Menu

Links


Advert

PHP-CSS-DIV-CMS Joomla-Java Info - News

JED Editor's Picks Nominations - One Week Only!

11.10.10

The Joomla! Extensions Directory Team is proud to announce a new set of guidelines for the once Top Secret Editor's Picks!  With no new selections since 2008 and only 8 current listings, it's was past time to review our procedures and add new ones.  ThroughoutEditor's Picks discussions many ideas were brought up on how to handle the selection process.  To bring in community involvement, a nomination form has now been created.  The criteria for selection is listed on the nomnation form below.  The nomination process closes in 7 days, so make sure to get yours in quickly!

Selections will be announced by the end of October 2010 and the process will repeat every 6 months.  If an Editor's Picks is currently listed, that does not mean that it will be listed in the new round of selections.  Additionally, team members with listings in the directory have self-excluded from the selection process.  You may nominate as many as you wish!

A total selection of up to 60 Editor's Picks will be chosen (about 1% of the entire listings).

Happy nominating and good luck!

or
(Please note, blog comments will not be processed, discussion areas are available in the J!People site.)




Today I'd like to announce a new project by the Joomla! team called 'Joopal'. Joopal is a new CMS featuring the power of objects offered to you by Joomla! with the immense hook system delivered to you by Drupal. Joopal is based on Joomla! 1.5 and features Drupal 6 the way PHP5 meant it to be done: with objects instead of globals and incredibly long function names. Joopal is compatible with the Drupal 6 functions and maintains all of those globals for backwards compatibility whilst providing a new object orientated approach to the functions you know and love.

 

The power of Joomla! with Drupal configurability

Joopal permits you to use your traditional Drupal blocks anywhere a Joomla! module can do and also allows you to integrate Drupal's modules as if they were a normal Joomla! component. This permits your Joomla! site to pick and choose the features and functionality you need against two of the world's most popular content management systems!

 

Development Evolved

Joopal provides developers with the power of the Joomla! Web Application Framework as well as Drupal 6's many interfaces. Joopal allows Joomla! developers to leverage features found in Drupal and allows Drupal developers to discover the joys of objects. For Drupal developers, objects are a recently added to PHP in version 3 that permit encapsulation of your data and providing tools to permit the removal of globals from your code.

But it doesn't stop there! In addition to creating object orientated versions of the Drupal Core in addition to the function/global system, you can seemlessly use Joomla!'s Framework complete with on demand autoloading objects.  With two popular frameworks behind you, there is no way you can go wrong!

 

Getting Involved

Like Joomla!, Joopal is a community driven project and we need you to help us out! Joopal needs Drupal testers to help port their components and reveal issues with the system. Joopal also welcomes any developers wanting to fix issues and improve Joopal by submitting patches or even working in a more dedicated role. With Joopal and your involvement, anything is possible! So what are you waiting for, sign up the the Joomla! Development General mailing list and start working on Joopal today!

Follow Sam Moffatt on Twitter.


Donate TodayJoomlashack'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?

In case you had not heard, Joomla 1.7 will be released on July 19, 2011. This is is the first release under Joomla's new 6-month release schedule. There have been many posts about Joomla's new release cycle and how it will impact your sites and your business (including these two from Jen). Unfortunately, Joomla does not always do the best job communicating consistently and clearly with its community. Fortunately, Barrie and Jen are here to help you with all of your Joomla 1.7 questions!



ImpactoWe'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.
Back in November, Joomlashack was preparing for its annual Charity Contest, we saw that an effort had started to raise donations from the Joomla community for Doctor's without borders. We decided to match $1000 in donations from Joomla users! We are excited to say that the Joomla community has been able to match our donation and last week we donated our $1000 to Doctor's without Borders. If you'd like to start out 2010 with helping 200 children with a high energy meal, head over and donate just $35 right now!

We'd like to thank everyone who participated in the experimental Joomla Roadmap Meeting that was held last Friday live in NYC and virtually via live streaming on Ustream and twitter. This meeting was looking at the next major revision of Joomla after the long-term support release 2.5 comes out in a few months.




There are lots of email marketing services: iContact, Mailchimp, Aweber etc etc.

But I don't think there has been a scientific test and review of how well they deliver, all of them give their deliverability rates, but how can we compare them?

I need your help to do this very test and compare these services, here's how...

The test is a simple one, gather a test group of volunteers (that's you) and then get a subscription to each service. We'll then send out an identic[...]

Joomlashack is excited to announce the release of Scribe for Joomla. Scribe is an SEO service that analyzes your content and tells you how you can make it better for search engines and get ranked higher. When you install the free Scribe for Joomla extension, you can analyze your articles to improve their SEO copywriting - with the click of a button. The analysis shows you what search engines think your article is about, and then suggests and guides you to make it better. Its like having an SEO copywriting expert standing by your shoulder, helps you optimize your content faster and easier. Its not a tool to tweak SEF url's, its a powerful editorial assistant to help you write better copy for search engines!

Last week the Joomla Project team released Joomla 1.5.12, codename "Wojmamni Ama Woi." No explanation for the Swahili meaning was given, but this version's various security and bug fixes are easily explained by checking out the project's 1.5.12 release.

 

The notes on Joomla.org[...]

There has been some debate and a little confusion (and some misinformation) about whether or not extension developers should upgrade their extensions to Joomla 1.6. The short answer is "yes, except if you have an extension that is now ruled obsolete by the new functionality."

