2010 has been a great year for Joomla!. As our project celebrated its fifth birthday, we also surpassed 22 million Joomla! downloads worldwide and 138 million extension downloads from the Joomla! Extensions Directory. Here is a summary list of some significant accomplishments of the Joomla! project that took place in 2010:

• Joomla! 1.6 approaches RC status (expected on or about December 13th)
• JandBeyond international conference
• Major community driven recruiting effort to add new Joomla! Bug Squad volunteers
• JPeople site launches
• Joomla! Community Magazine launches (you are here!)
• Joomla platform project announced
• Work begins on overall joomla.org site redesign project
• Joomla! Extensions Directory lists over 6,000 extensions
• Joomla! Press book publishing agreement announced
• Open Source Matters board growth reflects increased diversity
• Joomla! User Group listing and approval process improvements
• Joomla! Student Outreach Program launches
• New Developer site launches
• New Demo site launches with over 100,000 free hosting trials
• New Idea pool site launches
• Increased awareness and support for non-english speaking communities

One thing which all of these accomplishments have in common is that none of them would have been possible without the commitment and dedication of volunteers from our community.

As we look ahead to 2011, there will be more new and exciting accomplishments which will also only be made possible by the contributions of volunteers. If you haven't already done so, please consider choosing an area that you want to have a positive impact on in the coming year. Then connect with others in the community who share your passion (whether in Joomla! working groups or in any number of community driven initiatives) and experience the satisfaction of giving, the joy of making new friends, and the fulfillment of leaving your unique mark on the Joomla! project and it's worldwide community.

In this issue:

We have made some usability improvements based on recommendations offered by Merav Knafo in her Joomla.org Magazine Usability Testing Report. Thank you Merav and Steve Bickel for your willingness to take a look at the JCM and point out some areas where we can improve!

Also, we give our special thanks to the members of the Joomla! community who are contributing authors in this month's issue: Lukas Polak, Parth Lawate, Jarrod Nettles, and Merav Knafo.

Feature stories

• Matt Lipscomb brings us another excerpt in Insights From: The Official Joomla! Book (Part 2)
• Lukas Polak shares insights about his team's JSOP project in J!SOP 2010 – j!Camp Outcome Report

International stories

• Community members have submitted four articles in four different languages for this issue.
• Opportunities are now open for community members to submit articles in 17 different languages.

Leadership Connections

• OSM board member Alice Grevet shares some updates on what OSM has been doing during November on behalf of the Joomla! project.
• CLT member Matt Lipscomb takes us behind the scenes once more at Joomla! Day West 2010: The 2010 Video Interviews - Part 2

Website Case Studies

• Robert Vining takes us below decks for a closer look at the Cantalupi Lighting website, and shows us how they use Joomla! to showcase their yacht lighting solutions.

Extensions and Services Evaluations

• This month Team EaSE offers up a blizzard of seasonal extensions so your website will shout out Happy Holidays!
• Brian "Sully" Sullivan has created a special Holiday Fun! surprise just for you that is guaranteed to make you smile (unless your name happens to be Grinch).

JUGs and Events

• Bo Astrup shares with us some new ideas for bringing community members together in his look at Joomla! Night Stockholm, an upcoming first of its kind event which will take place on February 4, 2011.

Developers Workbench

• Jarrod Nettles shares with us his perspectives on how to maintain your sanity by keeping your code in a single library across multiple projects in Rapid Development Techniques: Preventing Code Fragmentation. 

Did you know…?

• Nicholas G. Antimisiaris shares his script for verifying the true PHP memory allocation in your shared hosting environment in case you ever wonder Are you getting your fair share of PHP memory?

Designer's studio

• Merav Knafo offers her guidance about the 12 Usability Guidelines that every Joomla! template should follow.

Administrator's toolkit

• Parth Lawate shares lots of ideas about Fighting spam in a Joomla! powered website.

Joomla! in the Press/Media

• Mark Bender bring us Joomla! in the Press/Media — December 2010

On the lighter side...

• Yepr has contributed another Jane Beyond and friends cartoon.

The Joomla! Haiku: Share yours!

• Prolific poets,
  punsters and word masters too,
  spread the Joomla! love...
  Post your December 2010 Haiku here!

In our next issue

We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!