Why Joomla Sucks! (My Joomla Review)
Nov 10th, 2006 by AhYap
(Skip this post if you don’t know what is Joomla, it is only meant for Joomla Fans)
joomla 
drupal 
phpnuke 
wordpress
Joomla is the MOST popular CMS today. They have a lot of users, a lot of developers, a lot of contributers, a lot of extensions and a lot of templates. I put in a very high expectation on Joomla and have play with it for the last few months. My experience ended up quite disappointed with Joomla and thus I take the time to try out over 30+ CMS, reading their documentations and users feedback. Finally, I admit that Joomla is not for me with the following problems.
#1. Joomla Uses UGLY URLs (No Built-in Friendly URL Support)
As the #1 CMS in the market, Joomla didn’t even have built in SEF (Search Engine Friendly) capability to display nice looking URL. The best built in capability is still something like www.yoursite.com/section/category/2/5 and sometimes it can be as ugly as www.yoursite.com/component/option,com_weblinks/catid,26/Itemid,45/
Long and Ugly. There are 3rd party extensions available, some are free and some are not! Installing and managing the friendly URLs do takes a lot of configurations and a lot of work. Joomla 1.5 is said to put in more attention to SEF, but it will be in 2nd phase. The current Joomla 1.5 beta still doesn’t have any improvement yet.
If you have already have a website and thinking of converting it into CMS, think twice before you choose Joomla. It’s very hard for you to configure Joomla to use your old addresses and naming. Unless you don’t mind losing your old addresses (i.e. lose all the traffic that is going to the old addresses).
#2. No Built-in Comment System!
This is really bullshit, as the so-called #1 content management system, there isn’t built in comment system support for your articles and blogs! You need to install 3rd party extensions and I tried almost all of them, but didn’t like any of them.
#3. Documents are group using Section and Category System
While there are people who like this, I prefer a hierarchy model. All documents in Joomla must be placed in a category. What that means is that if you have 2 sections call FRUITS and COLOR and categories APPLE, ORANGE and MANGO under FRUITS, GREEN, YELLOW, BLUE under COLOR, you must put your document in one of the 6 categories. You cannot put your document under FRUITS or COLOR, nor can you create subcategory under APPLE or BLUE. So everytime you create a document, you must pick 1 section and 1 category.
There are 2 problems. The first one being that if you just want a category call FAQ, you have to first create a ‘ghost’ section call FAQ that you will not use and create FAQ category under the FAQ section. So everytime you create a new item under FAQ, you need to choose FAQ under the section drop down, and then FAQ under the category drop down. This is not logical.
The second problem is already mentioned, you will not be able to have more subcategories. Even there is section and categories, note it is still 1 LEVEL only and not 2 level because you MUST put a document under a category, you cannot put it under a section!
Hierarchy method is a more logical way of grouping, you can create a 1st level call FRUIT, then 2nd level call APPLE & ORANGE and 3rd level call RED APPLE, GREEN APPLE (under APPLE). You can put you documents in any of them! Hierarchy method make more sense. That’s the way how our files are saved in our computer (directories, subdirectories, more subdirectories …) where you can save your file in any of them. That’s also the way how book are indexed (chapters, sub chapters, more sub chapters …).
#4. Poor Documentation for Developers.
Joomla core-developers are busy migrating all their Mambo codes to Joomla and they are too little effort on documentations. If you are new to Joomla and you are a hard-core PHP programmer, you will find it very difficult for you to start making extensions for Joomla. There are not enough tutorials and documentations. Maybe they think it is not worth it to make documentations for Joomla 1.0 as all their effort now is to fully migrate to Joomla 1.5.
#5. Nightmare if you want to add a little PHP code to your site!
Joomla is designed for end-users and expect everything to be easy so that grandma and grandpa can use it easily. However, if you know some PHP and wanna add some dynamic stuff to your site, it can be a nightmare! Even a simple echo “Hello World” will require you to create a complete module/mambot/component (writing XML file, a lot of joomla-integration PHP codes, etc). There isn’t a more simple way to quickly put some PHP code.
For other CMS like Drupal, MODx, WebsiteBaker, etc, you can easily add some PHP code to extend your site.