 
With the release of Joomla 1.6, the Production Leadership Team embarks on time-based release cycles. In the past, features would be worked on in the development trunk and when complete, the release was declared "ready." So a new version of Joomla is never released until all the planned features are set and stable. This is the reason why both Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6 each took three years to complete. This results in a long lag time for third-party developers to update their extensions to work with three years worth of core changes. That can be a daunting task for even the smallest of extensions.
 
Time-based release cycles are a totally new approach for Joomla. The way it works is there's a vision/theme set for the next release around six months in advance. For the July 2011 release, the theme is "Rediscover Content."
 
This vision is what the Production Leadership Team has outlined as top priorities for the release and comes from community ideas in the Joomla Idea Pool (or the Joomla Feature Tracker) in accordance with what the development team determines as in line with the vision. That doesn't mean that all the goals listed will make it into the next release or that nothing except those goals will be included, but it provides a focused path for the team and those in the community who want to help contribute. 
 
Once a new version is released, there's a period of maintenance and bug fixes. Then the teams go into the next development phase of working on the next version. During this phase, features are worked on and stable branches are merged into the code trunk. Anyone who wants a code branch to work in can request one and it's their responsibility to ensure what they're working on works with the latest stable code trunk. This improves the likelihood it will get merged into the core and means that developers can work on anything they want all year round, regardless of release timing. Once it's ready, it can go into the trunk which prevents the "coding frenzy" that happens in the period leading up to a release (instead of a "stabilization frenzy"). Then there's a merging phase around 6 weeks before the release date where the code is stabilized up until the final date.
 
All this ensures the trunk is constantly stable and a release theoretically can happen on any given day. So every six months to the day, there will be a Joomla release. The contents of that release (which will obviously vary from release to release) will determine the numbering structure. So we have to refer to future releases by their dates, not numbers (therefore, that doesn't mean Joomla 1.7 will be coming out in July 2011, or ever). 
 
The changes from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6 are huge (in my humble opinion it should really be called Joomla 2.0) mainly because of the change in ACL and the new content structure—it's been three years in the making. But going forward, the changes needed in extensions to make them compatible with upcoming releases should be much smaller due to the shorter release cycle. This means this is the last time extension developers should have to "bite the bullet" in the time needed to update their extensions.
 
That also means extension developers will need to switch to a more progressive development process—doing smaller updates and incremental development work instead of a huge chunk of time every few years when a new version is released. In the past, it was a stretch to have an extension compatible with two different versions of Joomla. With this new model, an extension may be compatible with five or six versions due to the shorter cycle. Extension developers will be able to better plan their own development effort and costs (subscription-based sales will likely increase under this model since users won't take the tact that they'll only buy when there's a new version, but instead will keep a continuous subscription). Some of this also applies to site builders and administrators. The incremental changes from version to version will make life much easier for those folks upgrading from release to release (whether a long-term release or not). 
 
So if you're a Joomla extension developer, it actually does make practical and business sense to upgrade to Joomla 1.6 since roughly the same amount of work will be needed to upgrade to the July 2011 version of Joomla. The work to upgrade to the July release will likely be trivial, you'll be one of the first group of extensions on the cutting edge, and your customers will certainly be happier.
 
 


Many K-12 schools find Simplweb's fully managed service a useful way to maintain their websites. Some higher education schools are also following the trend. The latest addition to the Simplweb family is the Upper Valley Educators Institute, a principal and teacher certification school of education.

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 [...]





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.

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


 

We have finished most parts of the Development Coordinator Summit over the last few days. We have had some pretty intense days of discussing our agenda, that covered the following topics:

  1. Development Vision
  2. Healthy Development Team
  3. Operational and Organisational Structure
  4. Roadmap

This mail is a summary of the outcome of these topics. When you read it is important to understand that we only covered the highlights and have set direction and focus for Joomla development. It will take time, and considerable effort from everyone involved in the project to achieve our goals, but we are excited. It's impossible to share every detail but the following presents a summary of each major topic.




Source

Better Ways to Use Facebook Buttons

21.05.11

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a popular blog post about “Making Social Media Work”. I used some of those ideas in a presentation at Joomla Day New England (link has audio and video!) about how to use Social Media to get sticky traffic for your site. One recurring question was about Facebook etc buttons. The hard reality is that putting facebook buttons on your site isn’t going to do much. I used the example of cnn.com only getting a couple of hundred likes on a lead story. For most of us, we don’t have CNN’s traffic, and our buttons just end up un-liked and lonely. So what's a better way to use Facebook?

Source

Joomla 1.7: Offline Access, the New Core Permission

05.07.11

For those of you working with access control lists (ACL) in Joomla 1.6, you should know about the new core permission that has been introduced in Joomla 1.7 beta. The new permission is called "offline access". This allows certain user groups to log into the front end of the website when the site is offline.

Source

Need help? Ask Jen and Barrie!

27.09.11

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!

Source

So you want to know how your Joomla site is on SEO?

09.05.09

It has been a while since my latest post, but I really have been busy working on new website building projects. So my time is already limited, because I do all this stuff on the Internet after my normal daytime job. Why? because I like to share knowledge, get in touch with new idea’s and try them [...]

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

Source

Marlboro Marketing Class Websites

08.07.09

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[...]

Source

  • Search

  • Info