You may have noticed a few changes to the JB Blog over the last few days. Sometime ago when MyBlog was in Beta stage we gave it a little test run but found the interface a little confusing but after a few days of using the component we can happily say that it's quite possibly the must have commercial component for Joomla.

It really helps shift Joomla into a more flexible blogging platform with all the standard features you would come to excpect when using a blog:

• Tags
• Easy front end content submission
• RSS Feeds
• Permalinks
• Easy to use Blog dashboard
  

In fact we are so impressed with the component that we are going to install it on all of our client sites from now on. The $45 outlay is really nothing in the llong run, as it makes handling and add new content an absolute breeze.

The only real issue we had with the installation was with using SH404 and Myblog together. For a short period only registered users could access the blog content. A quick search of the azrul support forum yielded this fix here which allowed us to run the two components together.

The implementation of images in the blog posts could use a little bit more space as well. The sidebar contains a sliding accordion which shows/hides publish information, tags, image info and a search older posts facility (see image below). All of the slides except for the image slide work well - our only gripe is that the image directory view is a little cramped and would probably benefit from being placed in a popup to give you a better overview of the images directory.

Here is a screenshot of the user interface that just pops up on top of the page when adding or editing content.

All in all this is a fab component with loads of modules that we highly recommend for anyone looking to use Joomla as a blogging platform ...