Joomla! Community Magazine™

Some of the readers out there may know that I have been audio podcasting about Joomla for almost two years now.January 2015 will actually be the two year birthday of the Joomla Beat Podcast, one of the many passions in the Joomla Community that I have been carrying on almost every week. I was proud to hear also that I had inspired someone in the Spanish speaking community to start their own Joomla podcast in Spanish! Something I’m very excited to hear more about and see grow over the next few months.

Joomla is a very unique Open Source project. Joomla never had a benevolent dictator or a corporate backer. There is no office building and Joomla has no paid staff. Still, Joomla has grown to be one of the most popular CMSs in the world, thanks to volunteers!

Michael Babker has been specializing in Joomla based development and contributing to Open Source for more than four years. He was an active member of the Production Leadership Team recently, and now works on CMS Joomla code as a volunteer. I was happy to ask him some questions related to technical features and the entire development process which should be interesting to read for any developer.

Listening to Tessa's keynote on Volunteering at JoomlaDay Israel a thought struck me. If volunteering is so great, and I think it is and I have done it all my life, then why doesn't everyone do it and why don't those of us that do volunteer do it more. I have travelled the world and met so many people with amazing passion and skills for Joomla and yet I never see them contributing. Why is that? Is the problem with us? Is this a problem we can and should be solving? There are so many different ways that people can volunteer to help the Joomla project, so what is stopping some people from giving their time?

Just a few weeks ago, our OSM president, Sarah Watz and Community Leader, Ruth Cheesley, came back from one incredible experience, the Grace Hopper Conference. The Joomla! booth was approached by many students and young women interested in learning more about our Community and Project. But what does it really mean for our brand to get involved in such a big conference? What is the real take-away for our Community?

Joomla is becoming more and more popular and spreading around the globe at an incredible pace. As more and more people are drawn into community life, it’s time to ask questions that may interest many. This month here is some first-hand information about Joomla in an interview with Brian Teeman – a Joomla co-founder. Enjoy!

There is a popular Brazilian song, Preludio by Raul Seixas, that includes the lyric "A dream, which we dream alone, is just a dream. A dream, which we dream together, is reality”. I’ve listened to songs in Brazil this year. I’ve listened to songs in Germany, Poland, and other places too as I traveled from here to there speaking and learning about Joomla. In all of those places, just like all the places I’ve been before, I had great experiences meeting and talking with different people, learning about cultures, sharing knowledge, offering help and contributing to a common dream.

The NEW Joomla Resources Directory takes center stage at http://resources.joomla.org with the goal to empower Joomla users to “Connect and Do More” After several years of deliberation, feature enhancements and development, the Joomla Resources Directory (JRD) team proudly presents to the community a fantastic, updated providers resource directory.

Joomla, in partnership with SiteGround, will provide an improved demo site and a new free hosting option at Joomla.com. Steve Burge interviewed Sarah Watz, the President of Open Source Matters and asked her about the new joomla.com and demo.joomla.org.

The #IceBucketChallenge promotes awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encourages donations to research.