Joomla GPS
Stand up, Speak out!
It is easy to sit back, moan and bitch. It is not easy to stand up and speak up. But if you don't then you have no right to complain.
In my travels to several Joomla! days this year, on skype and on email, I have been approached by a significant number of people who are all committed to the success of our Joomla! project.
Each one of them has had some gripe. Whether it be about the direction or speed of development, the changed role of OpenSourceMatters, trademarks in domains and logos, donations, software libraries but the actual issue doesn't really matter.
Add a commentRoles and Responsibilities of Users and Community Members
An essay on the roles and responsibilites of users and community members in an open source project.
This is the first of several longer blog posts that examine the culture and ethos of an Open Source project, it's development, management, community and future.
Participation in the development of an Open Source Project is in almost all cases voluntary and traditional management cannot apply. Open Source developers are not therefore typically driven by financial motivation. Instead, consciously or not, peer esteem and a desire to acquire new skills are the driving factor.
Add a commentJoomla Administrator
I've blogged before about the the forgotten interface and joomla usability improvements and recommended two extensions to improve the joomla admin experience, CQI
for the control panel and Advanced Administrator Menu to reorganise the menus.
Today I'd like to introduce two other "improvements" to the Joomla Administrator interface.
Together they will help you improve accessibility, usability, performance and generally make your life easier.
Add a commentThe Best Joomla Template
One of the strengths of Joomla is it's template system but this is also one of it's weaknesess. More and more the tendency for designers is to showcase as many different cool things as possible that they can achieve in a Joomla template rather than concentrate on presenting the site owner's content.
Personally I always consider the SCOPE of the template before selecting it
- Suitability
- Creativity
- Originality
- Performance
- Expandibility
Depending on your needs, requirements and skills the amount of weighting you apply to each of these criteria may vary considerably.
I apply a much higher value on a templates performance and expandability than I do to the creativity. Perhaps this is because when I am looking at templates for a prospective site I always find I am more attracted to those templates that are crisp and clean than those that are busy with a thousand modules on the front page.
Joomla 1.5.15 released
A new version of the Joomla 1.5 series was released today, which is possibly the last release before 1.6.
This release contains a huge number of fixes specificaly in the TinyMCE editor and various fixes to provide php 5.3 compatibility.
Of course I'm particularly pleased to see a new line in the htaccess.txt file as this addresses what I believe has long been a security issue in exposing extension version numbers, this will have to be applied manually. See my Joomla Hidden Secrets presentation to see why I belive that exposing version numbers is a bad idea. Note the fix provided in the new htaccess.txt is far more advanced, and better, than the one I inititaly proposed - but heh I'm not a programmer.
There are two security fixes in this release and users are strongly encouraged to upgrade immediately.
NOTE please check the FAQ of known issues with 1.5.15 before upgrading
Please do NOT rely on an automatic updater
Add a commentWhen will Joomla 1.6 be released?
Every day we get closer and closer to the release of Joomla! 1.6, and with the release of Joomla! 1.6 Alpha 2 imminent, I thought it would be a bit of fun to have a competition to correctly detect the date and time of the release of Joomla! 1.6.0 Stable.
To avoid any confusion the time will be defined as GMT.
There will be a very special prize for the winner.
Add a commentFour today
Wow has it really been four years since Peter Russell and I sat down and wrote the press release that announced the birth of Joomla!.
So much has changed since then and yet so much is still the same.
Happy Birthday and congratulations to everyone who was there on that day, September 1st 2005.
In 2006 Johan and myself celebrated the first bithday with a cake and a candle at the first Joomla!Day in the UK.
Will you be celebrating today or perhaps having a JUG (Joomla User Group) party?
(I really should consign that photo to the trash - it was certainly a bad hair day. )
Add a commentThere is no Joomla community
Many years ago, when I was young and innocent, I lived in a self-sufficient "closed" community but now that I am older, and more mature (?), it is more accurate to say that today I chose to "participate" or "belong" to several different communities.
In the world of Free/Libre and Open Source Software (F/LOSS) the word "community" is used as a badge, often without any true understanding of what the word really means.
Joomla, like many F/LOSS projects, claims to be a community project but have you thought what that really means?
Add a commentShould I wait for Joomla 1.6
I received the following email last week
"Should we stall new clients until 1.6 is released, or build their sites on 1.5 knowing there will be some future re-work to migrate them to 1.6? Maybe we should build now on 1.5 and leave them on 1.5?"
As I was writing a reply I realised that it might be better to appear here on the blog for others to read (and perhaps even comment).
Add a commentJoomla Developers Showdown - The Winner
Well I've spent, together with the other judges, the last few weeks evaluating the entries for the "Joomla Developers Showdown".
(Apologies for the delay in releasing this information - other things just got in the way)
It's certainly been interesting and we're very impressed with the quality of entries
We will be running this showdown again later in the year and I've learnt a few things that will hopefuly make it bigger and better.
More Articles...
- 22 Jul Joomla 1.5.13 released
- 20 Jul So long, farewell - joomla 1.0
- 14 Jul How to build a shop with joomla
- 07 Jul Joomla 1.6 - features and changes
- 03 Jul Automatic Joomla updates
- 02 Jul Joomla Developers Showdown - Begins
- 30 Jun Joomla 1.5.12 released
- 29 Jun Joomla Suppporters Club
- 24 Jun How much does joomla cost?
- 22 Jun Joomla 1.6 alpha is available ..