#6. A Joomla site is very fixed to its Pattern
What I mean is that you can easily recognize a site being made by Joomla by looking at a few things. Most of the time you can see from the urly URLs (look for the word component and option) This search in Google looking for both keyword in the URLs return 13 million pages
http://www.google.com.my/search?q=inurl%3Acomponent+inurl%3Aoption&btnG=Search&hl=en&safe=off
Others include the way they list our their categories with a bullet on the left and with a bracket that contain the articles count on the right. Also thanks to their Section/Category structure, you can only see a long flat list of documents listed in a category because there isn’t any hierarchy. There is also an easy recognizable filter, order, display row on top of listing. And lastly the << Start < Prev 1 Next > End >> Joomla Signature found under the listing of their documents.
Something Good About Joomla
Ok, I have bash too much about Joomla and with their fan base, I will not be able to stay alive long. 
So here are some praises for Joomla.
1. Should be the CMS with the most templates available! (only maybe WordPress can have a little bit more)
2. So many users that the website and forum is extremely active! Joomla.org is the top 500 most visited sites of the internet according to Alexa!
3. A very BIG and dedicated team behind Joomla. So Joomla will continue to grow rapidly in the future. You don’t need to worry that it will be abandoned like some of other CMS (or maybe wait very long for new releases).
4. Hopefully after they read this post, they will do something on it and I can blog “Why Joomla Rocks!” in 2007!
joomla sucks! joomla follows mambo.
JOOMLA SUCKS!!!!!!!
Joomla is the SON of Mambo. The developers have a fight and leave mambo, creating they own ‘mambo’ called Joomla.
So, Mambo and Joomla also sucks!
no wonder la.. but yeah.. the cms is too complicated. and it sucks. whats ur best recommendation for cms? i’m lookin for something i can work and tweak with.
After testing so many, my recommendation would be
#1. MODx
#2. CMSMadeSimple
MODx can do everything cmsmadesimple can do. But cmsmadesimple is extremely easy to use. And i think it is the fastest tool to make a complete working website. The initial installation come with a premade website with contents that is actually some basic guidelines on how to use it! It make getting started really very easy. If what you need is really a simple website (such as a brochure site for a company), cmsmadesimple is very suitable. After playing with CMSMadeSimple and get comfortable with it, you can start playing with MODx, once you good with MODx you will want to stick with it all the time.
MODx advantage is that it is simple and at the same time allow further extension easily if you are a PHP programmer. Another CMS that is good for developer is Drupal. It is not for beginners. If you are new, you got to read a lot of documentation to learn what is node, what is taxanomy, etc. The default installation also doesn\’t come with any sample site.
I definitively agree!
The shortcomings of this crappy “CMS” caused us two launch delays (three weeks each)!!!
I have to add the following annoyances:
1.) No fine grained access control (permissions)
2.) BLOAT
3.) API is changed quite often - Modules break quite often after security updates
4.) “Dirty” and extremely verbose HTML output
To be continued …
Totally agree!! I wrote another article almost at the same time this was released about how Joomla sucks as well. It really sucks, I had to take a few hacks in order to get my things done for SEO. I spent nights to fix the weird stuffs in the Joomla components and its internal structure was a nightmare! I was/am really mad about it! It just SUCKS!
Elvis
Internet Marketing Watch
1. Joomla have Built-in Friendly URL Support
2. Joomla have Comment System (Extension)!
3. Documents use Section and Category System, and its the best way to do it.
4. Good Documentation and Support for Developers.
5. Easy to add PHP code to your site (Extension)!
6. A Joomla site is not fixed to its Pattern
Hi Babula,
Thanks for commenting in my blog.
1. The built-in friendly URL doesn’t allow you to name your path exactly the way you want it.
2. How could the #2 CMS doesn’t have built-in comment system but rely on 3rd party extensions. There are few of them and users need to waste time to further research to decide which one to use.
3. That depends on people. Some like it, some (like me) don’t like it.
4. Are you sure? For future Joomla 5 maybe. For Joomla 1, developers are busy focusing upgrading Joomla from Mambo and doesn’t spend much time on developer document. User documentation are indeed quite good, but not developer documentation. (Compare Joomla Documentation to Drupal Documentation and you will see Elephant and Mosquitoe)
5. Haha. Extension again. The extension are buggy and insecure. If you run a multiuser site, your user can enter PHP code! Drupal handle this perfectly.
6. Look at the way its display a listing of pages and the next previous link, and other I refer in mypost.
I have made 40 sites with joomla.. never needed some built in comment system
http://www.juicymedia.co.uk joomla-site
I have tried drupal, it was quite ok.
