Blues and twos by Bernadette Higgins

EasyBlog Advanced blogging tool for Joomla!

Quick Start Guide

Introduction If you need a much more powerful and user‐friendly blogging tool for Joomla!, EasyBlog is your answer. EasyBlog is a blogging component for Joomla! and it comes with built‐in Twitter integration, Ajax‐based commenting system, reCAPTCHA integrations, and many more features that might change your perception about blogging with Joomla! platform. EasyBlog is licensed under the GNU/GPL.

Help and Support Support Channel Our support is done via our helpdesk system for premium subscribers and forum support for non‐ premium subscribers. At the moment, we do not provide any support via telephone or live chat.

What We Support Although we are offering support plan for every purchase, there are some limitations what we support. Below is the list of supported issues. 1. Issues in the products 2. Setting up component 3. Usage of our products 4. Non‐documented issues, tips and tricks regarding our software. 5. Minor changes to our products in order to work on the site. 6. We do povide support only for ONE of your domain name. You can install EasyBlog in multiple sites, but support is for one domain only.

What We Do Not Support And here is the list of unsupported issues. 1. Huge customizations. If you need customizations, email us for a quote 2. Massively hacking the core files. 3. Template / theme customizations. 4. Template conflict issues. Please take note that we reserve the right to refuse any or all modifications and feature requests of our software.

And also, since we are not selling the software but support subsciption, we do not offers any refund to your purchase.

System Requirements Joomla! Before installing EasyBlog, you will need to ensure that you are running the latest version of Joomla! for your site. It is always recommended you to use the latest version of Joomla! Please check Joomla! official website to check the most recent updates.

PHP PHP version 4.4.x and above is required. EayBlog has been tested and working with some warning message in PHP 5.3.x.

MySQL Since EasyBlog support UTF‐8 characters, MySQL version 4.1.3 and above is required.

Minimum Width To ensure a smooth sailing layout with EasyBlog’s Dashboard, a minimum width is required for the site. It needs a minimum of 640px wide (English language). It has never been tested with other languages yet. A much comfortable width would be at least 700 pixels.

Installation & Upgrades Installing or upgrading EasyBlog is as simple as installing other 3rd party Joomla! extensions. Follow the steps below to start installing or upgrading EasyBlog.

Step 1 Proceed to your Extensions > Install/Uninstall menu item under Extensions.

Step 2 Click on Browse button and select the EasyBlog installer file.

Step 3 Proceed by clicking on Upload File & Install

Step 4 That’s it! Installation is completed now.

Upgrading the component follow the same procedure with installation.

Getting Started! Congratulations! You now have multi bloggers blogging environment for your Joomla! site. Before proceeding, do take note of the configurations in the back end of EasyBlog.

What’s next? After you have installed EasyBlog, you will have to configure your blog to match your requirements and branding. Here we will show you to configure the basic settings for your blog.

Blog title and description

Now go to Settings tab in your EasyBlog configuration panel, and configure at least the two settings listed below. 1. Global blog title. This is your blog title, will be used in most of your blog pages, except when users view blog posts and bloggers page. 2. Global blog description. The description of your blog. Same with global blog title, the description you set here will be used in most of your blog pages, except when users view blog posts and bloggers page.

Select WYSIWYG editor We allow you to select your own editor for writing blog posts. By default Joomla! includes TinyMCE editor. But you can use JCE or CKEditor if you think these editor suits you better.

On your EasyBlog setting page, click on Layout tab. You can see the option to configure the editor at the bottom of the page.

ACL (Access Control Lists)

Our component comes with advanced ACL that can control actions for specific user groups and users. You can set who can write blog posts, publish the posts, create tags, create categories, and many more. Now why don’t we set some basic permission to your user groups? Let’s go to Components > EasyBlog > ACL to get started. This is the default ACL settings for your user groups. Actions Can write entry? Can publish entry? Can burn feed? Can upload avatar? Can manage comments? Can update Twitter? Can delete own blogs? Can add post trackback? Can contribute to frontpage? Can create category? Can create tag? Can have Google Adsense? Can enable blog privacy? Can post comments? Can subscribe to blogs?

Super Administrator

Administrator

Manager

Publisher

Author Registered

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes Yes

With these settings, we can conclude that your blog allow all registered users to write blog posts. If you want to allow all your users have their own blog, you can leave this settings like it is. No need to change anything.

Let’s say you want to allow specific users to post blog, including yourself, of course. What you need to do is set all permissions to No for other user groups except Super Administrator. Actions Can write entry? Can publish entry? Can burn feed? Can upload avatar? Can manage comments? Can update Twitter? Can delete own blogs? Can add post trackback? Can contribute to frontpage? Can create category? Can create tag? Can have Google Adsense? Can enable blog privacy? Can post comments? Can subscribe to blogs?

Super Administrator

Administrator

Manager

Publisher

Author Registered

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes

No No No No No No No No No

Yes Yes Yes

No No No

Yes Yes Yes

No No No

Please note that with the settings above, all users, excluding you as Super Administrator, cannot create any blog post.

