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?
I've been trying to think of a light hearted and topical blog post for this time of year when I remembered a tweet requesting a Joomla Xmas Carol.
Below you will find "my" version of "The 12 Days of Christmas" and I've taken a few liberties with the numbers.
I'm sure you can do better either by offering an alternative line for this Carol or with your own Joomla Carol.
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.
An essay on the roles and responsibilites of users and community members in an open source project.
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.
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.
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.
Sadly in the last 6 months there have been two published circumstances where an extension provider has been hacked and malicious code inserted into the extensions that they offer.
This meant that as soon as you installed the extension your site was vulnerable to defacement etc.
If there have been two published cases perhaps there have been more that we don't know about.
So is there anything we can do to prevent this?