The main reason why Joomla is #1 is it can be used out-of-box and is user friendly enough for not technical savvy users (which are most people). For technical savvy (programmer, coder…) who like to have more control and customization, we might prefer other CMS like Drupal.
Joomla out of the box? Friendly? I’ll have a pint of whatever you’re on my friend.
@11ahyap
you’re definitely on drugs, joomla sucks big time, but what annoys me the most are the extensions and their management(they’re either installed or removed, shitty placement.. )… heck, all the administration sucks, tables everywhere, templating systems sucks too, doesn’t give you enough freedom and the presentation code is both on the template and extensions, etc etc etc, I’m really pissed off with joomla, started creating a template thinking it would be as easy as creating.. you know, a template, like a few hours and I’d have a super-duper xhtml/css/wai compliant layout as usual but no, I ended up wasting lots of time looking for extensions that allowed me to make the template look like the original prototype…
I am starting to hate joomla, i used 1 before and 1.5 version today and i cannot stress enough who much i hate this category/section bs. Just cannot see the point, what are they trying to do? Tell everyone they are stupid and only them are smart with that crayze system. Hate it, it’s so confusing and it cannot be me because i tried other systems and did lots of stuff easily. I like the big community but hate product..
This article sounds so awfully familiar to me. The tutorial on how to display ‘hello world’ on your webpage was absolutely hilarious. And I find it very difficult to add my own programming to a website. It’s like I am forced to do it Joomla-style, for creating your own menu (with divs and links and not tables or ) is too much work. But I have to use this crap because my employer uses this. I hope I can find my way in the code-mess of joomla.
Also for a month now I feel that Joomla is designed for end-users. People who don’t understand a crap about programming. For example, when I want to use a seperator in my menu I have to fill in a parameter. Seems simple, but somehow it doesn’t work anymore. But when I look at the code, I just can’t find the solution for this problem for it is hidden in the humungous amount of code… needle in a haystack so to say.
Menuhighlighting is another crappy thing. I wanted to use a seperated submenu. On top of the page I have my main menu, on the left the submenu. Highlighting doesn’t work then. So we spend a whole day figuring out how to implement this in the website. I could’ve managed it in a few minutes using a CMS built by an ex-colleague of mine…
Have to go…have to make a very simple webpage…with joomla…
Hi everyone!
I find it a bit hard to sort out who lies about cms in order to defend what interest so I can only speak about my own experience. I use both drupal and joomla 1.5 to create sites for my customers…
If you honestly compare joomla 1.5 and drupal, you will be disappointed by joomla basic limitations at early or later stage of a site development unless you need a blog type site and nothing more.
When you really need an important basic extension you don’t find it… only gadget free extensions made by companies who want to sell you something behind them but nothing serious.
Joomla looks very nice and that’s why it’s a very good trap for people who don’t compare cms by trying them themselves…
Drupal is much more efficient than joomla which was thought and made as a fly trap for non professional people to sell templates among free template, SEO amongst free SEO services, and so on…
Drupal has the core functionality for the long term which joomla misses from the start and which cannot be patched even with the millions of extensions.
Example: Group access should have been basic in joomla core as they cannot be cleanly extended later without creating many holes in cms security … too bad for joomla unless they start it all over again (you will find extensions sooner or later for group access but don’t use them!).
That’s probably why only private individuals and small companies use joomla when clever companies use drupal.
Allow unregistered visitors to submit a new article with captcha in joomla as a simple proposal for approval by admins in a queue before it is published is possible but will never be secure… it takes 2 minutes with drupal !
Hi, nice thread here. I have to say; I think Joomla! is excellent! for creating messy, instable, non xhtml complient, SEO-unfriendly, WAI-losing, impossible to manage or deploy.
I tried Joomla to create a simple, seo-friendly, complient website and stopped after a week… I tried CMSMadeSimple to do the same and was finished in 5 hours. Believe me; this is the one. Have to see what additional modules bring, but so far, this is something that could actually be used! I just started my webdesign firm and use CMSMadeSimple for my first client… He LOVES the easy admin module, and added content is actually humanly understandable..
Kudos to them!
Wouter
I think Joomla is kind of old school. Things are moving into ROR like frameworks: Cake, CodeIgniter…
I dumped Joomla because of the Joomla-SMF stuff thats going on.
I used TinyPortal for SMF to do what Joomla did and I’m happy with it.
http://eCric.net
Agree with all the points, there’s gotta be built-in commenting and SEF support like drupal.
What do you guys think of Website Baker?
http://websitebaker.org
It is super easy to setup and use.
