be posting a transcript of this chat
hgm: thanks all - very informative
Johan: Thanks for having us, see you all in the Joomlasphere !
Ryan Ozimek: thanks Holly, great medium
Matt Henry: gg
Ryan Ozimek: hehe
Holly: at this URL: http://nten.org/expert/joomla
Holly: Have a great day all!
Ryan Ozimek: Ciao
