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Web 2.0 Marketing with Joomla Graduate Course

09.05.09

Want to sharpen your Web 2.0 marketing skills and learn some Joomla at the same time?

This spring I am co-teaching a 3 credit 15 week graduate course at Marlboro College Graduate Center with Jen McKibben (of New England User group fame).

The blurb reads:

"This course explores the power and practice of Web 2.0 marketing.
Including and going well beyond the simple "how to" of integrating
social networking sites into your campaign, this course challenges [...]

Last week the team behind Joomla's most popular social network-building software, Community Builder, released a new version (1.2.3) which fixes a bunch of bugs, includes a couple of functional updates and makes way for a new generation of the extension suite - starting with '2.0' to be released soon.

The new release supposedly installs to replace the old one you may have on your site, so upgrading should be fairly simple. Also noteworthy; the release is rumored to work on the new Joomla 1.6 beta 5 release as well.

You can read more info over on the Joomlapolis forums.

We'll be popping a copy onto a fresh install of Joomla 1.6 and posting a review video later this week.

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

Finding Your Best Domain Name | Joomla Domain Name

The Joomla! project and Open Source Matters would like to invite the members of our community to take a look at the proposed 2011 budget and then submit your feedback through Monday April 18th.

A long and winding road...

We realize that unveiling our 2011 budget in April of 2011 doesn’t exceed expectations in the timeliness category. Even though this has much taken longer than we wanted, the good news is that some new planning and budgeting processes have been put into place that will enable  more inclusive and collaborative efforts moving forward, as well as enabling improved goal setting and planning among each of the Joomla! project’s leadership teams.

A collaborative effort

One element of these new processes consisted of forming a budget committee from members of the Production Leadership Team (Chris Davenport), the Community Leadership Team (Wendy Robinson and Matt Lipscomb) and the board of Open Source Matters (Phil Locke and Paul Orwig). This committee has been working together over a period of months to integrate each of the leadership team's revenue generating estimates and funding requests into a budget that is intended to help support the goals of each leadership team and continue to strengthen the Joomla! project’s overall financial position.

Goal setting included as part of planning process

Another new aspect of the budget process involved asking members of the Production Leadership Team (PLT), Community Leadership Team (CLT), and Open Source Matters (OSM) to each put some effort into planning their goals and priorities for 2011, as a predecessor to help them focus on what resources (financial and other) would be needed to achieve those goals. This planning effort has the following benefits:

1. Allows our budget to be a more effective tool for supporting the project's planned priorities for the upcoming year.
2. Allows each leadership team to better understand what the other leadership teams are planning to work on, which will improve inter-team collaboration and support.
3. Allows the community to be aware of goals and priorities for the upcoming year, which will improve transparency and openness and enable increased support and volunteer contributions.
4. Will make it easier to bring in more sponsorship contributions, due to prospective sponsors having a better understanding about what initiatives their contributions will be supporting.

Next steps

Once the community feedback period has closed, the following next steps will be taken to complete the formal approval of the 2011 budget:

1. PLT, CLT, and OSM will review community feedback and offer suggestions.
2. The budget committee will potentially revise the budget based on step 1.
3. PLT, CLT, and OSM will review revised budget.
4. OSM will formally review and (if acceptable) approve the budget.
5. 2011 budget will be published, along with PLT, CLT, and OSM goals for 2011.

Please discuss this blog post on the Joomla! People site.

Roughly every two weeks or so, Barrie and I will be posting a news roundup from Joomla, pointing to the latest news that you shouldn't miss coming out of the Joomla project.

As we creep up to the second anniversary of the Joomla Site Showcase in April, I'd like to share some of the experiences myself and the team has had. The current team consists of:

Lee Cher Yeong (Malaysia, the developer of Mosets Tree)

Amanda Warren-Gonzales (US)

Pablo Yamamoto (Argentina)

Mike Hamanaka (US)

SĂŠbastien Lapoux (France)

Tarik Assagai (US)

 

Past members have included Matt Lipscomb, Carson Pierce, and Jonathan Lackey. Everyone has done a fantastic job of managing the showcase and making it what it is today.

