PHP-CSS-DIV-CMS Joomla-Java Info - News
Community Leadership Team Summit 2010
15.09.10
The Community Leadership Team (CLT) will be hosting a summit on 1 October 2010 through 4 October 2010 in San Jose, California. This will overlap the Joomla! Day West 2010. Members of the CLT will be available for questions and feedback during the Joomla! Day event and are also on the presenter's list.
The CLT is tasked with the operation of the Joomla.org sites including the Extensions Directory, Forums, Resources Directory, Community Magazine, Community Portal, J!People and the teams of volunteers that facilitate these sites (known as the Community Working Groups). One of the primary responsibilities of the CLT is to provide a safe and positive environment for the community. During this summit, the CLT will meet to discuss ways to help the community and the teams and additionally plan and prepare for the future. We want community input for topics that should be discussed. To help facilitate this we have setup a simple form (below) for you to submit your anonymous suggestions for topics to cover.
Addtionally, we are going one step further - a Live streamed "Open for Questions" session will be held on 4 October 2010 from 9am - 10am (GMT-7). This will be available for free to all community members by simply going to the JoomlaCommunity Livestream channel: http://www.livestream.com/joomlacommunity
We look forward to this exciting event and the feedback and participation of everyone!
Click Here to submit your topic suggestions!
Superior SEO + limitless flexibility + seamless JomSocial styling = Joomlashack's new template, JS Community! Built on our powerful CSS 960 grid framework, JS Community is a sleek yet sophisticated approach to design. It comes loaded with over 30 module positions, multiple source-ordered column layouts, easy to customize CSS files, and much more! And most exciting- JS Community is ready for JomSocial, the best social networking extension available for Joomla. Need to offer community tools to your audience but want a consistent, seamless look and feel? Try out our demo and see how JomSocial and JS Community work together for a perfect social networking experience. JS Community is chock full of powerful, state-of-the-art features. Check out Community's full bag of tricks, including:
This has to be one of the best ways I have seen yet to explain web standards and usability to clients.
Next time you find your self in that situation, show this handy video.
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? After just having a chat with my brother about the growth of Joomla usage, and overall size/scope of Joomla's user-base I came across the following screenshot which Johan posted on flickr : Joint Summit Attendees: Topics Covered and Action Items (where applicable) Created The following is a brief summary of the topics discussed. Detailed reports will be published as they are produced. The entire leadership would like to thank eBay for the use of its offices for our summit, and Louis and Ron for coordinating with them. Thanks to Rochen we had tasty lunches, ordered with care by Wendy. And Gunner, our Summit Facilitator Extraordinaire kept us on target and on time! For comments and feedback click here Recently I wrote an article that proved to be immensely popular. I then thought it would be good to reach out to a favorite Joomla! blog of mine: Compass Designs. Here is a companion piece to my original post on promoting your Joomla content, Five (more) tips to promoting your content. Creating working relationships across your industry can only help you. Even if you don't guest blog, reach out to other site owners that focus on the same topic. Some ways youRead More... There is a new Joomla User Group in Vermont, the second for the state! The first meeting of the North VT Joomla! User Group will be held on Thursday, April 30, 2009, from 5:30-7:30 PM. Location: Johnson State College, Johnson VT, Martinetti Hall, 2nd Floor, Room MAR 213A (it will be sign posted) Agenda: You are reading a post from: Joomla SEO Blog by PathosSeoBlog.com We love to promote iContact as the perfect companion service to a Si [...]
CLT: Peter Martin, Paul Orwig, Wendy Robinson, Sandra Warren
OSM: Robert Deutz, Alice Grevet, Dianne Henning, Sandy Ordonez, Paul Orwig, Ryan Ozimek, Jacques Rentzke, Marijke Stuivenberg, Akarawuth Tamrareang, Altansukh Tumenjargal
PLT: Chris Davenport, Mark Dexter, Louis Landry, Sam Moffatt, Omar Ramos, Ron Severdia, Jean-Marie Simmonet, Andrea Tarr
Where we came from:
 
It was unanimously voted to discontinue the AGPL license. This lessens restrictions and will open up the project to more contributors.