2 things I really like are #1 it is super SEO Friendly with the urls it creates. #2 unlike joomla it uses a simple system to publish pages. You can install and publish pages in a few minutes. No stupid category system to figure out. I installed joomla and gave up after a few hrs of trying to just get a damn article on the front page. What a joke.
I have so far about 10 sites of my own and another 10 for customers. This is pretty much the only system I have found where I can set it up for some one who knows nothing about how to operate a website and they can catch on and run it without too much trouble. There are some decent templates available and they are pretty easy to modify. I have 1 site that does about 1k to 1.5k unique visitors a day. Not much I know but the site is solid and google really likes it seo wise.
I would just like to know how others feel about this cms.
###
Joomla 1.5 has a lot going for it.
The Model-View-Controller design pattern for extensions is EXTREMELY powerful. I find most people who complain that Joomla isn’t “developer friendly” actually mean that Joomla isn’t “scripter friendly”. Anyone who understands object-oriented design and common software engineering design patterns will be in love with Joomla 1.5’s extremely clean and extensible framework.
The templating system is insanely flexible and easy to use. Some of the core components are still outputting outdated tables, but it is dead easy to write override templates since ONLY pure data is passed to the template - no HTML is passed from the code which is very uncommon and forces people to hack core code to change default HTML.
That said, Joomla is FAR from perfect. The user access is short-sighted and very limited. Also the content management setup with Sections and Categories is utter nonsense.
I personally look at Joomla as a site framework more than a CMS. Once you learn the ins and outs of the API, Joomla makes a great base for web application development as opposed to typical content management.
Hi AhYap,
I know joomla sucks, but it is open-source among others. Now I’m stuck in Fetch PHP coding, anyone willing to help?
Or recommended me other CMS. Thanks a lot.
Your are absolutely right — Joomla will not be abandoned, but it will abandon it’s older version users.
As I have built a site using the pre Joomla 1.5 engine, I have become quite comfortable with my plugins and components.
Now that Joomla 1.5 is out — there is no easy way to move my data over from an older Joomla to Joomla 1.5. Even the Joomla site states that data may be lost upon conversion.
None of my components and plugins will run natively in Joomla 1.5 unless you turn on legacy mode which is counter intuitive to Joomla 1.5 and turns off certain features of 1.5.
So… as no more security updates will be done for an older Joomla structure, I will therefore be stuck with a system that will eventually get eaten by hackers.
Since my plugins and components run on Mambo as well, I guess I will be forced to switch back to Mambo eventually unless the Joomla team can come up with a better solution to let me move all my data from Joomla 1.0.014 to Joomla 1.5.
I’m sure I am not the only person stuck in this boat.
-joe
Hey some of you guys are forgetting something.
Not everyones a programmer. While I agree Joomla is hard to understand it’s not such a bad option for those who prefer to go to the configuration screen rather than edit configuration.php
Also there are some pretty decent templates for Joomla.
Sure IMO Drupal is better all round it could do with a few slick templates (themes). Joomla hardly ’sucks’ but it’s also not the ‘king’ of CMS people make it out to be.
My company wants to deploy content, not provide a playground for programmers. We’ve been using drupal, but every time we want a design change in our sites it results in months of work by our one developer, all accompanied by grousing and complaining about how much is expected of him. We’re moving to Joomla slowly and find that with little work we can deploy feature rich and content rich sites that are easy for end-users to manage, cutting out the programmer middle man. Maybe others are finding this to be true as well. That probably accounts for the complaining on this blog from hard-core coders that Joomla isn’t good enough. Of course you’ll complain about a technology that cuts you out of job. So much for the high-tech high-priest guarding the technological holy of holies. Joomla is delivering web design and development to a broader audience. Warts and all, that’s a very good thing!
Hey guys,
I’ve been using Joomla for a year now and must say that I’m quite satisfied with it. I’ve installed Virtuemart and a few other components and modules and everything runs fine. I count X pages that I made with Joomla, one of them with 1.5.
When I read some of your posts, I ask myself if half of you even think about what they are writing. This is an OS CMS. Got something to say? Give your 5 cent to society and make it a better world. It’s really easy to point the finger and say: “bad” or “sux” or “shit” … But about changing it to make it better?! I point the finger and say: “retards” “idiots”. Why ? Because You can’t do better than this! You can ? Prove it! :o)
So what? there are some extensions or templates that have to be paid for ? Don’t we all want to survive in this jungle and have something to eat every day ?
