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JPress(ive) feature overview

Written by Wilco Jansen Wednesday, 26 November 2008 10:00

In my previous blog explained that Amy Stephen and I have applied for a session on the Drupalcon in Washington DC I promised to give an overview of all features JPress will bring when it is finished. Before I just dump the feature list, be aware that JPress will NOT use any core hacks and will come with example data so you can use it directly after you installed it. The sample data of course is to give you an opportunity to test drive JPress and play around with the features, in a final situation you of course won't use the sample data.

The blogging part of JPress has the following options.

• Single User Blog
• Multi User Blog
• Each blogger can have their own blog
• The blogger's Category can be automatically created after Username approval processing
• ACL Enhancements - Bloggers are restricted to their own posts and their own category
• Using normal Joomla! User Groups, Site Administrator can enable or restrict automatic publishing for all or individual bloggers

You can keep track of author profiles. With user profiles you extend the general Joomla! settings and make it possible to add additional data tags, or referrals to other informational sources. JPress will offer:

• With UserMeta extension, additional data elements added as an example of how easy it is to extend User data. This can be easily customized by Site Developers for their own needs.
• Blogger profile can be shared beneath their posts
• Gravatar support for both Posts and Comments
• Content License Choices (Can be site-wide or per-blogger)
• Email Notification options for posts and comments
• Define personal social networking URLs

To create the blogs there are editor features added, here we go with these set of features:

• Text (Smiley, FX.Slide, Syntax Highlighter)
• Images (automatic thumbnails, resizing, random image insertion)
• Gallery support (Slimbox, Phatfusion
• Audio
• Video
• Frontend editor space designed for ease of use and includes instructions for use of each Plugin.

What is a blog without proper URL generation and URL handling. For the SEO geeks amongst us JPress has the following:

• Pretty, permanent URLs: section-alias/article-alias(.html) available, will have many additional options
• Plugin to ensure unique URLs for posts;
• Posts have one, and only one URL, regardless of how many Menu Items include it (No duplicate content);
• Canonicalization of home page
• WWW vs no WWW http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonicalization-update/
• 301 processing available for URL migrations and/or changes to the Article URL
• 404 processing, including ability to create a custom 404 page and the collection of data regarding "page not found" errors.

Beside the regular RSS feeding JPress offers some additional features for post notification:

• Pings
• Email Subscriptions
• Tweets (Post title and Tiny URL)

I understand when you want to take a break from here, but the good thing is that the feature list is not yet ready. Let's focus into the look and feel of blogs, JPress has the following candy in it (blog View that simply extends com_content)

• Menu Item selection allows multiple Sections and Categories, date ranges, and authors;
• All normal events and Joomla! Plugins work with view since it uses com_content;
• Standard "reverse order by date" blogging standard possible (and can continue to use other Joomla!'s layout options)
• RSS Feed

JPress will also come with taxonomy support and standard blogger objects:

• Tag Cloud;
• Blogger;
• Blog Calendar;
• Selection of any dimension filters the list of posts for tag, blogger, or date range.
• Pagination support;
• RSS Feed (ex., "Posts tagged with Joomla!" has an RSS Feed)

Those who want to test drive JPress with a template that fits will also not be disappointed, JPress comes with the simplicity Template:

• Standard Blog look - Header, content area, footer and sidebars
• Adjust content in sidebar easily using Joomla!'s Module Manager
• Standards compliant output for all extensions

If you care about your visitors, you for sure want visitor interaction. Let's see what JPress offers there :

• Polls (core)
• Voting (core)
• Social Bookmarking
• Comments, Gravatar support, and Moderation

To keep the e-grafity blokes out spam control will be integrated:

• Mollom
• Akismet
• Secure Images
• Captcha
• Recaptcha

Almost there, only two categories left...my fingers get sore :-) Eye catching "Got to have it cuz it's a blog" stuff:

• Title Manager
• Flickr integration
• Twitter Status and Timelines of Self, Friends and/or Followers
• Blogroll - Friend Links/Cool Links (new custom Module that uses standard Joomla! Core Web links components)

The last stuff is almost boring, it's normal Joomla! Core Functionality but worth while to mention:

• Fully compatiable with all normal Joomla! functionality - including normal Joomla! extensions.
• Recent Posts (Latest News)
• Most Popular
• Online Users
• Related Posts
• Custom Modules
• Standard Templating easy to use to create headers, sidebars, footers, etc.

If you're not already impressed on what is already in, you should check out the JPress wish-list. This is a real joined effort from a community team. Tibor Toth has been doing some amazing work on the installer, because the side effect of so many features on top of the flexible 1.5 framework is that a lot of extensions need to be installed. Tibor has made the package install as easy as it can be, just one main package to put into the installer and all is done automatically...great work!

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