Then, from the dropdown list on your right side, select Assigned.

Now create New ruleset by clicking on New button at the top, right of your page. Now you can see sets of permission to configure. To select user, click on Browse.

With the user selected, set the permissions, depends on your requirement.

You can see the ruleset listed on your ACL listing. To edit the ruleset, simply click on the Edit link located on the right side of the item. You can preview the permission of the ruleset by hovering your mouse over the title.

Tags

According to Wikipedia, tag is a non‐hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system. You can add as many tags as you see fits. There are no limits on how many tags can be created. To create new tag, simple head on to your Components > EasyBlog > Tags and click on New button on your top right corner. Fill in the required information and Save.

You can create new tag in your EasyBlog Dashboard as well. Go to your Dashboard, and click on Tags button. Fill in the form and click Create button.

Writing blog You can write your blog posts either in EasyBlog Dashboard in frontend, or in EasyBlog Panel in backend. To start writing your first blog post, jump to EasyBlog menu. You’ll see EasyBlog toolbar menus at the top of your page. Hover your mouse on the last item on the right (we called it Dashboard menu), and you’ll see a set of dropdown menu with different type of actions.

Now click on the Write new entry link. You’ll be redirected to our EasyBlog editor and you can start writing your new blog post.

On the top of the editor, you can see few tabs. Each tabs contain other configuration option fo your blog posts.

Editor This is your main content area. It contain blog title and blog content.

Introtext If you want to split your blog post using Read more feature, add your intro content in this tab. It contain another editor, just for you blog intro.

Permalink By default, EasyBlog will create permalink for you based on your blog title. But of course you can change it as you see fits.

Options This tab contain all other post configuration like category to use, when you want to publish the post, set either the post is for public or private and so on.

Tags In Wikipedia, a tag is a non‐hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. You can add as many tags as you desire for your posts.

Trackbacks According to Wikipedia, trackback is a methods for blog authors to request notification when somebody links to one of their documents or blog posts. Here you can set the trackback URL to ping when you publish your posts.

Post Status EasyBlog comes with four predefined post status; 1. Published Blog posts will be visible to all users and visitors. But the privacy will rely on your own setting. 2. Unpublished If you set Unpublished, the posts will only visible to blog owner and site Admins (Super Administrator and Administrator) only. 3. Draft This is unfinish blog post status. For example, you are writing a blog post but cannot finish it in a day, just set it as Draft. It will not be visible for other users or visitors except the blog owner and site Admins. 4. Schedule Just set the publish date and time to the future date, and will automatically get published by EasyBlog. There is one more status, Pending Review in EasyBlog. But you cannot set to this status manually. It only applies to those blogger who cannot publish blog posts. Only those who have permission to manage it can publish the posts. By default, we allow all Admins to manage all pending posts.

Creating your own theme All the themes actually based on default themes. Every files that control the layout of the page is inside default theme. So, if you want to change the theme for your EasyBlog, we advise you to either: 1. Create new theme in JOOMLA/components/com_easyblog/themes/ folder, or 2. Create template override in your JOOMLA/templates/your_current_joomla_template/html/com_easyblog/ folder.

Creating new theme To create new themes, you can create new styles.css inside your new theme folder, for example, you want to name it as mytheme, all you have to do is: 1. Create new folder in JOOMLA/components/com_easyblog/themes/mytheme/ 2. Create new styles.css in your JOOMLA/components/com_easyblog/themes/mytheme/css/ If you wish to change any HTML output, you can copy specific file in your theme folder. For example, you want to change the layout when user reading blog post, copy blog.read.php to your JOOMLA/components/com_easyblog/themes/mytheme/ and edit the file. EasyBlog will check the existent of the files, if not exists in your theme folder, it will load the file from default theme.

Creating template override Same as creating new themes, creating new template override is very easy. Follow the same procedure as creating new themes, but put it inside your JOOMLA/templates/your_current_joomla_template/html/com_easyblog/ folder.

Creating new dashboard theme If you wish to create new dashboard theme, create new dashboard folder inside your new themes, example: 1. JOOMLA/components/com_easyblog/themes/mytheme/dashboard/ 2. JOOMLA/components/com_easyblog/themes/mytheme/dashboard/css/styles.css Or if you are using template override, 1. JOOMLA/templates/your_current_joomla_template/html/com_easyblog/dashboard/ 2. JOOMLA/templates/your_current_joomla_template/html/com_easyblog/dashboard/css/ styles.css If you wish to edit any html output, copy files from default dashboard theme to your new dashboard theme folder.

Note  

Please note that the CSS file must be named as styles.css, or else EasyBlog wont recognize your styling. Please link the styles.css from default theme in your CSS file using @import or any other technique you prefer to make sure all have fallback styles if it's not defined in your new theme.

Thank you for supporting EasyBlog! Need support? Find us on the boards http://stackideas.com/forum/

Vote for us at Joomla! Extensions Directory: http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/news‐production/blog/12630/