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Yes they do.

Over the last few months, I've run across quite a lot of companies who have avoided blogging on Joomla and instead posted on free blog sites such as Blogger.com, Blogster.com or Wordpress.com.

Today's post is a quick rundown of the reasons why you should only blog on your own domain. 

1. Visitors hate going clicking on a menu link and being sent to a different domain. We worked with one client recently who had 5 links on their Main Menu. Each link except for "Home" went to a different domain.  In his excellent book, "Don't Make Me Think", Steve Krug says this about having the same navigation on every page of your site:
   
   
   • It gives us something to hold on to. It's no fun feeling lost. Done right, navigation puts ground under our feet and gives us handrails to hold on to.
     
   • It tells us what's here. Navigation tells us what the site contains.
   • It tells us how to use the site. If the navigation is doing its job, it tells you implicitly where to begin and what your options are.
   • It gives us confidence in the people who built it. Every moment we're in a website, we're keeping a mental running tally: "Do these guys know what  they're doing?". It's one of the main factors we use in deciding whether to bail out and deciding whether to ever come back. Clear, well-thought out navigation is one of the best opportunities a site has to create a good impression.
     

 

Of course, if you go to a Blogger or Wordpress.com page all your navigation is lost and the user has to learn how to navigate all over again.




2. A rising tide lifts all ships. SEOMoz.org have done a great job of explaining this effect here and here. The basic idea is that all your ranking efforts should be focused on one domain, rather than dispersed over many sites. You see this every time you search and find a half-finished Wikipedia page ranking more highly than smaller websites that might contain more useful information.
   
   

   We worked with one client and really didn't do much. Our main recommendation was that they move their blog away from Wordpress.com and instead host it on their Joomla site. It took a while to move all the posts, but as this image on the right shows, it was worth it. The screenshot reflects how their Google keyword rankings have changed for the better since January.

   
   

3. Users think free blogs are for spam. And with good reason - Microsoft and the University of California found that 75% of Blogger domains are spam. Your site doesn't need those negative associations.

    

4. Joomla blogs work. True, it can't quite match the fully-unleashed power of a standalone Wordpress site, but next week we'll look at blogging options for Joomla and help you decide which option is best for your site's SEO.
   
   

Comments (17)

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Thank you, thank you, thank you!
written by N!cklas, April 13, 2007

Another great post that makes this week complete.
Looking forward for next weeks blogging with Joomla

...
written by steve, April 13, 2007

Hi Nicklas

Thanks for the kind words Blog week is coming soon...

Steve

Haven't I heard this before ?
written by Lawrence Meckan, April 13, 2007

Steve,

I'd suggest you do a rethink on Wordpress.com

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2007/04/09/why-wordpresscom-is-virtually-spam-free/

Matt Mullenweg, with the way Akismet, Automattic, Bad Behaviour and Spam Karma work, means that any free Wordpress.com account, not to mention the restriction of commercial advertising on a free Wordpress.com account, means that Wordpress have the tools and expertise to combat and negate spam.

This is why 75% of Blogger (and probably Blogspot / LiveJournal) accounts are high in 'spam' friendly keyword searches and burdened with poor quality advertising.

Sure, Joomla! is slowing getting the same feature set that is available to Wordpress.com users, but if there is no flow on from trust (i.e. Joomla! domains being hammered by spam bots e.g. issues with OpenComment and other Joomla! specific comment tools), there can be no buy-in.

...
written by steve, April 14, 2007

Hi Lawrence

Thanks for that link - its one of the most fascinating studies I've seen in a long time. Some really interesting anti-spam techniques:

1) If you ever come across something we host that?s spam just drop the link there and someone will look at it within an hour or so
2) No Adsense allowed
3) Any caught comment spam originating or pointing to a Wordpress.com flags the site for inspection

With our client's sites on Wordpress.com we also found that they provided some great free templates - more professional than Blogger by several orders of magnitude.

In terms of Joomla spam, I've had sites hit really hard via logins (spammers seem to have that cracked with both the default registration and CB) but not with comments yet - fingers crossed.

Blog
written by Justin Whittaker, April 14, 2007

I prefer using the default Joomla blogs. Looking forward to future articles on this next week!

