Joomla is my favorite Content Management System and WordPress is my favorite blog. Unfortunately, until recently, there has not been a way to easily integrate WordPress into Joomla. Now, with corePHP’s WordPress Integration for Joomla 1.5 (CWJI), it’s very easy to add a WordPress Blog to Joomla. update

Before this integration, I would create a custom skin for WordPress that matched the Joomla site. But creating a custom skin for WordPress takes a lot of time and it expensive for the client. It’s much easier to use CWJI.

Furthermore, with CWJI, your Joomla and WordPress users are integrated so your users won’t need a separate login for Joomla and WordPress.

The installation of CWJI was easy; it installs like any other Joomla component. Once it’s installed, configuring WordPress is the same as any WordPress installation. The only catch is that I had to modify the WordPress layout to make it fit within my content column. The reason is that the client’s site uses a left-side navigation, and they wanted that to be visible on ALL pages, including the blog page. If you can allow wordpress to fill you whole content area, then it you probably won’t have to make any modifications to the layout.

The CWJI is a commercial component and costs $59.95 for a one year subscription (this means you get free software updates for one year). I think that’s a very fair price, especially when you consider how long it would take you to create a custom template for WordPress so it matches your Joomla site.

One final warning: You cannot use a standard WordPress update to update CWJI. You will need to get updates from corePHP.

I highly recommend this product; now you can have the best of both worlds: Joomla and WordPress together.