PHP-CSS-DIV-CMS Joomla-Java Info

Review of 16 Joomla Books from Amazon

11.02.10

I have had a couple of emails this week from people asking me about Joomla book recommendations. Back in 2006 when the first edition of my book on Joomla was published, there were hardly any others around. Its been great to see that over the last 12 months we have seen a lot more published. As an author, its encouraging to see the growth, but even more, I think that the volume and pace of book publication is a pretty good indicator of the health of an open source project. I thought I'd take a second to do a round up of 16 Joomla titles around right now. I thought I would pull some metrics from Amazon to give you a sense of how much people like the offerings (rather than my own opinions).

Joomla - A User's Guide is the best selling book on Joomla, has been translated into over 6 languages, and is the highest reviewed title on Joomla at Amazon.com. Now you can get your own signed copy by signing up for Joomla hosting at Simplweb.

A few months ago I posted about a new Web 2.0 Marketing with Joomla Graduate Course I was going to teach with Jen Kramer McKibben at the Marlboro Graduate School.

Student assignments have included doing keyword research, optimizing their sites for Google, implementing link building campaigns and developing on line advertising plans.

We have 24 students in the class, and I'd thought I take a quick opportunity to show you some of the websites that are being worked on:

D[...]

In preparation for the Joint Summit (CLT, PLT, OSM) sheduled for July 29 - 31, 2011, at eBay in San Jose, California, the Joint Summit Committee has compiled a list of proposed goals for discussion at the three day meeting. The list below is shared with the community for feedback before finalizing the meeting agenda.

The goals include planning and discussing the following topics (not presented in any particular order):

• Who are we building Joomla for? Who is our target audience and thus who should we build new features for?
   
• Better collaboration
   
• The future of the Project
   
• The Joomla Project common goals
   
• The Joomla Project strategy
   
• Evaluate our project structure
  • The future role, if any, of the Community Oversight Committee
  • Better understand how our teams function
     
• Talk about processes (conflict resolution, budget process, ….)
   
• How to attract more developers?
   
• Review Sponsored Development program
   
• Review our Mission, Vision and Values
   
• Collaboration strategy with international communities
   
• Joomla! World Conference 2012 - Setup a committee, define goals
   

To comment on this list of goals please visit: http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/1220-Joint+Leadership+Summit+Goals.html?groupid=714

Wordpress for Joomla! Training now available in Joomlashack University If you want to blog, Wordpress is a great platform. If you want a blog inside a bigger site, then you can certainly use Joomla for it, I do at www.compassdesigns.net. But why not harness the blogging power of Wordpress inside your Joomla site? Joomlashack just released a very informative, in-depth training lesson in Joomlashack University on how to set up and use the Wordpress for Joomla! extension by corePHP. So I have been updating my Joomla book website, I discovered a problem with my RSS. Ironically, I discuss exactly NOT doing what I did in the book, but do as I say, not what I do (or something).I wanted to redesign my home page. Right now its a category blog - an obvious choice for book news - and then fixed content in the category description. I wanted to change because it's difficult to manage the meta description in Joomla in this layout, so I wanted to change it to a uncategorized article, and then load { loadposition } to show news links. Last week, Joomlashack announced the launch of our the new Joomlashack Annual Developer Template Club! Get $100 OFF the cost to join if you sign up before Monday December 24th. There is also a $100 OFF the price of our Lifetime Developer Club membership (templates for life!) AND $100 OFF Joomlashack University Lifetime membership (learning for life)!  

A while back I posted something about how Joomla is a great platform for not only blogging, but developing a website that does more than just a traditional blog.

Now that Joomla 1.5 is out , I've been considering how to go about relating my observations and impressions about it and I think picking up the thread on blogging w/Joomla is the way to go...

One thing you'll notice when you fire up Joomla 1.5 and jump into the content editing interface is that everything looks cleaner - gone are the comically large diskette, checkmark and red 'x' of yesteryear; moving around and getting things done happens more easily and quickly in 1.5 - two key components of blogging.

If you are reading this and currently maintain a blog using say, Wordpress, you'll understand when I say that uploading images, categorizing content and so on is cumbersome - confounded further by the fact that the editing interface is seperate from your nice templated front end.  Personally, I think that if the people publishing on a blog are offered the same interface as their readers, there's a higher chance their communication will be clearer (sort of like how a dinner party is always more fun when the host has an open kitchen and can talk to their guests whilst cooking... well, I'm not that great at the subtle art of metaphor but methinks you probably get it :) ).

Asides from more easily posting to a website, Joomla 1.5 has gotten better and letting you work solely in the front end.  Seen in the screenshot above, now you can choose both the section and category to place your content in front the front end interface.... That's pretty snazzy - and means that you can move posts around your site if need be.

In my next post on blogging with Joomla I'll get technical and walk you through the basics of how to blog well with Joomla - things like how you setup your content sections/categories can really affect both the administration of your blog and its navigability - plus, I'll review some new features in Joomla 1.5 like its improved media handling and interface. 

/boggle

If you haven't noticed, there has been HUGE change in Google's search results. The weird "google wonder wheel" is the least of it.

Are you ready for the new search landscape?

