Installation

Preparing to Install Wordpress for Joomla

Before you install the Wordpress for Joomla component, you have to do a couple things. In order for Wordpress for Joomla to run as intended, you will need to first rename the htaccess.txt file to .htaccess in your public_html or httpdocs folder where the Joomla site resides.

On some webhosts, if you get an Error 500 message when you try to access the front end your website, you may have to comment out the following line:

Options +FollowSymLinks

by adding a "#" before the line as shown:

#Options +FollowSymLinks

Next, from the Joomla Administration, Go to System > Global Configuration and ensure that both "Search Engine Friendly URLs" and "Use URL rewriting" are both set to "Yes".

Installing Wordpress for Joomla

This section goes over the basic installation of CorePHP's Wordpress for Joomla extension. Following these simple steps, your installation of Wordpress for Joomla should go quickly and easily!

Wordpress for Joomla Extension Installation Process

Download the Wordpress for Joomla extension from our website at https://corephp.com

In your site's administrator interface at (yoursite.com)/administrator, browse to Extensions > Extension Manager.

Click on the Choose File button and select the Wordpress for Joomla Zip file you just downloaded.

Click on the Upload & Install button to install the extension.

Upon successful installation, you will see a green confirmation box as shown below:

You will now notice that Wordpress shows up in your Component drop down menu.

Configuration

Wordpress Single Site Configuration

Installing the Wordpress Blogging Platform

Click on Wordpress in the Components menu to begin the Wordpress install process.

Next, you will fill in your site name, email and choose whether you would like search engines to index the Wordpress site individually apart from the main Joomla installation in which you just installed Wordpress or ask them not to (it is up to the search engine to honor the request).

Click the Install WordPress button to install WordPress.

Wordpress will now install. Once completed (can take a minute or two), you will see the final confirmation page.

You may now log into your Wordpress site that sits inside of your Joomla installation. Use the same username and password as you just used in the initial login to install Wordpress.

After logging in, you will be greeted by the standard Wordpress dashboard:

Wordpress for Joomla has now been fully installed inside your Joomla Website!

How to Enable SEF URLs in Wordpress for Joomla!

Prior to this step, ensure you have SEF URLs turned on in Joomla! or the site will not work.

To enable SEF URLs in your Wordpress site, you need to go to the wordpress dashboard and navigate on the left menu, Settings > Permalinks. Select a permalink structure for your blog. It is recommended that you do not change this after you make your initial selection as changing it will cause all of your Wordpress site's URLs to change.

Selecting the permalink type you wish to have on your blog:

** SPECIAL NOTE ** 
If you are using the .html suffix for your URLs, you must also install the WordPress System Plugin, you can download this plugin from our website. Follow the instructions inside the plugin to complete the installation.

Configuring the Twenty Ten Theme in Wordpress for Joomla

The Twenty Ten theme has been heavily modified for use with your Wordpress for Joomla! extension. This is to facilitate the integration between Wordpress and Joomla and allow proper styling and customisation from the Joomla styles.

You will find all the settings under the Settings > General Wordpress menu.

Twenty Ten theme settings

Display Title and Description: This setting will switch the Wordpress title and description from displaying in your Joomla site.

Display Header Image: This will turn the header image off and on.

Display Blog Menu: This will turn on and off the Wordpress menu right above the header image.

Joomla Template Company: Use this option to enable certain features and styles specific to each template company. We have put a lot of work into making our WordPress for Joomla! extension work with as many template styles as possible. We started with one template from each major Joomla! template company. If the styles don’t work you can revert to the Default Joomla option which should be a solid base for all templates.

Wrap metadata in modifydate class: You can have the metadata from Wordpress display in a small font wrapper ("posted on ... by ...), which may be needed by some Joomla Templates for a good display of the metadata (such as Joomlashack's Cascada template).

H Tag level of widget titles (ie. H1 - H5): Widget header titles should match the same header class as your Joomla Modules. That is to say that if your Joomla module titles use an H3 class, then so should your Wordpress Widgets.

