General Settings

To start configuring JoomBlog component go to Components > JoomBlog > Configuration in your Joomla! Administration menu.

On a General Settings tab you could configure several useful options.

• To change title and description displayed on JoomBlog toolbar you could configure Primary Blog Title (1) and Primary blog description (2). These fields describe your engine meanwhile every blog could have it's own title and description. Read Managing Blogs documentation section for more details on creating sub-blogs.
• To set amount of posts per page you could use Amount of Bloggers Recent Posts (3) and Amount of Categories Recent Posts features from General Settings tab. They determine how many posts will be displayed on a bloggers page and on category page respectively. Amount of posts on front page could be set in Layout section.
• To setup RSS feed use RSS feed settings (4) that allow you to enable/disable RSS feed for your blog and determine amount of records in a feed.

See Blog Frontpage and Bloggers Page screenshots to understand how these settings will impact look & feel of your blog.

Layout

Front Page

• To set amount of posts displayed on a front page enter appropriate number into Num of entries per page input box.
• To enable/disable displaying blog category and JoomBlog toolbar use Show category and Show front page toolbar respectively.
• To set a date format strftime function is used. So in Date Format field you could use parameters listed in PHP Manual page for this function.
• To enable/disable link to print compatible view on a blog post page use Enable Print Link option.

Avatars

Introduction Settings

Using Introduction reduce size of a blog post and make user to go to a blog post page to read a full article.

• To enable Introduction use Display Introtext (1) option. Otherwise full article text will be displayed.
• To define the size of Introduction set value in Default number of paragraph for default introtext (2) input box. Article will be cropped after paragraph which number will be entered.
• To customize "Read More..." link to a full article set a value for Display the Read More link (3) option. If no value specified default "Read More..." text will be used.
• To enable/disable Joomla! Read More tag and button in JoomBlog post set Disable the {readmore} tag and the Read More button (4) option.
• To enable/disable smart Read More link (will be shown only if there are more paragraphs than specified) Show the Read More link if necessary (5) option could be used.
• To open a full article right in a place where Introduction ends Readmore Anchor (6) could be used.

See how your settings will affect front page.

Dashboard & Menu

Dashboard is a flexible toolbar that gives user quick access to blog content. It could contain following menu items: Posts, Blogs, Search, Bloggers, Categories, Archive, Tags, Profile, Add Blog, Add Post.

Posts - list of recent posts from all blogs. Number of posts displayed could be configured on Layout tab.

Blogs - list of blogs with description.

Search - integrated search inside the blog. Available search options: keyword, blogger, tag.

Bloggers - list of bloggers together with their recent posts.

Categories - list of available categories.

Archive - blog posts sorted by creation date.

Tags - list of tags used in whole blog. Clicking on tag will link you to a list of posts with that tag.

Profile - link to a user profile. If the user have access to posts creation, he will find there a list of his posts with edit/delete options.

Add Blog and Add Post - this items available only for users that have author access to blog. That means they can create blogs and posts.

Several options could be configured in Dashboard and Menu sections:

• Administrator could configure JoomBlog to automatically approve new blogs and posts created by users. Auto approve blogs (1) and Auto approve posts (2) options are used accordingly. If set to 'No', administrator approval will be required.
• To enable/disable WYSIWYG HTML editor on front end when writing a post, toggle Use HTML Editor (3) option.
• To show/hide graphical icons for dashboard items use Show icons in main menu (4) option.
• To enable/disable tab style for dashboard items Show tabs in main menu (5) should be used.
• To show/hide panel around menu items Show panel in main menu (6) option could be used.
• To show/hide any menu item Show Menu Items (7) options should be set.
• To customize menu titles input values in Titles of Menu Items (8) section.
• To change the order of menu items configure Order of Menu Items (9) section.

Plugins

• Content - Joomblog
• System - Joomblog
• Bloggers synchronisation plugin

Modules

• Categories of blogs displays a list of published categories with a count of posts in each category.
• List of blogs show a list of published blogs. Count of blogs could be configured.
• Popular bloggers lists the most popular bloggers. Configuration options: bloggers count, show full name, show avatar.
• Archive posts displays posts in chronological order.
• Latest posts displays configurable number of the latest posts. Date format and name options also could be configured.
• Tag cloud displays tags used in posts. The size of a tag depends on a count of posts that contain the tag.