PHP-CSS-DIV-CMS Joomla-Java Info

Simplweb Becomes iContact Small Business Partner

09.05.09

I love iContact because I believe it's the best email newsletter and marketing service
out there. I use it myself, and even built into Simplweb several
tools that make it easy to integrate a Joomla site with an iContact list.

We love to promote iContact as the perfect companion service to a Si [...]

We've just released a brand new template at Joomlashack.com called Impacto, and besides being a great all-purpose Joomla template perfect for any site, it's also the first-ever Joomla template designed to be a powerful Landing Page for your advertising campaigns!

You probably already know just how important an effective Landing Page is in today's ultra competitive, e-commerce-driven world. The right Landing page layout can increase your Adwords sales and keep visitors on your site longer. And that's why Impacto is so..impactful. Impacto enables you to build stunning landing pages right inside Joomla! using bold, rich typography, preset styles, and customizable layout options that present your message clearly and effectively.

With Joomla 1.6 nearing completion the thoughts of many have been turning to "the next step":

• What features would you like to see in the next version?
• Where do you see Joomla heading over the next release cycle and beyond?
• What do you think Joomla should look like over the next several iterations? And so on.

There are two extremes on the scale of viewpoints about how open source projects should be run. At one extreme, we have the "benevolent dictator" approach where a single leader decides, in isolation, what will be incorporated into the codebase and what will not. At the opposite extreme, we have a project where all decisions are taken in the democratic tradition of a majority vote.

Of course, Joomla has never been, nor should it ever be, at either of these extremes. But it's fair to say that the gradual evolution of the project has seen us move further from the dictatorial towards the democratic end of the spectrum. We have always sought to be a community-led project; our leadership teams are drawn from the community and as leaders, we manage the project on behalf of the community. There is no large corporation or individual dictator with an overwhelming influence on us and the commercial prosperity of the Joomla ecosystem is in large part due to the decentralised, non-profit nature of the organisation.

So how should we steer the future development of the software that we create? Over the 5 years or so since the project's inception, we have been systematically lowering barriers to participation and today we are launching a new process for gathering suggestions for future versions of Joomla that will make it even easier for members of our global community to help shape the future development of the software. This new process comes in two parts, the first of which is aimed at collecting ideas for new features and assessing their popularity through a voting system, while the second is a formal procedure for monitoring and tracking feature suggestions.

New ideas come from many places and can come from anyone in the community. We like to use the Google Group mailing lists for the CMS since it's a great place to brainstorm, but the Joomla People site also works well; or indeed anywhere Joomla folks congregate. The Joomla Idea Pool (JIP), which is based on UserVoice, is a way for anyone in the community to make their voice heard and help set priorities. Each user has ten votes to cast on the various ideas, which will help make clear what future features the community really wants.

It is important to understand that not all features will be added to Joomla. This may happen for a number of reasons. For example, there may be a great feature proposed but either nobody volunteers to take it on, or the PLT decides it is better implemented as a separate extension rather than part of the core CMS or Platform. Our hope is that many or all of the most popular features on the JIP will have a strong chance of attracting energetic development talent to complete them. Once a feature has moved to the implementation stage, it starts its journey along the second part of our new process by getting added to the Joomla Feature Tracker.

The Joomla Feature Tracker (JFT) is the team's way of tracking the progress of a feature and encouraging more collaboration during development. Once an idea has reached the point where it has some level of support and is ready for more serious discussion, or even coding, then it can and should be added to the JFT. This allows it to be tracked more easily and acts as a focal point for activity regarding a new feature. There is more detailed explanation of how items will be moved through the JFT process on the Joomla Developer Network site.

To get this new process started the PLT has seeded the JIP with the feature suggestions that we discussed at the San Jose Summit and which together comprise our vision for the next Joomla release. You can read our vision statement in an announcement on the main joomla.org site.

So, for those asking the question "where next for Joomla development?", we say remember what Alan Kay famously said:

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

So get on over to the Joomla Idea Pool now and help us invent the future of Joomla.

With an October 25th announcement on the public Joomla! leadership email list, work has begun on the Joomla! project's 2012 goal setting and budget planning proposed process. 2011 was the first year that the Production Leadership Team (PLT), Community Leadership Team, (CLT) and Open Source Matters board of directors (OSM) put in the extra effort to first define their goals for the year before they began work on their parts of the project's overall budget.

