Building Online Communities With Joomla

Barrie North from Compass Designs provides a detailed overview of online communities here: http://www.compassdesigns.net/tutorials/289-building-online-communities-with-joomla.html

- he touches briefly on what it is that makes a community a popular place to return to: ie giving registered users indide tools to call their own and facilitating discussion on articles, blogs, as well as discussion forums.
Some of the comments were very insightful:

• keep it simple
• think of it as a community
• listen to the community needs

Get even more details in his online tutorial http://www.simplweb.com/413-7.html

Butterfly Marketing Review

Just read a great review of Butterfly Marketing at http://www.seocracked.com/product-reviews/butterfly-marketing-reviewed.html
I think we can all agree that the content is brilliant and the strategies sleek but as Joshua correctly points out - implementation for the newbie would be tough.
I feel pretty confident as I have been a web designer and technology marketer for 12 years now. If you need help implementing, contact me or comment below.
I will be using Joomla as my platform to integrate Butterfly marketing strategies.

What makes a Community Online?

As I build with Joomla, I recognize that it can be difficult to get community members to participate.
I like the idea of the Karma plugin so that visitors build rank by editing their profile and posting to the forum. I wonder if there is a way to modify Mamblog extension to credit Karma points?!

I am giving a speech tonight about creating and participating in conversation online. If you are at that event (or just want to join the fun) post your blog address and twitter page in the comments... I will comment on your blog and follow it and follow you on Twitter.

I want to start having some fun with Web 2.0 this year!
I am following my Internet Marketing hero on twitter - Mike Filsaime. He is following me back - very cool.

Share some ideas on how you are joining in to the online conversation that is WEb 2.0
Do you blog? comment on blogs? Give Yahoo Answers? Visit discusion boards? Put content on Youtube or upload podcasts? Digg it? Create reviews at amazon.com.............

SOBI 2 Online Directory for Joomla

I am working on a website for our downtown merchants. They need an online directory of members so I chose SOBI 2 - it installed so easily and allows quick addition of categories....BUT when I got to the addition of members, the process is painfully slow.
I hate charging for data entry so I thought, right a quick little query to append members in the member database row by row. I use MySql Front so that should be easy right? Wrong.

Users are not represented as individual rows. Each piece of information is represented in its own row. So some users have 6 rows, some 12 rows and so on - depending on how much information you have on each.

Well I figure - someone else has come across this! So off I go to search Google Groups and Voila... an plugin - pretty cheap considering the hours it will save me on this project alone. (Under $100 CAD)
Took me about 30 seconds to buy, download and install and another 5 minutes to learn the software and upload the members.
I love it when an extension can be extended!

SOBI 2 http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/1113/details
Import Export Plugin: http://www.sigsiu.net/download/plugins/import_and_backup.html

Content Management

I love starting new projects, listening to client worries, ideas and dreams, researching options, proposing solutions and devoloping websites that mesh with their needs. I am not so keen on website maintenance.

I have been a web designer for 10 years.
In year 1 -3 I updated client websites for them. Always.
In year 4 - 6 I would install a cgi script to allow them to go in and edit text on any of their webpages.
In year 7 I discovered Macromedia (now Adobe) Contribute. I would design sites in Dreamweaver so that all aspects except the main look and navigation could be edited by the client - yay this was a big step.
In year 8 I discovered WebAssist.com and started creating database driven websites with online control panels whereby clients could login and add pages, products, images and more using the programming language asp and an online database.... but... Access databases break so I switched to MySql and went through a new learning curve... and.... asp stopped being popular so I switched to PHP.... and if a new feature needed to be added, I often had to get into custom programming from scratch.

Last year I started using Joomla! http://www.joomla.org/
I am in love.

I took over an existing website for a new client. Instead of having to dive into code and figure out what the original designer had been thinking, this site was created using Joomla!
I was able to login, make their edits and have their site current in under an hour - this after they had been neglecting it for almost a year.
Later I was able to add a Blog and Event registration in just a couple of hours.
http://www.cnhr.ca/


Did I mention Joomla is free?

Did I mention that any time you want to add a new feature you can browse through over 4000 "extensions" to find that add-on feature? http://extensions.joomla.org/ Many of these extensions are free as well.

Why else do I love Joomla?

• I can create my own graphic design and use it for the site.
• Site managers can add new navigation items - not just edit existing pages
• It can be used to create an online community, social networking, e-commerce, calendar, newsletter, magazine, polls and surveys, blog, discussion board, document repository, education.....
• I can develop my own extensions that work with the existing structure.

So in this blog, I want to turn others into Joomla fans by sharing my discoveries, ideas and sites.

Visit my very first full Joomla site http://penetanguishenecurlingclub.com/