Stop talking s*** and try to build a community like the Joomla one and/or do a better Job.
To “ahyap”, what have you done today that makes you proud of yourself? Or in the past? Bitching about 3rd party components and modules … Oh man, you’re sad. This is an OS. Open your dictionary, maybe you’ll find the meaning of it. As for me, if there weren’t possibilities to add these “plugins” or make some hacks, where would the OS concept fit in?
To tekno_boy: You’re right, Not Everyone Is a Programmer. And most of the so-called Programmer do forget that …
Why don’t you guys just join the community and earn money with your so called “talent”. Because if you have a big mouth to criticize, I guess You Must Be Really Really Good in what you are Doing or Bitching about!
This was my 5 cent about this great (but by far not perfect) CMS. Anyway, who’s is? YOU?!
Regards
Oh, and I almost forgot None of my clients ever complained about this CMS. ;op
Interesting read. I tried searching information on Joomla after evalaluating if for several days and had a hard time. I absolutely agree those several drawbacks ahyap initially listed. I am trying to migrate one of my client site and I think this post helps me a lot on my decision.
To LusoLux, if you are grown up then try to behave civic.
I totally agree with those drawbacks too.
The worst thing is the section/category feature … not only you must have a 2 level category system (not 1 or 3 but exactly 2) but also you cannot put an article in multiple categories. I can’t understand how can people bear such limitations …
joomla are not for blog shit, so why need built-in comment system.
joomla have the ability to reorganize the module positions, unlike other cms, u have to tweak the code.
@ LusoLux
“Stop talking s*** and try to build a community like the Joomla one and/or do a better Job.”
What community are you talking about there buddy?
I have to agree, Joomla is rather crappy. And that is also true from the developer side. Mostly because even simple things are implemented in a messy complex way technically and completely naive in functionality. Same goes for praised MVC implementation for extensions. I’ve done rails, I’ve done MVC-s on .NET and none of them required so much dumb keyboard dumping as Joomla requires.
I’m won’t even discuss the content model Joomla uses or the “great” globalization features it offers nor performance issues and handicapped caching system. I must confess I don’t know how much of the 1.5 code was actually ported from 1.0 and how much was rewritten. If it required such a bloaty framework, I wonder why they didn’t start from scratch.
hi,
been there, done that…well ur pre-mature experience wif joomla n ur complaints against it like u know ‘em better! i have nothing against other cms, as i used different approach towards projects. n of course this doesnt mean that joomla can fits in every project though. it’s the questions of what to use n how to use it. it’s the person who use it that matters most!
I must agree to ahyap regarding the shortcomings of Joomla. It’s true using Joomla often pissed me and made me cursed “Joomla sucks!”
Main flaws:
- Bloated
- Little flexibility
- Found it’s often unable to do some basic CMS functions
- Doing simple CMS things the complicated way
Main benefits:
- Very popular, many users base
I have to admit I am not a big fan of Joomla but I do like all the available modules . Even the commercial ones if they allow code modification. I have used cms made simple and must admit it is much better for smaller sites and non tech savvy users but joomla may be better for large sites for organizing lots of content with thir limited but still useful sections and categories. Although I totally agree that it is poorly developed. I see version 1.0 like the cms version of oscommerce: badly designed, mixture of presentation and business logic and a lot of questionable modules BUT it comes with a large user base with a lot of off the shelf extensibility. I think they are headed in the right direction with 1.5. Adopting the MVC design pattern is a big step in the right direction. My biggest gripe right now with joomla is that urls are all hard coded in the database. Both in the menus and in content items. I would also like to see better documentation to the likes of drupal or the codeignitor framework. Both well documented. I also don’t see why anyone would say it is end user friendly. Try sorting the menu structure in joomla then try the ajax sorting in cmsms. Try assigning a different template to each page. Try counting an explaing to the end user each step to create a page in joomla. Between creating the section, category, content item and menu item there must be at least 12 page views to get the result. Then compare to single page using cmsms.
I’m a user, starting an online business. Not a coder at all. I just want a tool to build my business (an arts-oriented portal) My criticism of Joomla and other cms’ is that
**the sites and templates all look the same**.
Very rectangular, no graphics, menus, or anything running at angles or overlapping. It’s a very corporate look. No matter what the color scheme or images, they’re all just these very blocky grids.
So can somebody tell me, is this because
(a) CMS like Joomla are limited to this look, by design?
(b) Designers are too lazy to make anything else?