Benefits of the goal setting and budget planning process

These are the benefits of having PLT, CLT, and OSM put in the extra effort to first define their goals and priorities for 2012 and also asking them to provide input on the areas of the 2012 budget that their teams are responsible for:

• Allows our budget to be a more effective tool for supporting the project's planned priorities for the upcoming year.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Changes made for the 2012 proposed process

Some significant changes have been incorporated into the 2012 proposed process based on lessons learned from the 2011 process. Some of these changes are a result of lessons learned during the 2011 process, including feedback from the community. Other changes are based on work that came out of a session at the July 2011 Joint Leadership Summit about creating a public unified roadmap for the project. These are the main changes that have been made for the 2012 proposed process:

• Each leadership team has been asked to define a mission statement for their team that supports the project's current overall mission statement. Each team's mission statement will be a helpful starting point to confirm that their top goals and priorities are aligned with their mission statement.
• Time has been included in the proposed process for community feedback both before the leadership teams finalize their goals, as well as before the draft budget is submitted to OSM for formal approval.
• A more detailed framework has been provided for documenting milestones, action items, and resources that are associated with each team's top goals and priorities. Each leadership team can use this documentation to help with their budget planning and their implementation work for each of their top goals and priorities. If this documentation is completed it can be published alongside the both draft and approved budgets which will help community members see where those goals tie to specific budget line items.
• Recommendation that each leadership team publish a blog following each calendar quarter in 2012 to provide an update to the community about their progress toward their 2012 top goals and priorities.
• Creation of a sample timeline that aims to have a budget ready for OSM's formal approval in January 2012.

Potential impact of proposed leadership structure changes

Proposed leadership structure changes that were intially discussed at the July 2011 Joint Leadership Summit may result in changes to the project's current leadership structure sometime during 2012. It will likely take quite a bit of time to work out the details of any approved leadership structure changes, so if we want to have a set of full year 2012 goals and a budget that is based on those goals, then our best path to accomplishing that will be to rely on our current leadership teams to carry out this work now.

Sample timeline for the 2012 proposed process

The sample timeline for the 2012 proposed process is shown below. As was the case with the 2011 process, participation by leadership teams in the 2012 proposed process is voluntary. Each leadership team may choose to take a different path regarding both their goal setting and their budget planning work for 2012.

• October 25: Announce 2012 goal setting/budget planning process to leadership teams.
• November 2: OSM Treasurer publishes blog about 2012 goal setting/budget planning process.
• November 2: Each leadership team creates their mission statement, and begins working on their proposed top 2012 goals/priorities.
• November 5: OSM Treasurer provides budget spreadsheet templates to all leadership teams.
• November 9: Each leadership team defines their proposed top goals/priorities and they each independently publish a blog/JPeople discussion or other method of collecting community feedback about them.
• November 16: Public feedback on each leadership team’s proposed top goals/priorities closes.
• November 30: Each leadership team finalizes their top goals/priorities and their milestones/action items/resources.
• December 7: Each leadership team submits their proposed 2012 budget to OSM Treasurer along with their mission statement, goals/priorities, milestone/action items/resources document.
• December 21: Budget committee reconciles consolidated 2012 budget.
• December 22: Blog and JPeople discussion for community review along with draft budget, and leadership team mission statements, goals/priorities, milestones/action items/resources are published.
• December 29: Public discussion closes.
• January 2012: OSM votes to accept budget.

Get Further with PHP
March 4-6, 2009 / Montreal, Canada

This is an invitation to meet me, Michelle Bisson, at the PHP Quebec 2009 Conference as I will be a guest speaker.
I will be speaking at 11:00 Wednesday, March 4th, 2009.

Come and network with others who are are interested in learning about Joomla.

Conference Topic:

Joomla! Web Site Development in a Few Easy Clicks

Joomla! is used and loved by millions to build web sites from simple web sites to corporate web sites. Learn the basics of using Joomla! with this step by step walk through demonstration of creating your first Joomla web site.

• Page Creation (simple layout and blog layout)
• Menu Navigation system
• Working with modules

http://conf.phpquebec.com/en

Conference Location:
Hilton Montreal Hotel
900 Gauchetiere West St.
Montreal, Canada

Google Map >>

 

Joomla! Booth:

 

As well, PHP Quebec 2009 was kind enough to allow us to present Joomla! at their Job Fair even though Joomla is not hiring.  Do stop by at our booth to ask me a few questions about Joomla! 

Starting at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 5th, 2009

As well, do look for me between sessions.  I look forward to meeting you.

- Michelle Bisson, Joomla! Core Team Member

 

In order to understand how to configure ACL (access control levels) for your website, you must first understand how ACL fits together.

There are so many reasons to making your site easily visible on Social Networking websites and platforms - they raise general visibility and offer access to communities which may not otherwise find the information you spend time publishing in your posts.