Add a module class suffix to widget to match styles: Add a module class suffix to widgets to match style of modules. Add space in front of name if it needs to be it's own class instead of adding to end of default module wrapper class.

Add a space before the module class suffix to make it it's own class: Add a space before the module class suffix to make it it's own class. Needed for templates like Gantry.

Site title size (in pixels): You can change the size of your Wordpress' site title if you have it displayed in your Joomla Site (If the "Display Title and Description" setting is on)

You can set colors for Title, Links, hover links, sticky posts, navigation background & text, and same with the subnavigation.

Extra Settings

Use Joomla content plugins: Enabling this option will allow the Joomla content plugins to show when a WordPress post is displayed.

Use sidebar in content area: If enabled, the WordPress sidebar will be displayed within the WordPress content area. This will allow the Wordpress Widgets to display, however it will also shrink your post area as you're adding a sidebar into the content area.

Enable Multisite: This is where you can turn on MultiSite to facilitate a blogging community with multiple blogs all running through a single Wordpress for Joomla installation.

Redirect to Primary Blog:  This option is only used when Multisite is enabled If enabled, a user will be automatically redirected to their primary blog when visiting any other WordPress dashboard for the first time.

How to Enable SEF URLs in Wordpress for Joomla!

Prior to this step, ensure you have SEF URLs turned on in Joomla! or the site will not work.

To enable SEF URLs in your Wordpress site, you need to go to the wordpress dashboard and navigate on the left menu, Settings > Permalinks. Select a permalink structure for your blog. It is recommended that you do not change this after you make your initial selection as changing it will cause all of your Wordpress site's URLs to change.

Selecting the permalink type you wish to have on your blog:

** SPECIAL NOTE ** 
If you are using the .html suffix for your URLs, you must also install the WordPress System Plugin, you can download this plugin from our website. Follow the instructions inside the plugin to complete the installation.

Display WordPress

How to Display Wordpress Content In Joomla!

While Wordpress for Joomla can be used as it's own website within the Joomla domain (ex: yourdomain.com/blog where blog is the wordpress site), it's real power comes from integrating seemlessly with Joomla. The Wordpress blog content takes on the style from your Joomla template for each blog post, and you can even display the Wordpress Widgets in your Joomla site!

In this tutorial, we will show you how to display your wordpress blog posts right in Joomla! using Wordpress for Joomla!

1. Navigate from the top menu of the administrator dashboard in Joomla to Menu > Main Menu > Add new menu item
   
   
2. In the details tab, click the Select button in the Menu Item Type line
   
3. Choose Category from the Wordpress Dropdown as shown
   
4. Wordpress for Joomla will pull your Wordpress site's categories and display then inside of your Joomla Administration in the New Menu Item as shown below. Choose which category you want to display in Joomla (for this tutorial, "Uncatagorized" came as the Wordpress default, and I added "blog", "news" and "events" categories in the Wordpress dashboard.
   
5. Give your Menu Item a Title. Since I chose "News", the Joomla menu title will be "News" (but you can name the Joomla Menu Item anything you want, of course). Once done, click Save & Close.
   
6. Going to the Front End of your Joomla site, you will now see a new menu item called "News". Click it.
   
7. You will now see your posts show up in your Joomla site that were created in the Wordpress site!
   

How to Display Wordpress Widgets In Joomla

Wordpress Widgets Can Be Used In A Joomla Module

You can place your Wordpress widgets in a way so they show up in your Joomla website, just like you have done with the Wordpress posts. This is good if you want to show your latest wordpress posts, archives or tags.

1. In Wordpress, navigate to Appearance > Widgets. Notice how at the bottom of the list of widget areas on the right, you have Joomla Module Widget Area 1 & 2? This is where you'll place your widgets that you want to display in your Joomla site.

