This blog is in English and it will never be available in any other language as I just don't have the skills to translate it myself. I am definitely not going to install some plugin to add automated translations as I believe that will give a very poor translation.
You might decide to add that to your site but I always feel that offering up no translation is better than a bad translation. On many sites the language switcher does not even indicate that it is a machine translation and what kind of impression does a bad translation create for your readers. So it is something that I have never done on any site I have been involved with.
Ask a Joomla web site builder why they use Joomla and the answer will most likely include "Joomla is easy, anyone can use it and you can have a site online in 5 minutes." But that's not really true.
Saying something is "easy" is a relative statement. Sure, building a web site with Joomla is easier than building a rocket to orbit the earth, but it is definitely not as easy as boiling an egg. Joomla is easy for me, and probably most of you, because you have done your research, read some documentation, watched some tutorials and most importantly have several years of experience.
So when we say "Joomla is easy" what do we really mean and are we setting the expectation for newcomers to Joomla at completely the wrong level?
2013 was a very quiet year for this blog but that is all changing in 2014.
Just because I was quiet here didn't mean I was quiet in the Joomla world, (do you really think I can ever be quiet?), as I tried to contribute in many new ways. For me some of those were successful others less so.
I have learnt new skills which I hope will I will be able to continue to improve. I definitely understand more code now than I ever did before and one day I will be able to completely stop asking friends for help.
Walking down the street in a leafy suburb of a town in northern England I stumble across a large bunch of keys on the street. I don't know whose keys they are as there is no handy name tag or address but there is clearly a chance that they will open the lock of one of the doors in one of the houses on this street.
I can't resist the temptation to see which door these keys will unlock and what goodies I can find inside. I'm an inquisitive person, I'm not a thief looking for riches, I'm just a nosey person looking for the thrill of adventure and a good story to tell in the bar.
We are not that long away from the scheduled release of Joomla 3.5, the next LTS (Long Term Release) and at this point in time I believe we really should not be looking at adding any game-changer features. My understanding, and hope, is that by the time we release 3.5 it should be a rock solid release and will need little more than minor maintenance and security releases for the rest of the release's life.
With just a few weeks to go to J and Beyond it’s time to start your preparations. A few minutes spent reading this check list will have a lasting and beneficial effect on your experience at the event.
If you have other suggestions then please share them in the comments.
I am not a strong swimmer OR remotely fit and I thought I should do something about that. The venue for J and Beyond has a great swimming pool so encourage me to stop talking and get in that pool by sponsoring me, please.
I will be raising money for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity (GOSHCC) in London by swimming 1km. That might not seem a lot to some of you but as I don't think I have swum more than 25 metres for over 20 years it's a heck of a long way for me.
Joomla! 4.0 or Next, Joomla! Platform or Framework, WTF is going on!?
A lot of discussion and confusion has been going on lately about the direction of the Joomla! project. What's in store for the CMS, what's going on with the Platform, why a new direction with the Framework, and how's all of this tie together. I personally don't have all of the answers, but what I can share is my own vision for the future and how everything ties together.
This is a guest post by Michael Babker
As a trainer I am occasionally asked if there is any Certification available after the training and all I can offer is a certificate of completion or attendance.
(There is definitely a cultural difference where some countries and cultures place a high value on formal qualifications.)
In the final days of Mambo I was excited about the possibility of the project offering a more formal "official" certification process. That never happened and today I am glad it didn't as I do not believe that there is any real value in certification or that it can work in the real world.