Of course, one of the most agile word-of-mouth Social platforms on the web is Twitter and you may have recently noticed a pretty cool widgety thing people are using on their blogs/sites to include a 'retweet' link and counter of how many times a post has been tweeted - its powered by a site called 'Tweetmeme' and installs pretty easily on any website - whether using static html or a CMS like Joomla.

When you take a peek at the tweetmeme page containing the necessary embed code it may not be too easy to tell how to use it with your Joomla site - and though there's a couple of plugins/extension floating around Joomla, it may not offer the flexibility you require for clean theming/templating.  However, there's an easy way to go about embedding this and all it takes is a small modification of the de facto embed code. 

All you have to do is:

• copy the following code(s),
• replace 'http://mysite.com' with your own root URL and:
• replace 'twitterhandle' with your twitter handle (if you want reweets to automagically incude @yourtwitterhandle - you can opt to delete that line from the code otherwise.

For individual article template files (eg 'templates > your_template  > html > com_content > article > default.php'):

  <script type="text/javascript">  tweetmeme_style = 'compact';  tweetmeme_url = 'http://mysite.com<?php echo $this->article->readmore_link; ?>';  tweetmeme_source = 'twitterhandle';  </script>  

For article list pages - like section or category template files (eg 'templates > your_template  > html > com_content > category > blog_item.php'):

  <script type="text/javascript">  tweetmeme_style = 'compact';  tweetmeme_url = 'http://mysite.com<?php echo $this->item->readmore_link; ?>';  tweetmeme_source = 'twitterhandle';  </script>

The trick then is to take this code and include it in the appropriate version of your theme's template files - Of course, you can see I've wrapped the code in a div called 'tweetmeme' so you can then add in some css for that div wherever you want in your template to style the tweetmeme widget.  You can learn more about Joomla templates and the files which they can comprise of in the official documentation wiki.

Basically what we've done here is include some php to tell the embed code the specific URL for each post - so the widget works cleanly on individual article pages as well as displays showing multiple articles at once.

*You can see the widget in action here on this site above - just below the title of each post. Try it out and retweet this post to see how it works!

Incase you ever need to remove a user on a Joomla 1.5x site with Super Administrator status and are wondering why the site keeps spitting a message at you saying that you can't disable or delete them fear not, there's a simple work-around: simply edit them changing their group assignment to 'Registered' (only) and save the user - then you can disable or delete them.

Joomlashack's annual holiday charitable campaign is back with a new twist: We'll match your donations!

For the fourth year, Joomlashack is rallying our community to support a worthy charity during the holiday season.

This year we're supporting the important humanitarian efforts of Doctors without Borders (aka Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF.)

For every dollar contributed by our community, Joomlashack will match up to a total of $1,000. Other partners may match even more!

What is Médecins Sans Frontières?

I'm pretty darn excited about the Joomla! Platform. Actually, that is my biggest understatement of 2011.

I believe that the Joomla Platform has an opportunity to be one of the fastest growing development platforms of 2012, enabling the more than 200,000 Joomla developers around the world to break the bonds of CMS development and dive head-first into a world of ever-more global, mobile, and social applications.

Joomla devs building a J!Platform app at Joomla!Day UK 2011

Evangelizing about something as opaque as a development platform is a bit of a challenge. There's been many times where developers and end-users alike will attend one of my talks ask, "what's an example of what someone can build with the platform?" It’s easier to understand how something can be useful to your own needs when it’s laid out with specific deliverables and products.

Joomlashack's Inspirion Joomla Template is one of the most innovative templates currently on the market. Its built using the 960 grid, a CSS system that gives you a tableless layout and a fast loading site, great for SEO!

Its one of the first commercial professional templates to validate XHTML Strict. This is a high benchmark t[...]

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[...] 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.



What is JS AppBox? A killer SEO, fast-loading template ready and waiting to style some of the best extensions available in the Joomlaverse. AppBox is a native Joomla 1.5 template built to visually integrate Joomla and three of its best extensions: K2, Kunena Forum, and the must-have JomSocial. Not yet familar with K2? K2 is the powerful content component that gives you enormous flexibility to place and display your content differently than your typical "out of the box" Joomla layout style. Learn more about K2 and AppBox. JS AppBox is a web 2.0 template optimized with raw SEO power and easy style integration with best-of-breed tools to make your site engaging and sticky.

Joomla! 1.0 has served us well, but after nearly 4 years of service it has reached retirement. Things are moving forward with Joomla! 1.6 and there is no better time to start migrating to the Joomla! 1.5 release!

InformIT have released a second snippet of the upcoming Fundamentals Of Joomla Video series, its a 25 minute video on how to install Joomla.

The release date is Q1/Q2 in 2009, available on DVD and on iTunes

 

Order your copy now!

InformIT have released a second s [...]

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