2. Let's say you have placed a simple Text widget into Joomla Widget Area 1, this is what you would see in the Wordpress administrator dashboard. Make sure to save the widget you place here by clicking the "Save" button.

3. Now, from your Joomla Administration, you will go to Extensions > Module Manager.

4. Click New to create a new module, then Wordpress Sidebar 1, where the number is the same as the widget area where you placed the widget in step 2.

5. On the right side of the Module Manager: Module mod_wordpress_sidebar1 or 2, you will see the Position field. Select the position that you want the widget to show up on your Joomla website. Make sure you give the module a title too. For the default Protostar theme, I will select the "Right" position to display the widget to the right of the content. Don't forget that you can choose to show the widget on all pages or just certain pages as well. Click the green Save button.

6. Now go to the Joomla front end and check to see if your widget shows up in the module position that you defined in step 5 above.

Note: If it does not show up, please check to make sure that the module's Module Assignment is set to show the module on either all pages, or to show on your desired page. This is located in the menu assignment tab of the module manager's module display:

How to Create a Menu Item for your Wordpress Blog in Joomla!

In this tutorial, we will now create a menu item for your Wordpress blog within the Joomla website. This will allow you to show your full Wordpress site without being integrated within your Joomla site.

You can put the menu item in any existing menu or create a new one. For this demonstration, we'll add a "blog" to the main Joomla menu.

1. For this tutorial, you can use any theme other than twenty ten or twenty twelve, which are both modified specifically for Joomla integration!
2. Going to the Main Menu in the Joomla administration, we create a new menu item in the main menu.
   
3. Click the select button next to Menu Item Type
   
   
4. From the popup list, select Wordpress, and it will slide open to give you more choices
   
5. For the purposes of this demonstration, we want to show the wordpress site when the menu item is clicked on the front end, so we select Wordpress default layout. The popup will disappear, and you'll be back at the main screen. Notice here that your menu item type and link are both populated. All you need to do is add a title for your menu link and you're all set! I called the link "Blog"
   
6. Click the Save & Close button.
7. You now must turn on SEF URLs for both your Joomla site and your Wordpress site. To do this, follow these tutorials:
   1. Turn on SEF URLs for Joomla
   2. Turn on SEF URLs for Wordpress
8. Go to your website's front end and you'll notice that you have a new menu item called "blog".
   
9. When you click on "Blog", you will see your full Wordpress website.
   

Add Users

How to Add Users To Wordpress in Wordpress for Joomla

You have the ability to add users to your Wordpress installation in the Wordpress for Joomla by simply adding them to your Joomla site through the Administration Control Panel. Just go to Users > User Manager > Create New User. Now you will create a new user in Joomla. By default, Joomla will make your newly created user a member of the "registered" group. This will then create a user in Wordpress in the "Subscriber" role. 

If you create a Joomla user and assign the "SuperAdmin" group, then the user will automatically be created in Wordpress with the "Administrator" role. 

Should you want to give your Wordpress User either the "contributor", "Author" or "editor" role, this must be set manually in the Wordpress dashboard under Users.

The Wordpress User permissions follow the standard Wordpress permission levels found here.

Installing WordPress Extensions

Installing Plugins in Wordpress

Plugins can be installed in the usual way through the Wordpress dashboard. The Wordpress for Joomla integration was developed so that it would allow for most of the Wordpress plugins to work without modification. On occasion, you might find that a few plugins will not work after the installation as expected, which is likely due to the nature of the integration. If you need to have a plugin migrated, please contact us at http://support.corephp.com.

Installing Wordpress Themes in Wordpress for Joomla

Currently, WordPress for Joomla! ships with a modified version of the default Twenty Ten and Twenty twelve themes. These two themes are made to display inside of a Joomla! template. This means that they have nonobtrusive styles that will not affect the rest of your Joomla template. They are also made so your Joomla! template validates.

