PHP-CSS-DIV-CMS Joomla-Java Info

Possible New Release Cycle for Joomla!

19.12.09

One of the great things about the recent Joomla! Developers Conference in New York was that, with Andrew, Ian, Louis, Ron, Sam, and myself, we had all four Development Coordinators plus a majority of the Production Work Group all in one place for the very first time. This gave us the chance to talk in depth about an important issue that is critical to the future of the project -- the release cycle.

As many of you know, version 1.5 was released in January of 2007, almost 2 years ago. That means that it will be over 2 years between versions 1.5 and 1.6. I think most of us would agree that this is too long between versions. But just saying we should release more often doesn't address the underlying issues and challenges.

Fortunately, Louis had given this a lot of thought, and he led a discussion of how we can get to a more dynamic release cycle while preserving the stability and reliability that our users have come to expect. I wrote up a short proposal based on that discussion and just posted it to the General Development list here.

As I stress in that post, although we are excited about this idea, it is only a proposal at this point. We want to hear your feedback before we make any decisions. So, if this is a subject that you care about, please read, consider, and then let us know your thoughts. Thanks!

Using Joomla 1.6? Then grab a copy of the brand new Joomla 1.6 book - now in its 3rd edition - Joomla, A User's Guide! This is the continuation of the wildly popular Joomla - A User's Guide, by Barrie North, published by Prentice. It's sold over 35,000 copies, had rave reviews and been translated into 5 languages. Joomla - A User's Guide has been the standard bookshelf reference for Joomla since 2007.

Over the last week I have been talking (How to Track Offsite Links for Google Goals i...) about how to use Google Analytics for your Joomla site to better track conversions, marketing efforts, and the usability of your site.

 Allowing users to register at a Joomla site is very very common. It also makes a great goal to track. Discovering the URL to use in the funnel path is a little tricky, as there is a confirmation email involved. When users register on a Joomla 1.5 site, they geRead More...

Since the release of Mootools 1.2, we have found ourselves facing a rather difficult question - what do you do with the 1.5 core?  Unfortunately, the changes that came in Mootools 1.2 were significant enough that backwards compatibility with Mootools 1.1 was a difficult task.  I like to compare it to the difference between Joomla! 1.0 and Joomla! 1.5.  We did a lot of house cleaning and made our framework much smoother and much cleaner.

Such is the case for Mootools 1.1 and Mootools 1.2.  The new Mootools represents a significant step forward.

As a result, Joomla! developers have found themselves in a difficult position. Do you use the outdated version of Mootools, thereby reducing compatibility issues and making life easier for users, or do you use the new version and attempt one of a variety methods of overriding the core framework.

We hope to change all of that in the near future.

As has been previously mentioned, it is our plan to give Joomla! 1.5 an upgrade to Mootools 1.2.  This will allow developers to take advantage of the improvements that this new version offers and to write code that will endure into the future.

We have set a target release date of July 15, 2010 for Joomla! 1.5 with Mootools 1.2.

The Gory Details

I previously released an upgrade plugin for people to test out which replaced the core JHtmlBehavior class. This plugin implemented the JHtmlBehavior::framework method that has been added in trunk. The Mootools upgrade that will be included with Joomla! 1.5 will follow along in this direction.

After the 1.5 update is uploaded, the plugin will be installed the first time an administrator logs into the administrator panel.  They will also be presented with a message asking them if they would like to enable the plugin. Once the plugin is enabled the site will then be using Mootools 1.2.

When the plugin is enabled whenever the framework Mootools library is loaded Mootools 1.2 will be loaded with the compatibility layer.

The hope is that even with the upgrade activated, there will be no negative impact on sites. However, in the event that the upgrade does cause problems, it will be easy for administrators to disable the plugin and restore their site to the previous state.

We're excited about this development and are grateful to the folks at Mootools who have worked with us to provide a compatibility layer that could make this possible.

The code is a work in progress. If you would like to check it out you are free to check it out from http://joomlacode.org/svn/joomla/development/branches/mt12.

