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.
For the last few months I've been working hard with a team of amazing developers, designers and user interface gurus on a top secret project, protected by stacks of Non Disclosure Agreements, contracts and other legal protections.
I'm excited that at last I can reveal that Apple's new pad/tablet/slate (sorry still can't reveal the name for another 24 hours) ships by default with an application management and help system written using the Joomla framework.
Yesterday I was answering a user question on the joomla forums.
It doesn't matter what it was about but the upshot was that the problem was a known issue in the latest release and that a patch had been written and approved and was ready and waiting to be included in the next release.
But it was 24 hours and a lot of testing before I realised that it was a known issue.
It's not practical for regular users to search the bug tracker for "known issues" and fixes as the tracker is less than friendly.
As the year ends rather than look backwards at what has happened in the past it's time to look forward to what will happen in the coming year.
I made such a hash of last years predictions that I hope this year I will do a lot better by stating the obvious instead of stating what I dreamed of whilst recovering from days of indulging myself on beer, food and cookies.
Here are my Top 10 Predictions for 2010 (in no particular order).
As we approach not only the end of the year but the end of a decade I spent a little time looking back at some articles I wrote back in 2007. Finding this one I was perhaps not surprised but definitely disappointed that it's as true today as it was then.
The article was not looked at with a critical eye or an open mind in 2007, perhaps it is different today as the same discussions are still taking place?
