Earlier today I read a tweet that led me to a web page that led me to another web site that finally dropped me into spending 25 minutes watching a video on Vimeo.
Now I'm not usually a great watcher of online videos, especially when I'm travelling and on a dodgy 3G internet connection but something about this presentation grabbed my attention.
If I could be bothered I would spend some time summarising the video and abstracting the key points. But as you should know by now I'm lazy and don't like to repeat things if I really don't have to.
So grab a coffee, some nice biscuits, settle down in a comfortable seat and watch the presentation.
Almost a year a go I wrote a proposal for a "Joomla Supporters Club"
Unfortunately perhaps the timing wasn't right and despite positive comments from the Joomla community the idea sadly fell on deaf ears.
Which suprised me as it was one of the most read items on this blog in the year
In the last few weeks several people have contacted me about trying again.
So never being one to give up at the first attempt I'm making another attempt to get this off the ground.
Perhaps now is the right time to finally get the Joomla! Supporters Club up and running.
I've been involved with voluntary organisations for over 25 years, either as a volunteer, employee or organiser.
Every organisation has suffered from the same problems: lack of volunteers, volunteer burn-out, missing skills and cliques.
The problem usually arises when a new task/team/role is created and the default option is to look at the existing pool of volunteers and asking some of them to take on the task. Without consideration of them having the required skills, or importantly available time, just that they are already "known people".
It's a busy time in the Joomla! event calendar right now and I'm busy preparing to make two presentations at Joomla!Days in The Netherlands and if accepted another presentation at J & Beyond.
I probably made a rod for my own back with last years Hidden Secrets presentation as I have a lot to live up to this year.
I considered making a "Hidden Secrets Part 2" but in the end settled on "What's in a name".
Hopefully I'll be able to explain where the name Joomla! comes from, what it could have been instead, why we have the ! at the end and some lessons learnt that might help you choosing a name for your company, product or child.
There has been some discussion and comment on the development list recently about the design of sample templates for the upcoming Joomla 1.6 release.
Have you considered what they should look like, their functionality and most importantly their purpose?
Are they intended to be used on production sites or are they a showcase of the potential for Joomla templates?
The second most common odd question I get asked is "Why is the default userid 62?"
Andrew attempted to give the most complete answer but the truth is the answer is lost in the dim and distant past.
There is nothing you can do about it.
On every install a superadmin user is created with username "admin" and userid "62".
I have blogged before why it's so important for your web site security to remove these known values.
If you've ever received an email from me, chatted with me on skype or followed me on twitter you will know that the end of my arms I have two handy typo generators.
Today I finally found the time to upgrade my blog to the latest version of Joomla.
(No I won't tell you what version it was running but let's just say I really should have done it a very very long time ago. Funny how our own sites are often the last to get upgraded)
If you have been following the development of Joomla 1.6 you will have noticed that one of the new features is nested categories.
This means that you are no longer limited to the Section-Category-Article paradigm but can have as many levels of categories as you wish.
I've explained before how the current system works and how to understand the limitations by comparing it to a filing cabinet.
Personally I have never had an issue keeping my back-end filing system and my front-end navigation system separate but I know that many many people do. It's been this way since the early Mambo days so I guess I have grown up with the structure and it's not a problem for me.
We all know that the vast majority of email is spam or UCE (unsolicited commercial email) and that there are people out there whose sole aim in life is to harvest your email address.
I'm sure that you are very careful about placing your email address online, ensuring that it is protected by javascript, or using contact forms with hidden email addresses.
But when you add your email address to a newsletter or service do you consider the security of that list?