 

The Site Showcase was created to do exactly that—to showcase how great Joomla is. I found that when I was talking to clients about using Joomla, they wanted to see examples of websites in their vertical that were successful using Joomla. In some sectors, especially the enterprise, companies are still getting used to the idea of using an open source CMS for their needs. This enabled me to show them specific examples and I felt sure that many others were in the same boat. Hence the Site Showcase was born in April 2009.

 

Sometimes people ask, why does it take so long to publish a site? Well, go through a similar process as the Joomla Extensions Directory. We check each entry against our guidelines, which includes making sure the site isn't offensive or violating the trademark. It's really obvious when somebody just wants some SEO traffic for their site when they submit it. These sites are half-finished, broken, minor changes to the default template, tricky redirects, tons of Google AdSense, etc. These sites obviously don't showcase the best Joomla has to offer so they are always rejected. With over 2200 sites so far, around 100 sites each month are processed by the team (into 112 categories).

 

On that note, it's amazing how few actually read the Site Showcase guidelines. Every day a web design/development shop submits their website, even though it explicitly states that the Joomla Resource Directory is the place for those. 

 

Some people have misunderstood the concept of Site of the Month as a contest or a number of other things. The Site of the Month is simply a site that the Showcase Team really likes and we feel it should highlighted for that particular month. If you're on the team and you build websites, you're automatically disqualified from being featured. The process consists of the team coming together around the end of the month and sharing their top URLs. We decide what's the best showcase for Joomla itself (it helps if it's a high-profile project) and that's the Site of the Month for that month. The team's schedules vary since we're all over so we try to published it on the first of every month (or thereabouts).

 

We also monitor the showcase for comments and clone voting. This happens fairly regularly when a site owner want's to bump up their ratings so they create multiple accounts to cast 5-star ratings on their listing. We have pretty sophisticated tools to detect this (like the JED) so we have to remove those and make sure nobody is trying to "game the system." 

 

Occasionally, a site was Joomla when it was submitted and approved, but over time it has changed to WordPress, Drupal or other platform. We try to keep an eye on those changes as well.

 

Unfortunately, we get very few case studies from people who submit their websites. We'd really like to get more of these because they helps users learn about how the site was put together, what extensions were used, and other helpful tidbits.

 

What's the plan for the future? We hope to raise the bar on the websites included. We know there are a lot of great sites out there that aren't in the showcase and we want to include those. We hope to get faster with site processing. We hope to someday overtake the JED in number of listings. We hope to continue giving users and potential users more and more great reasons to use Joomla...and much more!

Joomla! Best PHP Open Source Content Management System… Don’t take my word on it, this is the what the Packt Publishing Award judges say: http://www.packtpub.com/article/joomla-wins-best-php-open-source-content-management-system Joomla Wins Best PHP Cms But it is nice to see Once again, judges commented on the size and responsiveness of the community, which translates to potential problems being dealt with quickly.   Post from: Joomla SEO [...]

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

If you liked the tool mentioned in my previous post about Joomla and SEO, you might also want to read this article on my other Blog. This one is about the new Content analysis page in Google webmaster central: Google helps with Meta description and title errors Post from: Joomla SEO Blog by Pathos-Seo.com ©2009 Joomla SEO Blog by [...]

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

(This post is in reply to one that Dries Buytaert wrote on OStatic.com)

I agree with Dries that Open Source CMS' are putting more power into the hands of people who may not know or want to learn code, and that as their learning curves get less steep we will see more people jumping into creating and growing their websites themselves; depending on the type of website they want to have.

We've of course seen the *huge* acceptance of wordpress for simple content publishing (read: 'blogging') amongst all sorts of people ranging from tech pros to near-luddites.  As people use more websites that have richer feature sets everyday they'll no doubt want to see the functionality of those sites in their own; for a while yet, though it may not require custom coding, I think the role of 'web master' or 'web developer' or whatever-you-want-to-call-them will be around for quite some time.