You are able to install a different third party template if you wish, but the template will display on its own and it will not be wrapped with the Joomla! template. The reason for this is because most, if not all third party templates are not made to work inside of another template. If you were to display a third party template inside a Joomla! template, more than likely you would have duplicate <html>, <body>, tags (among others) that would cause your page not to validate. It could potentially not render correctly on some (or all) browsers. 

Keep this in mind when installing a third party template.

For custom theme integrations, please contact us at http://support.corephp.com.

Modules and Plugins

Wordpress for Joomla Modules and Plugins

Aside from the main zip file for WordPress for Joomla!, there are other files that can be downloaded for Wordpress for Joomla.

MODULES

Note: These modules can only be used when the Twenty Ten theme is enabled. 

WordPress Blog List Module – Lists blogs by name and provides a link to them. This module can only be used when the Wordpress multisite option is enabled.
WordPress Category Module – Lists categories from WordPress in a Joomla! module.
WordPress Latest Blogs Module – Lists a specified number of posts site-wide. Since the module was written with versatility in mind, it removes all HTML from the truncated version of the post (unless the “Display images” parameter is set to "Yes”, then it allows the <a> tag and the <img> tag). The amount of characters the module will display in the intro-text is defined by the “Max Length of Post” field. Note that because content is being truncated, if the “Display images” parameter is set to “Yes”, the “Max Length of Post” should be increased to allow for lengthy tags.
WordPress Recent Comments Module – Lists a definable number of recent comments that were made on WordPress posts.
WordPress Search Form Module – Displays a WordPress search form that you can use anywhere on your site.
WordPress Sidebar Modules 1 and 2 – Outputs WordPress Widgets in any module position in your Joomla site. For further explanation, please refer to the “Widgets and Modules” section earlier in the documentation.

PLUGINS

WordPress Search Plugin – Enables the native Joomla! Search component to be able to search the content of WordPress for Joomla! posts and display the results.
Xmap plugin – Xmap is a sitemap component for Joomla created by Vargas. The WordPress sitemap plugin allows blog posts from WordPress to display in the sitemaps created by Xmap. The plugin must be installed via the Xmap plugin manager and not the default Joomla installer.
WordPress Plugins – Occassionally, a Wordpress plugin may not be able to work with Wordpress for Joomla out-of-the-box and will require modification. WordPress plugins that have been ported by ‘corePHP’ can be found in the downloads section of corephp.com.
The JomSocial WordPress plugin which displays activity stream notifications for blog posts and comments
The JomSocial WordPress Toolbar Plugin for displaying a menu for JomSocial users to write their blog, view their blog, view all blog entries, and register for a blog.

Upgrading

How to Upgrade Wordpress

It is recommended that you make a backup of your Joomla site before any upgrades are performed.

1. Backup your wordpress theme folder if you have make modifications to your theme. It will be found at /components/com_wordpress/wp/wp-content/themes. If you did not modify the theme files, then you can skip this step
2. Install the component and plugins included in the installation zip file. You can install all the extensions over the current ones (overwrite) that were previously installed.
3. Browse to your wordpress installation through the Joomla! Backend:
   
4. Wordpress may ask you to upgrade the database before continuing. Do so now.
   
5. After doing the database upgrade, restore your theme if you did the backup in step 1 if necessary.

Your blog will now be updated.

How to Migrate from a Wordpress Stand Alone Site to Wordpress for Joomla

To transfer from a stand-alone Wordpress site, you can go to Tools > Export and export an XML file that will contain all of your posts, tags, categories, and links to your images. Then access Wordpress for Joomla and go to Tools > Import and import the XML file. This will bring in all of the content and prompt you to transfer the images to your current installation (so make sure you don't take the old site down until the import).

Themes and Plugins will have to be manually transferred or re-installed.

Multisite

Activating WordPress Multi Site

Wordpress Multi-Site Can Easily Be Used in Wordpress for Joomla

What is Wordpress Multi Site?

Simply put, Multisite allows your site users to create blogs of their own. Alternately, you can setup multisite so that you as the admin are the only one who can set up multiple blogs.

