PHP-CSS-DIV-CMS Joomla-Java Info

Building custom forms - whats the best extension?

05.01.10

For some reason Joomla core has never natively been able to create custom forms - I'm not sure if this is due to it originally (pre-1.5 releases) allowing non-article content types to sit in the usual database tables that comprise your site, or something else... However, for years there have been multiple extensions floating around that could let you create forms out of basic elements, like text, email and file fields.

The most basic use of such extensions would be to get rid of Joomla's too-simple contact form system.  To do just that it seems that today there are a good 4 or 5 extensions sitting in the extensions directory that could help you out, though the more digging you do the more you'll find discrepancies between them.  Choosing the right form extension should be done with a balance of features to look for, such as:

• A highly active and focused extension developer,
• A multitude of fields already supported,
• A large user base,
• Development of the extension with long-term focus; if the extension has been created to allow the developer to just create 1 or 2 forms on his/her website, it may not be able to do more in the future (given that their initial need for it was satisfied).

Back in 2007 I mentioned the release of a new extension called Fabrik - after spending some time comparing notes between a bunch of form components just now I am back in love with it!  You see, Fabrik takes the approach of forms being essential things for application-building - meaning that with Fabrik, you can create forms to not only email somewhere but store in your database which in turn can be displayed as lists through your site - you you can, for example, use it to build things like a custom library listing of books.

Fabrik was around before last year's CCK-in-joomla copycating began and is interesting in not replacing Joomla's core article content-type but side-stepping it with a flexible system for handling custom content that supports custom theming and additional plug-in support (yes, you can make your own field types).

Already available fields for forms created with Fabrik include; user details, captcha (with recaptcha!), text areas/fields, file uploads, images, database joins and more (including text displays to annotate fields - for 'help' purpose)...

I highly recommend popping over to http://fabrikar.com and checking Fabrik out... Be sure to also pour through their forums to answer any queries you may have before installing/getting started.  If you think there's a simpler, more powerful, or otherwise better form extension out there drop a comment below!

Community Leadership Team Summit - 28th July and August 1st,  2011

Participants: Peter Martin, Wendy Robinson, Sandra Warren, Paul Orwig (Day 1)

Video participants: Matt Lipscomb, Brad Baker

The following is a summary of the topics discussed in the Community Leadership Team (CLT) Summit:

A. All current websites that are under overview of the CLT:

1. Joomla.org now has about 30 internationalized pages that are used to redirect non-English people to local Joomla community resources. However because of the new Joomla 1.7 banner, the localized link is currently unavailable.

• Action item 1: reinsert the link to localized “Joomla Information Pages”.
• Action item 2: get the “info pages” translated in more languages.

2. The community.joomla.org site seems to have a less important role then it used to have. Probably because of the success of the Magazine and People sub-websites.

• Action item 3: we should communicate that *all* working group members should be able to post blog posts regarding joomla.org related matters.

3. The new ticket support system for the Joomla Extension Directory (JED) is working very well. Other teams might use the system for their own process communication as well. The “premium listings” idea is moving forward, but we’ll have to wait on a new design for the JED site before it can be implemented.

• Action item 4: evaluate new design for JED.

Furthermore we’ll have to make a decision about the Joomla version compatibility buttons.

• Action item 5: wait for a decision on the new Joomla version numbering, and create buttons for Long Time Support (LTS) versions.

Finally we’ll need input for the “standards” information: what evaluation items for extensions should be included.

• Action item 6: ask PLT / 3rd party extension developers for feedback on best practices for extensions.

4. There haven’t been any major changes regarding the Joomla Resources Directory (JRD) besides one new featured hosting provider in the hosting provider section. It has been decided to honor Rochen as a featured hosting provider listing (Brad and Wendy were excluded from this discussion).

5. The forum, which is used for technical Joomla support, has been experiencing a great influx of spam the last year. Last May a new forum protection mechanism has been put in place. It decreased the amount of spammers drastically. The downside is that some people with dynamic IP addresses have problems reaching the forum because spammer’s IP addresses get automatically banned for some period. This resulted in three complaints from (non-spamming ;-) people over the last three months.

• Action item 7: create a contact form for issues like these, and link from the forum.

The new Joomla versioning system will increase the maintenance of main boards and international subboards because those have to be created. It has been decided to only create boards for Long Time Support (LTS) versions.

• Action Item 8: To ensure that we have enough forum coverage to support our users, we need to check in with any inactive moderators to see if their interest is still in being members of the Moderator team

6. The People website lacks some moderation features.

• Action item 9: define the needed moderation features and write a Request For Proposals (RFP) to get the features developed.