That role will continue to exist but may change to focus on conceptualizing the end result and making it happen with the right combination (and configuration) of 3rd party modules/extensions; whether through just hand-holding/teaching people wanting to develop their own sites or actually putting the pieces together themselves.

I'm really excited for Mark Boulton's redesign of Drupal 7; right now a major hindrance to non-technical people using Drupal is its stratified admin interface, which often leads to developers custom-creating UX per-project to suit each client's administrative needs.

To help people jump-start their web projects we've taken a hard look at another Open Source CMS called Joomla for example, and come up with a packaged solution called Seedling (http://www.plantseedling.com).

Seedling's distribution of Joomla is cool because it comes pre-configured and loaded with a suite of extensions and easily changeable theme; so people can develop their web projects a lot quicker and with more power under the hood.  Plus, it comes with optional email/ticket support - so new adopters of Joomla can get help when they need it.

Until core installs of Open Source CMS' are a lot more user friendly I think solutions like Seedling will really help bridge the gap for those folks who want to learn via DIY and/or can't afford the services of web developers.

Recently the Joomla Community Workgroup came up with an idea to share just how much work is being done with the wider community by way of a monthly team report. You can see the source of the combined report I have compiled below here.

It's an incredible snapshot of the 100's of volunteers working on this part of the Joomla Project. Thanks must also to go to the support OSM ( www.opensourcematters.org ) gives to our project, as well as the Joomla Production Workgroup.

Read on for the full report, it's amazing!

We will be having live streaming of the Joomla Roadmap Meeting happening in New York City this Friday, October 21. The meeting is scheduled to start at 10 am EDT. See this link for the time in your area: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=Joomla+Roadmap+Meeting&iso=20111021T10&p1=12&ah=7

The link to the stream is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/joomla-roadmap. During the breakout sessions in the afternoon, we will be adding a second stream at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/joomla-roadmap-ch2 if needed. (Edited to change the second link)

The suggested twitter hash for this meeting is #jroadmap.

The success of any software release in an Open Source project depends on people getting involved, and Joomla! 1.6 is no exception. As we get closer to a stable Joomla! 1.6 release I wanted to take a moment and go over the timeline to stable and how you can play a part in making it better, faster.

Left to right: Phil Locke, Robert Deutz, Alice Grevet, Jacques Rentzke, Javier Gómez, Marijke Stuivenberg, Andy Tarr, Ryan Ozimek, Dianne Henning. Attending JAB but not in the photo: Paul Orwig

From May 6 - 8 in Kerkrade, The Netherlands, 220 Joomla! community members gathered at the unforgettable JandBeyond conference. Among them were 10 members of the Board of Open Source Matters (OSM). We came as community members to connect, network, and meet again or for the first time many of the people who make the Joomla! Open Source project such an exciting place to be.

The large turnout of OSM members allowed us to share experiences and goals as a group with the attendees, and to talk as a group about impressions and lessons learned from this event. I think everyone will agree that JandBeyond was an invaluable experience in every way!

A high point for all of us was standing together during Ryan's well-attended "State of OSM" session. After he presented achievements from the past year, various members shared OSM goals for 2011.

The goals included increased revenue sources, a new online shop, trademark team streamlining and improvements, upcoming conferences, a Joomla! Supporters club, PR and awareness initiatives, and the simplification and documentation of processes. The presentation was followed by questions from the community about revenue spending and leadership dynamics.

The following is a summary of the question and answer time:

Community: What is the purpose of raising money? What are the plans for that money?

OSM: We want a cushion so that when good ideas come up we will be able to respond in a timely manner. We want to be able to enact good ideas coming out of the community.

Community: Some ideas for the spending of increased revenue:

A Summer of Code funded by Joomla
Getting all of OSM, CLT, and PLT together in one place for the world community to talk about the goals of Joomla
Pay a consulting firm to do an analysis for security and performance
Give a portion of surplus to charity. (OSM: We donated money to SFLC this year)
Do a targeted prize contest with specific requirements with a cash prize to the winner

Community: Would you consider contracting paid development work again?