The year 2009 just began and it is really great to see how many people pick-up the idea to organize a Joomla!Day in their region or support a regional conference. With that they contribute to the project and helping others to learn more about the project or the services related to it. As the Joomla 1.0 series will come to an end mid 2009 we will support all Joomla!Days to offer sessions about the migration towards 1.5. The Joomla User Groups are talking about the topics in their regular meetings and during the conferences people are available for 1 to 1 talks. It is great to see the events and JUG calendars are filling up.

Some of you come to us and ask about how to start an event in a region or if it is ok that you present Joomla on a regional conference. Actually both is great and quite easy to start with. The first step should be that you get in touch with the events team and sign up to become what we call an "event organizers". The events mentoring team will guide you through the process and within all the organizers you can find new ideas and help if needed. More detailed information can be found on our wiki page as well as in the events forum.

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Joomla! @ Expos and Conferences

The Thailand Internet Expo 2009 was the first conference in 2009 Joomla attended. On the last weekend members of the Thail community answered questions and presented the latest information about the project to the attendees of the conference. Akarawuth Tamrareang (aka JoomlaCorner) presented Joomla in a seminar that was pretty crowdy. Check out the pictures to see what was going on.

The upcoming weekend Joomla will have a stand at the FOSDEM 2009. The conference is one of the most important Open Source Conferences in Europe and it always gets alot of geeks and interested people together. On the stand may people from the European Community will be available to answer your questions about the project and of course we will make sure that we can also present some of the upcoming features in the Joomla version 1.6.

A small outlook what the various communities around the world will support in the next few month. Most of those events will have either speakers or a stand on which you can meet with Joomla community and team members. For example you can visit the PHP Quebec Conference in March to listen to a speach from Michelle Bisson, or join in at the SXSW in Austin, Texas and talk with Arno Zijlstra about a very interesting project he is going to present during this event. In Europe Joomla will be presented on the Linux Tage Chemnitz. The team on site is looking for volonteers still and if you have a chance to be around it would be great to support them.

Joomla!Days

The season for Joomla!Days started as well. Next weekend you can meet with development coordinators and team members in Melbourne. The latest news about the project development as well as presentations around the migration to 1.5 will give you a great inside of what is going on in the Joomla-sphere.

In March the European community meets in the United Kingdom at the Joomla!Day UK 2009. The first J!Day in Europe for 2009 will be pretty interesting as the development of Joomla 1.6 will move on and the first results of the opening of the development mailing lists can be seen. Also the migration of Joomla 1.0 websites will become more and more important as the EOL will get closer. Many sessions with high profile speakers are already in preparation for this event.

The registration is already open and the agenda for the Joomla!Day Las Vegas is already forming. Many speakers from the development and community teams are offering various presentations and talks about Joomla. Based on the conference concept it is up to you what will be presented and which information you get. So make sure you register to the event and take part on the process to give an initial idea what you like tohear during these days in Las Vegas.

After Europe and USA Joomla comes back to Asia and the first Joomla!Day in India end of April 2009. The regional community is forming their team and event at the moment. If you have suggestions or contributions please join in the discussions and support the event there. The same goes for the Joomla!Day New England that is planed for end of May 2009. Please support your regional organizers with suggestions, feedback and help with the organization. Many more Joomla!Days are already in preparations for 2009 and we are going to keep you informed about their progress here on the site.

 

 

You are invited to join a meeting to help plan the Joomla 3.x roadmap, just prior to Joomla Day New York City. On the new Joomla Developers Blog you can read more about the coding efforts and more on the new Joomla version 1.6, what will you find there and more information read here...

Post from: Joomla SEO Blog by Pathos-Seo.com

I have previously blogged about online reputational management, but a more recent event came my way today, and I thought it was interesting to see the effects over a longer term, and the dismal response from the company involved.

Last year United Airlines hit the press about breaking somebody's guitar.

Not such huge news probably, United has lots of passengers, and probably damages lots of bags, but this guitar belonged to a singer who made a song and video about his trials.

The result was a MASSIVE fallout for United, with the video on YouTube getting millions of hits, and the story even making CNN.

What truly amazes me is when I search for "United Breaks Guitars" on Google, there are hundreds of results about this story, but nothing I can see from United.

Heck, there is even a Facebook and Wiki page about it now!

Over the last couple of years, we have been conducting a survey about the scope and features of the Joomla community. Over 7,000 people have completed the our survey over the last few years, and this year we want to make it the biggest ever.

Complete our survey and you'll be entered to win prizes!

• Grand prize winner: Our new lifetime Developer club - $399 value
• First Prize: Three $100 gift certificates to Amazon.com
• Second Prize: Three Joomlashack University spots
• Third Prize: Five template giveaways
• Bonus prize: 3,000 person to take the survey, also a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate

Head to our survey now and tell us about how you use Joomla!

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Joomla 1.7.3 and Joomla 1.5.25 were released today, as a result of a zero-day security issue. Because of the security issue, it's recommended that you update your sites immediately. Joomla 1.7.3 fixed 77 CMS bugs as well as the two security issues. One of the big new features in Joomla 1.7.3 has to do with multi-language improvements, which are summarized in this blog post.

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