Be sure to read the latest proposal for Joomla's leadership structure and give them comments and feedback for what's being planned. (You may need to join the Leadership Group at the Joomla People site in order to provide that feedback.) This is important, because Joomla's leadership and direction impacts your business, particularly if you are making money building Joomla websites for clients. So a few weeks ago, my aging iphone bought the farm, and I started the search for a replacement. I eventually ended up choosing an Android phone - the Fascinate. AT&T had been a continual source of frustration, and the recent move to allow tethering, but to have to give up the unlimited data plan, (a move most considered a bait and switch) had me looking for another carrier. But anyway, back to the Android OS. Just a few minutes of playing with the phone made me realize how really restrictive the iphone universe is. With the Android Fascinate I could change my launcher/home page, use different players, get and install apps from anywhere, and even (if I were brave) root it and start modifying the programs at a lower level in a few minutes. With the iphone, you are locked into the Apple mindset, everything goes through itunes, development is highly regulated, the interface is virtually impossible to customize.

A while back we wrote a blog post asking the community to nominate people that they felt would be good candidates to join the Community Leadership Team.

From those nominations, we are pleased to announce that we had selected six people. Four people accepted our invitation, while two chose to instead focus on their current volunteer roles in the community. We thank all of the people that we invited for their kind and thoughtful responses, as well as the Joomla Community for the many excellent suggestions.

So, to not keep you in suspense any longer, please join us in welcoming the following new CLT members:

Isidro Baquero - Related with Joomla since Mambo days, he owns a blog about Joomla in Spanish (www.gnumla.org). He started collaborating actively with the Joomla project during early 2010, when joined the moderator team as local moderator for the Spanish forum. After that, he continued to increase his involvement, joining JPeople community managers team and the JCM as Spanish editor during 2010, and becoming JPeople Communications Manager during 2011. Also, during 2011 summer he joined Joomla Tweet team and the Spanish Translation Team.

Milena Mitova - With more than 8 years of online marketing experience and a broad set of technical and project management skills, Milena uses her expertise in SEM (search engine marketing), analytics, and landing page optimization to create high-impact Joomla websites.
She works as an online marketing manager for FalconStor Software, Inc. and manages her own web design company - Complete Website Care. She also volunteers as an author and team member of Joomla! Community Magazine.

Olaf Offick - Olaf is an Internet Engineer (M.Sc.) working in Galway, Ireland. He is the founder of Learn Skills, a company providing high quality Learning Management Systems (LMS / LCMS / VLE) and Educational Materials to businesses, schools and government organisations. In the Joomla! community, Olaf currently works on the Joomla Forum team as a Global Moderator and forum Adminstrator.

Sander Potjer - The involvement with the Joomla community started back in 2008, as co-founder of the local Dutch community www.joomlacommunity.eu. In a short period they established a solid community with an active team of volunteers. The volunteers contribute by providing news, translations, documentation, forum support and by organization the Joomla User Groups (14 in a small country!) and the yearly Dutch JoomlaDays.

As you can see, these new members not only add to the skills and experience of the CLT but also bring representation from our International community, something that we feel is very important for our commitment to Internationalization which we discussed in depth at our recent summit.

Isidro, Milena, Olaf and Sander - Welcome! We are so very excited to have you on board of our team and we look forward to working with you. Thank you for taking on this added responsibility on top of all that you do already for our community.

If you would like to say your own welcome or note of congratulations, or have any other comments or questions, we welcome those in this thread on the Joomla! People site.

[edit - minor typo - 08/16/2011 - Wendy]

Last week the Joomla Project team released Joomla 1.5.12, codename "Wojmamni Ama Woi." No explanation for the Swahili meaning was given, but this version's various security and bug fixes are easily explained by checking out the project's 1.5.12 release.

 

The notes on Joomla.org[...]

Need a web app to serve your databases online? Look no further than FlexLists from MovingLabs. One of our Simplweb customers, the Upper Valley Educators Institute, needed to make their library database available to all their student interns online. Help with these non-hosting questions is all part of the service at Simplweb, so we took some time to find FlexLists.