OSM: We would not do it the way it was done before. If we do consider it again, it would be only for a very specific task.

Community: Congratulations on your structure and leadership but who is going to influence the other parts of the leadership?

OSM: We can use leadership by example. There are processes being put into place that give opportunities to understand, influence and encourage. There will also be a joint summit in July.

Community: There is a perception that OSM can give active guidance.

OSM: It’s not OSM’s role to be the teacher and the others to be students. We can only lead by example. The theme of the weekend is community. The community has to come together and work together.

Community: The community feels excluded.

OSM: The leadership is working on getting better communications and clearer channels.

Community: OSM went through organizational training but what about the other teams? Did they get anything from that? It should be that if you are going to be a part of the leadership then you should have professional development.

OSM: OSM was fortunate to be offered a training opportunity. Gunner will be working with leadership skills at the summits.

Community: The way the groups are growing is positive because it spreads out the work and reduces the perception of cronyism. It would be good to see that happening with the CoC.

A common theme that we all came away with was appreciating the chance to interact with so many community members and to listen and be heard.

It was a privilege also to have Louis Landry attend from the Production Leadership Team (PLT). He made himself available to talk at length with many attendees. There was much positive feedback about interaction between the community and the leadership throughout the weekend.

An energizing spirit of innovation, passion, communication and respect characterized this event.

The State of OSM Address - Ryan Ozimek from jandbeyond on Vimeo.

To post a comment on this article please visit the thread on the J!People site: http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/1198-Open+Source+Matters+at+JandBeyond.html?groupid=579

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.

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.

 

 

In somewhat of an ambitious statement last Thursday, Joomla template and extension development firm Yootheme announced that they are almost ready to release 'CCK for Joomla' - an extension they're calling 'Zoo.'

As of now, Zoo seems to offer Joomla developers an easy interface for creating content types other than the standard 'article' type which is the basis of content currently in Joomla.  The concept is exciting - but I wouldn't be so quick as to liken Zoo to CCK; you see the Content Construction Kit for Drupal ('CCK') is a highly advanced extension which provides an infrastructure for complex content types which can interface with each other and be presented in a myriad of ways through dynamic GUI-created-and-controlled views and panels.  Then again, once Zoo is released I expect a hugely positive reaction from the Joomla community and that could speed up development of its feature set; depending on how easily people can extend it.  Yootheme have mentioned that a template engine will be included; it will be interesting to see how this stacks up to the Views/Panel modules for Drupal.

I've blogged before that there are a few different people working on custom content types for Joomla.  Building a CCK for Joomla is an excellent idea and I'm loving the attention its been getting since the introduction of Joomla 1.5, though I really want to see the idea translate into an extension that is built with sustanable scalability in mind.

Ultimately I feel this functionality should be included Joomla core - with extensions being provided by the community offering new types of fields which can be combined to create content types; an approach which exists in the Drupal community.  Over the past few years CCK has become an integral part of most Drupal websites and this has even spurred a donation effort to raise enough money to get it fine tuned enough to be included in an upcoming Drupal core. 

Reading through the commend thread on Yoo's announcement, it looks like they:

• will be releasing Zoo under GPL (nice!)
• have built it in a plugin system to afford scalability (double nice!)
• are keeping Joomla 1.6's ACL advancements in mind (triple nice?)

So I'm super excited to check Zoo out and will be posting a full review as soon as the extension is released (no release date posted yet.) 

Hopefully some of the other chaps working on a CCK for Joomla like bContent can link up with Yoo and come together behind one strong solution for the community @ large.

There are a few people whose every word I follow and try to incorporate into my business, and Brian Clark of CopyBlogger.com and Teaching Sells is one of them.

In 2008, Brian launched his Teaching Sells course. A complete guide to setting up and running and online paid membership websites. It was insanely popular, I joined up right when his doors opened, and so did people like Aaron Wall (of SEO Book).

After 2 rounds of students, Brian closed his doors and has been busy im[...]