Brian Teeman

In the last few months there has been quite a lot of activity across the globe at various CMS showdowns. At these events teams of designers have competed against the clock to create a website using their chosen CMS.

But these have all really been design related and I think it would be great to have a similar competition amongst developers to create a specified Joomla extension.

A new version of the Joomla 1.5 series was released today, which is possibly the last release before 1.6. This is a minor security and bug fix release and you should ensure that you upgrade all your installations.

NOTE please check the FAQ of known issues with 1.5.11 before upgrading

Name
Ronildo Costa

On-Line name (Skype:Twitter:Joomla forums)
ronildo

Website
http://www.ronildo.com.br/blog/

Location
I'm Brazilian living in Las Vegas right now.

Job
Developer (css & Xhtml skills) - Freelance

You may remember that on the now defunct Joomla Weekly News I ran a series of "5 Minute Interviews" with people in the joomla community and I now plan to resurrect this here.

Sometimes you can have seen a screen-name on a forum, twitter or skype for a long time but have you ever stopped to think if you really know the person behind the screen-name.

I plan on publishing one or two of these each week and I hope that you enjoy reading them.

... and Wordpress is better than both.

Back in January of this year I made the first call for votes in the annual Linux Journal magazine Readers' Choice Awards.

The results are now in and in what looks like a pretty close race Joomla came second.

Release early - release often or release once when it is ready?

It is often quoted that an open source project, like Joomla, should release early and release often as this is the best method to find bugs and provide new features.

However I believe that is an overly simplistic approach and does not translate to real world use in all but the simplest, single use projects and definitely not for Joomla.

As soon as you have a piece of software that third parties extend and build upon you run into serious issues.

When you have been using a software application like joomla for as long as I have certain things become second nature.

But it is only when you see a newcomer struggle to work out what to do that you truly appreciate that there is room for improvement.

Don't Make Me Think - says Steve Krug

I am not a programmer or developer, in fact I think if I tried to write any sort of joomla extension I would fail miserably.

However I like to think that I am reasonably skilled at reading code and even if I don't understand it all I can get the general idea and make minor modifications if necessary IF the code is well written.

That's the beauty of Open Source

Come gather round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
Youll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin
Then you better start swimmin
Or youll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin.

13 June 2009 I will be revealing the "hidden secrets of joomla" at Joomla!days.nl.

What will I be saying?

What won't I be saying?

Is any topic taboo?

If you want to find out you had better make sure you are there nice and early!