1. To activate Multisite, in your Wordpress dashboard, go to Settings > General and scroll down to the bottom. You will see the selector "Enable Multisite". Choose "Yes" and then click the "Save Changes" button. Multisite is now active!

2. You now must choose a directory for the multisite to be installed in.To do this, you will need to go to Tools > Network Setup and create the directory. Keep in mind that the directory name will show up in your web address: YOURDOMAIN.com/directory-name-here/blog-name. So if you create a directory name called "Community" and your blog is "myblogname", then your URL will be YOURDOMAIN.com/community/myblogname. Got it?

3. You will now be logged out. Please log back in using your Joomla Superuser credentials.

4. You will be taken to the Network Setup page again, and here you will have to give your new blog network (multisite) an overall title and administrator email (probably yours).

5. Using your favorite FTP Client, FTP to the Wordpress directory located at either of the following (depending on your hosting account):
/httpdocs/components/com_wordpress/wp
/public_html/components/com_wordpress/wp

6. Download a copy of your wp-config.php file so that if you happen to mess something up, you can always copy it back to the server and start all over.

7. Open the wp-config.php file and add this text from your Wordpress dashboard into the file:

Like so:

8. Now create an .htaccess file on your server in the same folder as the wp-config.php file was found, and open it for editing.

Add the following in to that file:

Like so:

9. Once complete, log out and log in again to see the changes.

Creating a new site in Wordpress Multisite

Now that we've activated Wordpress Multisite, it's time to set up a new site!

1. Go to Sites > Add New and click the "add new" button.

2. In the Add New Site screen give your new site an address, which is part of the URL, and a title. Then map the new site to an existing user. Then click the Add Site button.

Please note that you have to create the user in Joomla first if you want to map the site to someone not already registered.

The site will be added and you will see the following message:

If you now browse to the URL that you defined in the first step (in my case it was DOMAIN.com/community/newsite), you will find the front end of that specific multisite!

Adding Themes to Wordpress Multisite

Now we will change the Wordpress Theme on your Multisite using our newly created "New Site" Wordpress site. 

1.In the Wordpress Menu, go to My Sites > Network Admin > Themes

2. You can choose to either upload a new theme (red arrow) or network activate a theme (green arrow). Every theme that you upload must be network activated if you want one of the multisites to use it.

3. To Upload a new theme, click the New Theme button at the top (red arrow). You will be given a choice of selecting a theme from the Wordpress.org selection, or uploading one saved to your computer.

For complete documentation on Uploading and switching Wordpress themes, please see http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes.

4. Go to the Wordpress Dashboard displaying all the sites in your multisite installation by going to Sites > All Sites. Choose the site you want to change the theme for by hovering over it to show the "edit" menu below (red arrow) and click edit.

5. From the edit site screen, choose the theme tab (green arrow) and then click "Enable" for the theme you want to change to (shown with red arrows).

Your theme change is now complete.

Adding Plugins to your Wordpress Multisite

Here is how to add plugins to your Wordpress multisite.

1. From your Wordpress Multisite administration, click My Sites > Network Admin > Plugins

2. Choose Add New to add a new plugin.

3. Install the plugin by either typing the search term in to the search field or uploading from your computer.

4. If you want to make the plugin available right away, select "Network Activate". If you want to activate it later, just click "Return to Plugin Installer".

Unlike themes, Plugins are automatically turned on for all sites when network activated in Wordpress for Joomla.

Languages

Wordpress for Joomla in Other Languages

To translate WordPress you need to do two things, you need to install an .mo file where you can read how to do this here

This will only translate the dashboard of WordPress.

To translate the front-end you need to edit the WordPress language file. This file is located here:

/language/en-gb/en-gb.com_wordpress.ini (which contains roughly 10 phrases to be translated)

You need to translate all of the strings inside that file. If you would to provide us with the translation file once you are done, ‘corePHP’ will more than gladly upload it for others to download.