Joomla for Paysites/Membership sites

joomla control panel
Originally uploaded by fsse8info

Before you run to the comfort and safety of the "Do it all" CMS Joomla make sure you do your home work or hire some one (me) to do it for you. Lack of knowledge and experience can turn a very small job into a huge headache.

I've listened to many people talk about Joomla and it's many bells and whistles. Some of them have ran back to the more familiar wordpress, some of them settled for a site builder and others just gave up on CMS websites all together.

Give up on CMS websites !! I could never ever do that. CMS websites excite me more than that hot stripper on your lap excites you.

So what now..? I keep learning about CMS software.And a lot of that learning requires building test sites to see for myself what works and what doesn't . Right now I'm looking into the most affordable and efficient way to build Joomla as a Paysite/Membership site.

The best option so far is
http://www.websgold.com

PHPNuke Block Control Layout Block Tutorial

Many of you know me for my wordpress work but my first love was php nuke. When I saw php nuke I had no idea what it was or any prior knowledge of content management systems and open source software but after I played around with it for a few months I was hooked.

This video shows how easy it is to make changes and customize your look and feel in a php nuke site. It really is very easy to add/remove blocks and customize templates. If you can customize wordpress you can customize php nuke. The same skill level is required for basic adjustments.

Most people are really hooked on Joomla and wordpress right now and they are both really good open source software. Although wordpress is a blogging software and not a cms it's often used as a cms so I some times refer to it as a cms.

Honestly, I've found that out of the cms (content management systems) I've used I prefer php nuke. The most recent cms I've been getting the hang of though is Drupal and I'm truly impressed with Drupal and I prefer it over Joomla, Typo, etc.

Wordpress Plugin Assign Categories

I will blog a lot about my experiences with open source software such as Wordpress.
Wordpress is the best darn thing that has happened to the internet. Wordpress is open source *free* made for blogging but used for every type of site you can think of.

I love wordpress not because it's free but because you love wordpress. Yep, that's right so many people find wordpress easy to use and with more people using it more and more and more plugins are being made. There are so many plugins for wordpress that sometimes It's such a hassle to go through them all.

It's a hassle to find the plugin you need for your site. There is just so much wordpress information and resource sites to look through but the beauty is usually if you keep looking you find what you need.

Nearly everyday I have some type of wordpress maintenance to do on a site. And since I've decided to wait for WPMU to become better developed I needed a plugin that would help assign user categories.

First plugin I found didn't work although the title and description was right on target.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bind-user-to-cat/

A Few mins on google and I was able to find a forum of wordpress users dicussing that same issue.


And they listed two more wordpress plugins:

1) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/access-by-category/

2) http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/authors2categories/

After trying them both I decided upon plugin 2.

Which allows you to assign categories by user instead of my role.

When I choose plugins I take into account the number of times a plugin has been downloaded in addition to the comments and suggestions of other users and experience of the plugin developer. Everyone that develops a plugin isn't an experienced developer so it's best to get familiar with the developers to choose plugins from trusted and experienced developers as a precaution.

The downside of plugins is since many of them are free they are use at your own risk. Which means if you screw up your site adding a plugin tuff titty.