You are reading Basic Joomla 1.6 SEO Settings Do’s and Don’ts a post from: Joomla & SEO Blog.

Joomla 1.6 is stable and very good to start a new website on, but for Search Engine Optimization you have to set some basic parameters for optimal results. So here is a short overview of basic Joomla 1.6 Do’and Don’t for Search Engine Optimization. Let’s start with the Do’s… Global Configuration SEO Settings Like the … Continue reading

Want to read more? Check out Joomla & SEO Blog.

I've had my eye on Dioscouri for a little while - they're the Joomla services guys that released JUGA, or Joomla User Group Access - an extension which gives you control over registered user groups and the power to define content access per group & category/section.

Well, they've obviously given a lot of thought to this whole idea of ACL and I like the most recent little extension they've released; called Hider .  As you might imagine, it lets you simply hide certain areas of content from public site viewers.

Ultimately, this might get messy if you have a lot of content with embedded tags all over the place to display certain info to certain user types, but for simple uses I could really see it being handy.

 

We have finished most parts of the Development Coordinator Summit over the last few days. We have had some pretty intense days of discussing our agenda, that covered the following topics:

1. Development Vision
2. Healthy Development Team
3. Operational and Organisational Structure
4. Roadmap

This mail is a summary of the outcome of these topics. When you read it is important to understand that we only covered the highlights and have set direction and focus for Joomla development. It will take time, and considerable effort from everyone involved in the project to achieve our goals, but we are excited. It's impossible to share every detail but the following presents a summary of each major topic.

Open Source Matters (OSM) is entrusted with providing organizational, legal, and financial support for the Joomla! project. You can find out more about the organization at http://www.opensourcematters.org.

Given those responsibilities, and the recent departure of two long-serving board members, and the OSM officer changes resulting in the election of the Treasurer to President, the decision has been made to expand the board once more.

We are looking for your nominations for new OSM board members.

We acknowledge that the greater worldwide Joomla! community can help us a lot in this election process, and make us aware of potential candidates we may overlook.

Nomination Information

We are looking for up to three new board members. Useful areas of experience and expertise include:

• Accounting, bookkeeping or financial
• Legal or trademark
• Organizational or managerial skills
• Non-profit organizations
• Fund-raising
• PR and Marketing
• Education or certification development work
• Events planning and support

Nomination Criteria

We are looking to recruit the very best and the brightest members in the Joomla! community.

Some of the criteria that will be used when evaluating nominations include:

• Community: the nominee should have a strong track-record of successfully collaborating with, enabling others and earning the respect of the Joomla! community.
• Character: the nominee should have proven themselves a person of high character, with a history of acting honestly, fairly and openly when in leadership roles.
• Experience and Expertise: if the nominee is being proposed for a specific role, they should have strong experience and expertise in that area.
• Success: the nominee should be able to point to a history of success and leaving previous roles in a better state than when they arrived.
• Diversity: to work towards gender balance and geographical diversity, we are committed to seeking nominations from talented members of the Joomla! community who are female and / or are fluent speakers of languages other than English.

Nomination Schedule

• Nominations close: April 11
• Appointments announced: April 25

Nomination Form
Click here to submit a nomination

Last week must have been an exciting week for Andrew, one of the hardest working long term contributors to the Joomla! project. Not only did he pick up the inaugural medal for an individual who has demonstrated an outstanding contribution in the Queensland software industry but he also picked up a Certificate of High Commendation from the Pearcey Awards! Andrew has a great blog post on his New Life in IT blog, so check it out for more details and great links to the awards themselves.

So from both myself and the rest of the Joomla! project, congratulations Andrew!

Many K-12 schools find Simplweb's fully managed service a useful way to maintain their websites. Some higher education schools are also following the trend. The latest addition to the Simplweb family is the Upper Valley Educators Institute, a principal and teacher certification school of education.

I am very excited that some great new resources to learn how to Joomla are now available, Joomla! 1.5: A User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website (2nd Edition) and Fundamentals of Joomla! (Video Training)!

The second edition of the book is an update of the best selling book on Joomla, bringing it up to date with the latest v[...]

Source