The Joomla Leadership, including the Open Source Matters board, Community Leadership Team, and Production Leadership team, recognize that our current leadership structure could be more effective.  Communication between our teams and the community needs improvement, and oversight needs rethinking.  As a team, we strive to be more effective leaders for the community. To achieve this, we have begun extensive discussions about the project’s leadership structure. This discussion is early and on-going.  As we consider important changes to continue on a path towards more effectiveness, we intend to request community input and feedback to help us in this important effort.
The communications breakout discussion was one of the most lengthy. Audiences and current communications channels were identified - there are many! A review was made of the document produced by the current communications team this past spring, defining what is communications. Roles and responsibilities for the communications team moving forward were listed. Action items include: condensing the 12 newly defined roles into a more manageable list and begin identifying potential owners for these roles. Candidates must have a passion for communications and experience in the specific area (marketing, branding, graphics, etc).
A working group will be started to bridge the gap when communication needs a boost between the community and the JUGs, the JED, events, merchandise and trademark. A comprehensive leadership directory wiki will be created for a better flow of leadership communication and troubleshooting. The communications team volunteers to disburse intra team communications, and facilitate intra team conflict resolution, including the creation of a FAQ list within the wiki for that purpose.
While English is the common language in the software world, the majority of the world population does not speak English. To increase Joomla’s presence in a proactive way and recruit more non-English-speaking volunteers, the following action items will be implemented: concentrating our efforts in the different regions of the world by identifying one or two community coordinators / contact persons in each region; compiling a list of currently active local communities and JUGs and see if there are any groups which have not yet been accounted for; identifying their needs, the nature of their communities, and recruiting translation help to update the Joomla info pages.
This discussion first explored the benefits of creating a public unified roadmap that encompasses the entire scope of the Joomla! project. After that, the discussion continued to define a process for creating a public unified roadmap that also includes periodic public progress updates from leadership.
The process for creating a public unified roadmap involves: Leadership defines and publishes an overall mission statement for the project. This is high level and conceptual.
Each leadership team defines and publishes their team’s mission statement, which should support the project’s overall mission. Each leadership team’s mission statement may need to be revised to insure that they all tie in well with the overall project mission statement. Each leadership team defines and publishes their annual goals which support their team’s mission statement. For each leadership team’s goals, the following supporting details will be added and published: milestones (achievement and target completion date); action items (each task required to progress toward achieving the milestone; resource(s): volunteer or paid workers, financial (specify the purpose and budget line item); features (if applicable), action items (if applicable), resources (if applicable). Each leadership team publishes periodic updates during the course of the year regarding their progress on each of their goals.
The PLT discussed forming a Joomla Outreach Project (JOP), where a "bucket" of tasks is created by teams, using the wiki. Community members would be invited to join these teams, and they would work in alignment with development goals, under the guidance of the PLT. Incentives (such as T-shirts) would be awarded upon the completion of each set of tasks.
Volunteer Now is a plan for recruiting new team members, because teams should be created to manage recurring, long-term tasks that require deeper knowledge. A volunteer engagement page will be created on the wiki, and a Volunteer Now button will link to it from the joomla.org home page. In the wiki a future volunteer will find documentation on how and why we build teams, and contacts for the projects major teams and assets.
A concept will be drafted listing outreach ideas for engaging university students.
Regarding processes and messages in correspondence (for example, in areas of trademark, the JED and events), we often need more differentiation and adapted responses to specific situations.
Action items include: reviewing our texts to verify if we are using a friendly approach aimed at optimizing communication; listing and identifying situations and creating responses adapted to them; simplifying language.
We talked about the state of the Developer Sponsorship Program and how we handle the involvement of sponsored development time from companies and guide this process more effectively in the future. One Idea was to move from pre to post recognition and use a to-do list and let people pick from the “cookie jar” list to sponsor development time.
Action items include: speaking with the existing sponsors about their experience and writing a report; deciding if a money only approach or money and development time approach is best, finding a volunteer to manage the cookie jar.
A 1 - 2 plan of certification ideas and how to approach them will be drafted. Feedback from each leadership team will be gathered. The plan will include creating levels for web masters, designers and instructors of joomla, creating a curriculum and courses template for trainers, financial and licensing fees to create more revenue, a test database infrastructure.
