We eat, sleep and breathe Joomla!

So let's go back to the drawing board and look at what extensions you might need to pick up to duplicate the whole effect of a blog.

• Flexible Layout  
  
  Joomla is probably the easiest CMS to "skin" or "template" which means you can have your blog looking like anything you want.
  Conclusion: Out the box.
  
  
• Browser-based Editing
  
  One of the whole points of Joomla is to be able to maintain your site and edit your content in a browser.
  
  
• Automated Publishing
  Publishing is one-click with Joomla. You can even have items be published at a future date. Say you need to go out of town, and you write some blog posts to get published while you are out of town.
  
  
  
  
• Categories
  
  This just requires a bit of planning. When you are setting up your site, make a section called "blog" or similar to hold all the categories. Then make categories as you need them. Last step is to make a menu that has a link to each category. A module is automatically created at the same time, which you can place as needed.
  
  Conclusion: Out the box.
  
  
• Automatic Archiving
  
  I have yet to find an easy way to do this. The archive function in Joomla allows you to index content by date, but it changes the URL. That is very bad for a blog as you need persistant URL's for all those people linking to you.
  
  
  
  
• Search Engine Optimized Titles
  
  For OpenSEF. It's new Ajax admin interface is great and it seems to produce robust URL's. The clincher is the ease in which you can create redirects. If you have a lot of URL's that need to change, links from other sites. All I have to do is monitor my logs and when I see traffic coming in from old URL's its a 3 second (literally) job to set up a redirect to the new URL. No messing with htaccess here.
  The second part of the process was internal links. These are useful for SEO, but who wants to be found on a Google search for "read more". There is a mambot from Run Digital that changes that though, and makes the link much better. It also does it automatically.
  
  
• Comment Systems
  
  Luckily, at the time of revising how I was building my blog, a new comment component was released. I am using it on my site now and its great. The front end looks good, has a robust captcha and is easy to template. Its also got some nice extra features like hiding the comment form with Ajax. Its $12.50 for the basic version, but well worth the price.
  
  
  
  
• Trackback or Pingback
  
  Here is our first major issue. Currently there is no method of acheiving trackbacks on a Joomla blog built from its seperate peices. If this is an absolutely critical, must-have feature for you then you might need to be using the JD-Wordpress extension. If its more a question of "it would be nice if I had it", then its probably worth going with the seperate pieces solution and wait for this to be developed. In 1.5, this function will be much easier to add and there are at least two developers working on a solution at this time.
  
  
  
  
• Syndication Feeds
  
  Joomla has built in RSS syndiation, there is actually nothing to do here. Well, that's not quite the whole story. The RSS as it runs in Joomla is only of the Front Page (or home page). This means that if your blog is on an interior page, or you want to have multiple feeds, you need to find some help. Fortunately, there is a great extension from Run Digital that will do both of these, and its free.
  
  
  
  
• Email Notification
  
  Right now there is no way to have email notification to an emaillist when you make a blog post. There is a way round this. Several 3rd party (non-Feedblitz. You can have people subscribe to an email list and they actually get the introductory text from your blog posts emailed automatically to them. There is nothing you, as the blog author, need to do.
  
  
  
  
• Search
  
  Joomla has a powerful search function built in.