Spam
written by Zorro, April 14, 2007

In terms of Joomla spam, I've had sites hit really hard via logins (spammers seem to have that cracked with both the default registration and CB) but not with comments yet - fingers crossed.

Steve,

JomComment is holding up well on my blog as well, but haven't the spammers detected your contact form yet? I have received a lot of spam through these forms on my site and will have to do something about it soon.

...
written by steve, April 14, 2007

Hey Zorro

Agreed - Jomcomment is doing remarkably well, and I haven't even had to turn the captch on yet.

The contact form is getting some spam - not just in Joomla but also in some components. Mostree in particular has been getting its contact forms spammed heavily.

I'm loathe to add a captcha to our main business contact form so it might be time to move to a custom contact form...

Steve

Spam + Blogs = Trouble
written by Brian Teeman, April 14, 2007

I highly recommend reaing this article from Wired magaine.

And then do some google blog searches for joomla and see the volume of splogs

There is another article in the wired archive somewhere that shows how the spam blog farmers can setup tens of thousands of fake blogs every hour

Joomla gets thumbs up for blogging
written by Barrie North, April 15, 2007

I have always advocated Joomla over WP as a blog platform. The reality is that very soon in most blog's lifecycle they soon need to add this function or that feature. This is effortless with Joomla, but much harder with WP.

Interestingly, one of the most read blog posts I have is comparing the two...
www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/joomla-reviews/why-you-want-to-use-joomla-instead-of-wordpress.html

Spam and linkbaits
written by Lawrence Meckan, April 16, 2007

The main areas my clients get hit are the contact form, since most don't want to run comments. As for the ongoing fight between WP and Joomla! as a blog platform, perhaps Barrie might consider the reason his article is popular is that it conforms to a known linkbaiting technique (The contrary hook).

Content management systems should be deployed on usage behaviour of the client, since at the end of the day, the client has to understand the system they use. In this way, WP fulfills a different task for the end user than Joomla!, and any usability expert worth his salt would recognise this. Blind marketing for Joomla! just gets shown up as blind by the wider community (as per the ClueTrain Manifesto and IdeasVirus), actually lessening the credibility across the blogosphere for it. Perhaps this is why people consider Joomla! a "monster" app and "bloat" ?

Bundling to reduce bloat
written by steve, April 17, 2007

Hi Lawrence

Thanks for the interesting post. Its interesting to see that there seems to be a movement towards bundling Joomla for specific applications, removing some of the unneccessary addons and plugging in the tools needed for specific tasks. Doing this can help reduce the "bloat" factor.

VirtueMart are doing it: http://virtuemart.net/index.ph...ew&gid=101
Discussion on the Joomla forums: http://forum.joomla.org/index....190.0.html
Joomlabamboo.com and Joomlashack.com are doing this on a commercial basis.

Joomla Bundles
written by Anthony, May 22, 2007

Actually we have just released the Start Blogging package for free. Its essentially a mix of the Blog Sidebar, Ja Submit, JosComment, RD Rss feed and a few other handy things like mycontent and some other mambots - that aim to turn Joomla into an easy to use blog without needing to log in to the backend after the user has set it up.

I think it is going to be handy for some people but its missing some stuff like trackback and I think that Jomcomment would be a much more suitable addon but its not GNU - so the user will have to add that on later.

Anyway thought I would let you all know.

Thanks Anthony.

absolute!
written by bhupen, July 06, 2007

spend a few bucks, host your own blog, you own it, you manage it, you have the power to do what you want! There is always a string attached when someone says FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ? Free ? for what ?

doesnt make sense
written by stelam, August 07, 2007

so this isnt an actual post about joomla itself but about people just getting their own domains. why can't someone just use wordpress on their own domain then?? why in gods name would anyone bother to install joomla bloatware just for a blogging site??? ridiculous.

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written by steve, August 07, 2007

Why Joomla? Because sometimes that bloatware is useful

Sure, for a site that is 100% blog, nothing beats Wordpress, but this post is designed for sites that only have a blog as one part of their whole operation.

...
written by Jason, September 20, 2007

Great feedback! THank you...I really appreciate the perspective.

...
written by Avene, August 16, 2008

Thank you for your comments but which work better as a Blog Joomla, Blogger or Wordpress?

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