7. JUGs
* 1st official Joomla book (from Person) was meant to be spread around all JUGs, but this did not work out as planned. There is an idea to try using coupons that people can use to order copies of the books
Sandra + Liam will arrange it for the next books that are released in the series
* be more proactive: identify areas / countries where no JUGs are active (or where they are inactive) and try to reactivate / support people in those areas to organize JUGs.

8. Currently joomla.org does not have a credits page to acknowledge current as well as all previous contributors to the sites and infrastructure areas (software/design/support services donated to the project for use). This is something that can be worked in with the site redesign which is currently in progress *link to people site redesign group.

B. New candidates for CLT:

The current CLT members have selected people from the nominations that were submitted by the community. Invitations have been sent out to these folks and once confirmation has been received from them, we will announce this and welcome them to the CLT publicly.

C. Ways to improve processes to become more proactive

Currently a lot of teams are functioning in a reactive way, in the sense that a lot of actions will be taken when people from the (international) community ask for help. E.g. a community from some country may ask for help regarding organizing a Joomladay. This behavior might result in some countries and areas that are not covered. Action item 10: We should come up with ways to be more proactive. E.g. find uncovered countries and motivate local communities to organize events.

D. Version labeling for JED and Forums

We need to request clarification from the PLT regarding the version numbering as this affects some areas such as the JED compatibility labeling and the categorizing of support forums. (note: discussed by PLT and put forth since for community feedback)

E. Joomla.org and its community are very English orientated.

While English is the common language in the software world, the majority of the world population don't speak English. For Joomla! to be successful in the non Anglo-Saxon world, we must invest more (time) in local foreign language communities. We would like to increase Joomla use as well as recruit more volunteers from the non-Anglo-Saxon world. We realize that there are communication issues and barriers for participation that need to be addressed.

F. Combined Summit Notes Discussed during the CLT meeting Day 2:

During the combined summit the following communication issues have been identified:

1. Language barriers. Sometimes our communication is too difficult (e.g. difficult English words and sentences too long) and too much fragmented over different communication channels. And joomla.org has too much information to translate all to local languages.

2. For some countries the concept of Joomladays is not always clear. Furthermore there’s too little marketing budget for local foreign language communities to promote Joomla.

3. Documentation about processes in local communities is sometimes lacking. Which makes it difficult for people to take over the organisation of local JUGS when current JUG organiser steps down.

4. Official communication from Joomla.org to foreign non-English communities is too sometimes too difficult, and not helpful with solving the actual problem. Official documents (e.g. trademark rules) have often not been translated into foreign non-English languages.

During the combined summit the following participation issues have been identified:

1. Missing overview of all countries/language entities and local communities

2. How to organize responsibilities and autonomy of local communities in relation with Joomla.org?

3. Cultural barriers - in some countries people are not always that outspoken to the international community, only within their own local community.

4. In some cultures/countries the standards of living are not as high as they are in the western world. Which causes that some people have too little time to participate because they need to have multiple jobs to make their living which leaves no time to participate. In that case working as volunteer doesn’t have much incentives / rewards back.

At the combined summit two new problems regarding joomla.org have been found: The International flags in the main menu are confusing visitors, as when they click on a flag they expect to be taken to a page that contains content and/or language packs respective to each flag. This creates an additional problem in that, by looking at those flags, one might assume that certain languages are missing.

• Action item 11: find a better way to represent “internationalism” and create an image/button for the joomla.org website.

Another issue that has been brought forward is that the current joomla.org site is missing a search box.

• Action item 12: find out why the search box has not been placed on the homepage, and put it there if needed.

During the combined summit we’ve decided to compile a spreadsheet to take inventory of countries, languages, regions, local communities, nature of those communities, and in what countries communities are missing. [action item solved]. Secondly we’ve divided the world in regions: North-America, South-America, Europe, Africa, Asia+Pacific. Each region gets assigned one or two regional community coordinators / contact persons who will help with making the inventory. After we have such an overview they will get in touch with the local communities to find our their needs (e.g marketing, translation), get information and opinions, and help with updating the Joomla Info Pages project (to redirect international people to the local community sites). A further update will be provided to the community when it is time to put this idea into action and request volunteer help.

In Closing...

we would like to say that we enjoyed our time at the summit so much. Not only together as the CLT but with our friends and fellow team members on the Open Source Matters board and the Production Leadership Team. It was a very productive and positive event and we thank everyone that we were able to attend the summit with, as well as the incredible Joomla Community, whom without, we would not have been able to take part.