(c) Nobody in the world other than me wants their site to look any different?
Thanks. I’d really like to hear something about this.
Most of the stuff you’ve mentioned is either inaccurate or outdated. Perhaps its time to take another critical look at Joomla.
- Sid
I think Joomla is for end-user with little programming knowledge..Not without total programming knowledge/experiences at all!
However, you don’t have to be a competitive like a ‘genius’ of knowing how to make a ‘complex’ - ‘Hello World’ output.. Untill now I don’t even know how to make ‘Hello world’ using PHP.
I don’t even know how to program at first and my background is in agriculture! Yet I figured out how stuff work out and find solution toward it. Not just cry out yelling here and there.
By the way, layout of Joomla is mostly depend on the designer creativity and their tweaking experiences on using CSS, PHP and HTML. Sadly the structure of design still have to adhere and limit to JOOMLA positioning..However, this is not a major issues. I’m sure by time goes by, Joomla will develop into better CMS..
I totally agree! Joomla is for idiots who cant code in php. Joomla created their own alien language that is designed to be understood by morans only. I had a competition with someone who is a joomla professional and created a site with 10 times more functionality in half the time using php and notepad.
While we’re slamming stuff, has anybody noticed that the site ‘joomlabook.com’ will not open in IE6? I pinged the author, Barrie North, about it and the response was that “IE6 is old. Don’t use it.” Excuse me, but IE6 is still 30% of the user base according to w3.
In fairness, I’ve not seen this problem with any other Joomla-powered site. But I thought for a Joomla ‘guru’ to take such an attitude to a browser-compatibility issue was way off-base. Especially since he was pitching me on his ‘SimplWeb’ service at the same time.
First off, I’m a coder who got sick of building custom CMS systems for each one of his clients, so I decided to look for a CMS system that would meet most of my clients needs and could be easily extended to meet those that it didn’t. I built a membership based site that needed a couple of extra modules, as well as automated user import from a legacy system. I built the site on Joomla 1.5, thinking that building with the newest and best was going to save my client money on later upgrades… Bad call. They want a forum component… Oh yeah, none exists for 1.5. (They may now, this was about six months ago.) In fact, MANY components don’t exist in 1.5, and the whole Joomla Open Source component sales issue means that many will NEVER exist for 1.5, paid or free! The API is very poorly documented, and writing the admin side of any component is a MAJOR pain in the butt.
So, I tried Drupal and was blown away at the ease of customization. The previous commenter who said their coder was complaining about customization obviously has a very crappy coder working for them because I’ve never met a pre-built system easier to customize than Drupal. You can hook into (almost) any part of the page building process easily, allowing you to inject your own functionality almost anywhere in the system. Integration possibilities are endless (we do a lot of flash, so Services/AMFPHP is awesome).
Yes, Joomla is pretty and somewhat easy to use, but I’ll take the power any day. My clients can handle a learning curve if it means that they can save lots of money and get more bang for their buck.
I just have to say that in my opinion Joomla [1.5] is more framework than CMS, sure it has some faults [non SEF urls (by default!!!, but it breaks with non-SEF extensions), fixed user groups and fixed content categorization [section->category->your-content or static (with no section)]], but it accommodates my client’s needs and mine perfectly.
I think you should see Joomla more as a framework tahn a CMS, it has succeded as a CMS thanks to the vast library of extensions, but you can’t always rely on extension devs [Fireboard is a good example].
For those arguing about not being able to use custom php, there are several custom-code modules that work with no problems, and it is quite easy to add your own code for anything you like [even pre-existent hand-written php sites] as a component, just following a simple file-structure [read the first pages of "Learning Joomla Extension Development"].
Again, if you are a dev, Joomla should be seen more as a framework, not as an openly customizable CMS ["hackable" for the joomla fanbois (as me =P)]. If you want to make a blog, use wordpress, a BLOG software, using Joomla for that is like using a cannon to kill a fly, but hey, the fly still dies in an awesome way =).
Joomla is not blog software, it’s for real websites ;), so its dumb to compare it to wordpress, as dumb as comparing PHP to Ruby On Rails (language vs. framework) . As I said, I’m a Joomla fan, but if i had to do a blog, I wouldn’t hesitate to use Wordpress instead.
Get the packt publishing books, that is all you need to make joomla yours in no time. Want forum integrations?, look at JFusion [http://jfusion.org/], still under development, but its advancing extremely well and can be looked at as a solution right now.