A story we want to help tell is that Joomla can provide students with CS degrees experience on a global team that goes far beyond just a curriculum. Action items include creating a spreadsheet where we can determine which events developers are attending, and writing a one page messaging document outlining persuasive reasons why the Joomla Platform and CMS are useful for developers, and target university students.
We talked about the process for establishing goals and milestones for the Joomla project long term releases. Once every 6 months the PLT and developers will meet just before or after an existing event such as a Joomla Day or JandBeyond. We are hoping to do the first one this fall where milestones and goals for the July 2013 long term release will be discussed.
A few years ago, fluid width templates were all the rage. Accessibility guys loved them, and it was cool to grab the corner of your browser window and see all that content slide around. Heck, my original Joomla template tutorial published at joomla.org even showed you how to make them. We even sold templates that had the more advanced "jello layout" (fixed side columns and fluid middle). But now, at Joomlashack, we don't make fluid templates, but focus on fixed width templates. I firmly believe they are misplaced on today's web.
Build relationships
# Welcome and Introductions
# Organize the group, set standards for future meetings
# Discussion Time ... Joomla Questions, Display of Sites . [...]
Doing Keyword research and Using the right tools to get the keyword information you need is essential if you want to build a successful website. Keyword Research Keywords are the most essential part of website creation, especially if you want your website to out perform your competitors. And Since you are here reading this Blog, you must be [...]
How To do Keyword Research to Build a Keyword List
With the excitment of the release of Joomla 1.6 building, more and more frequent questions are "Should I use Joomla 1.6 when released?" or "Will Joomla 1.6 RC1 ready for production/live sites?" Everyone is going to have their own opinion, but here we have some answers from two best-selling authors that have published books on Joomla 1.5 and have books on Joomla 1.6 in production - Barrie North and Jen Kramer.
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.
Recently, Barrie received an email asking questions about Joomla versions and upgrades, and how the system will work going forward. We are happy to take requests from our readers and address them here in our newsletter! As a result of the recent Production Leadership Team (PLT) meeting at the end of July, Joomla's release cycle has been clarified. 
Take 30% OFF the price of these select premium Joomlashack templates all weekend long. Sale ends right before the witching hour on Sunday, October 31st at 11:59pm EST. Hurry!
Joomla! 1.6 Development Shifting Gears
29.04.10
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.
Where Next for Joomla development?
19.11.10
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.
Adobe Muse: You're Not Helping!
17.08.11
Yesterday, a number of media outlets reported on the release of the latest product from Adobe, Adobe Muse. This is a new WYSIWYG editor, which claims to allow creating and editing websites without knowledge of code. (Yes, just like Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft FrontPage and other tools you may know about.) But before talking about Muse, let's talk about its target audience — print designers who build websites.
SourceWelcome Wendy and Ole!
13.01.10
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.
Community Leadership Team Summit 2010
15.09.10
The Community Leadership Team (CLT) will be hosting a summit on 1 October 2010 through 4 October 2010 in San Jose, California. This will overlap the Joomla! Day West 2010. Members of the CLT will be available for questions and feedback during the Joomla! Day event and are also on the presenter's list.
The CLT is tasked with the operation of the Joomla.org sites including the Extensions Directory, Forums, Resources Directory, Community Magazine, Community Portal, J!People and the teams of volunteers that facilitate these sites (known as the Community Working Groups). One of the primary responsibilities of the CLT is to provide a safe and positive environment for the community. During this summit, the CLT will meet to discuss ways to help the community and the teams and additionally plan and prepare for the future. We want community input for topics that should be discussed. To help facilitate this we have setup a simple form (below) for you to submit your anonymous suggestions for topics to cover.
Addtionally, we are going one step further - a Live streamed "Open for Questions" session will be held on 4 October 2010 from 9am - 10am (GMT-7). This will be available for free to all community members by simply going to the JoomlaCommunity Livestream channel: http://www.livestream.com/joomlacommunity
We look forward to this exciting event and the feedback and participation of everyone!
Click Here to submit your topic suggestions!