Comments and Discussion are welcome in this thread at the Joomla! People site.

The Joomla project recently reached its 10 millionth download of its popular CMS, a great milestone for the project, and in only 4 years.

Last year I estimated that over 30 million sites use Joomla, though obviously that number must be bigger now.

Interestingly enough, last month I also did some work breaking down the trends of 1.0 to 1.5 downloads of Joomla, you can see the results in this graph.

This is a report from the Joomla Leadership Summit now underway in San Jose, CA. Members of the Community Leadership Team (CLT), Production Leadership Team (PLT) and the board of Open Source Matters (OSM) are busy discussing the best foot forward in all areas of the project.

The PLT had our summit in the days leading up to the overall Leadership Summit. We'll share shortly the results of that summit, but we wanted to get some direct feedback from the community on an issue that affects many.

We decided to make a small change to the way Joomla versions are numbered. If you have read about the new development cycle, you know we now have a new Joomla version every six months and one long-term-support (LTS) release every 18 months. Versions 1.6 and 1.7 are six-month releases and the next release in January 2012 will be an LTS release. This way, users have a choice. They can get the latest and greatest version by updating with improvements every six months, or they can have a more stable feature set with updates every 18 months.  Maintenance and security releases will be done as necessary for both LTS and STS releases during their support periods.

To try to make this as clear as possible to users, we have decided that the long-term releases will always be labeled as x.5 releases. For example, 3.0 and 3.1 will be regular, short-term six-month releases. The following version would be 3.5, indicating that it is a LTS release. Version 3.5 will be supported for 18 months. In the meantime, we will release 4.0 and 4.1. The LTS replacement for 3.5 will be 4.5, 18 months later.

We would like to present two options to the community to decide how to proceed with this versioning approach. 

Click on the diagram above to view a larger version.

The first option (Option #1) in the diagram is to call the January 2012 release (long-term release) 1.8. The subsequent short -term releases would be 2.0 and 2.1 (e.g. maintenance releases would be 2.0.1 or 2.1.1, etc.) and the following release would be 2.5 (using the x.5 number to identify it as a long-term release). This would be an anomaly in the versioning strategy because it would be the only version to not follow the x.5 numbering, but this version number would naturally follow 1.6 and 1.7.

The second option (Option #2) in the diagram is to call the January 2012 release (long-term release) 2.5. The subsequent short -term releases would be 3.0 and 3.1 (e.g. maintenance releases would be 3.0.1 or 3.1.1, etc.) and the following release would be 3.5 (using the x.5 number to identify it as a long-term release). This would be an anomaly in the versioning strategy because there would be no version numbers between 1.7 and 2.5, but this version number would follow the future versioning strategy (also there would be backwards compatibility with Joomla 1.5).

Vote for the option that makes the best sense here:

http://tinyurl.com/jversion

 

 

 

 

 

I received a review copy of Joomla! 1.5 Multimedia from Packt Publishers and was expecting to read a lot that I already know about Images and the image manager in Joomla!. But instead it was an eye-opener about the possibilities that Joomla! and some special extensions gives you to create a complete multimedia experience for your visitors. This [...]

You are reading a post from: Joomla SEO Blog by PathosSeoBlog.com

Joomla! Multimedia – A Book Review about Images, Video and More… | Joomla Mulitmedia

At the Joint Leadership Summit (JLS) held in San Jose, California from July 29-31, 2011, one subject which received a lot of attention was our project’s leadership structure. It was widely felt that making some changes to our project’s leadership structure can strengthen communication and collaboration between teams, as well as improve oversight and accountability for all contributors and teams. The proposed changes aim to improve productivity and community engagement throughout all areas of the project.

The Joomla Community Leadership Team is proud to announce the addition of two new members.

Wendy Robinson is currently on the OSM board. She will be leaving OSM when her term is up in February.

Ole Ottosen was already on the Production Leadership Team, but found that most of the work he was doing was for the community side of the project. Ole's move from the Production Leadership Team to the Community Leadership Team is effective immediately.

With a new year upon us, we welcome both Wendy and Ole to the team.

Who said becoming a Registered JUG was easy? WE DID!

New, Easier Application Process for Joomla User Groups

The JUG team is proud to present a new and improved system for JUG applications.  After a short interim period using a temporary relief system,  the entire process was restructured from the ground up to provide a more streamlined approach to all areas of the process. 

The requirements and guidelines have been changed as well to allow more Registered JUGs worldwide.  If you'd like to register a JUG, please visit the FAQ on how to get started.  

Many JUG applications that were previously rejected or held up, have now been approved and listed in the new directory.  Please check your location to ensure your JUG is included.  If not, please reapply through our new application process.

New Directory and Map For All Joomla User Groups

We've created directory and map for all Joomla User Groups. By using Moset's Tree and Moxie Maps the directory listings are now plotted on a worldwide map which allows for easy and powerful searches. Click here to see the new map and directory.

Each approved JUG has a login and is now able to login to their listing and make changes.  Submitted changes will go into the queue and will be approved in a timely manner.  We ask that all JUG Owners please login and update your details as soon as possible.

New Team Members

The JUG team has also grown and now includes Wlima Howell, Cristina Solana, Himanshu Nagpal, Roger Perren as well as Sandra Warren and Javier Gomez.

Your Feedback is Welcome

Thank you for your patience through this process!  We invite you to submit feedback to this new process and system at the People.Joomla.Org group and if you need assistance please email us at jugs@community.joomla.org

Do you have questions about Joomla? We know you do. Whether it's a question about how to do something, what the Joomla roadmap is, what the project has planned, how to contribute to the project, or anything else, we'd like to hear from you. Jen and Barrie will pick answers to address in the newsletter. Post your question in the comment thread below, and we'll work on getting some answers to you!

JomSocial is quickly becoming a "have to have" extension for Joomla 1.5.

In a time when "social networks"are becoming what we think of as "websites," JomSocial is a huge opportunity for almost any Joomla website owner.

When we first started experimenting with JomSocial almost a year ago, we were impressed with the potential of building your own social network inside your existing Joomla site. It seemed to us that Azrul and his talented team had developed something very cool, and very useful, that would really blossom over time.

Now, the flower has fruited, and JomSocial has really arrived.

The much anticipated launch of our online Joomla training course for Beginner Joomla-ites, Joomlashack University, did not disappoint last week. In less than 24 hours we sold out all 100 seats in the inaugural Shack U class of October 2009- and then some!

Joomlashack University is our attempt to make learning Joomla online a fun, interactive, affordable, and "at your own pace" experience. Instructors Forest Linden and Barrie North are guiding the first class through the very basics of getting a Joomla website installed, set up, and built with compelling content.

We're limiting the number of beginner students in our "Charter Class" to keep "class size" small, so we can lavish attention on our students and get the curriculum right. In November we'll re-open ShackU and let another class of eager online learners in!

We have just added a 6 month subscription to Safari Books Online in our massive Joomla Freelance Web Designer Giveaway, bringing the prizes to over $1600 worth.

Have you entered?

Back in Nov 2006, I wrote the following blog post: What is 'contributing' to an Open Source Project?

Every so often I like to take a look at how we are now doing, in comparision to how we have been doing in the past. Having taken the time to do so recently, I'm really encouraged, and hopefully as a follow up in my series, I hope you'll benefit for reflecting with me, if you've been around for a while, or if you're only new, joining me and contributing.

Let me start with my conclusion I wrote back then:

There is no utopia. No one, and no project, is perfect. Do we have faults, yes, some of them may be more important to you than they are to me, however the fact remains, if you are here for Joomla, the structure is already in place (maybe not ideal, or perfect) for your contribution to be accepted.

From my point of view, this still stands as true today as it was almost 4 years ago when I first wrote this. However, what I'm most encouraged about is the progress we have made in being able to accept the many and varied contributions of so many people. In some ways our structure has also improved to facilitate this. Let's dig a little deeper into this now.

What is contributing to an Open Source Project?

Join us at the 2nd annual Joomla Day in Vermont - June 5, 2010, 9 AM - 5 PM at Marlboro College, Marlboro, Vermont, USA. Joomla Day's are a great way of meeting peers and learning about this award winning CMS. This will be the second year of Joomla Day New England, last year's event was highly successful with the limited places filled up in just a couple of weeks! Just 20 minutes west of Brattleboro, there are still a few places left for this year's conference - but register now - http://newengland.joomladayusa.org/! 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. Ecommerce in Joomla has popped its head up several times over the last few days. First, over the weekend I got a question from a potential Joomla hosting customer at Simplweb asking if we offered any shopping cart extensions. Then I read an article on the Joomla Magazine about best practice for ecommerce in Joomla. Last was an announcement from JoomlaJunkie about using PayPal checkout. For most ecommerce applications I have seen from clients, I think that in most cases, an integrated Joomla shopping cart extension isn't the best solution. Keep is simple and use a 3rd party application to take orders and checkout your customer.

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