Unless you've been stuck under a REALLY big snowdrift, hopefully you're aware that Joomla! 1.6 was released on January 10, 2011.  Over three years in development, this new version adds many important features, lays a new architectural foundation for future releases, and starts us down a new path of time based release cycles. Joomla! 1.6 marks the beginning of a new era for our project. Here is a story about how our community worked together to announce this new era to the world...

In the final days leading up to the launch of Joomla! 1.6, a call for help went out to quickly create extensive new content that would educate, promote, support, and celebrate the launch of Joomla! 1.6. A large, diverse, and talented group of people answered that call for help, and quickly formed themselves into teams to complete all of that work in only a few days. You can get a great inside look at how all of that came together in Alice Grevet's feature story in this JCM issue: Kyle Ledbetter: King of the launch room. Kyle was in the figurative "eye of the storm" for three days of frenzied activity leading up to the launch of Joomla! 1.6. In this interview, Kyle shares some great insights into how a large volume of outstanding quality work was done in an extremely short amount of time by a diverse group of people. 

The manner in which this Joomla! 1.6 launch work was all completed is in some ways reminiscent of an agrarian tradition in the United States known as a "barn raising". When a member of the community needs a barn, a call for help goes out far and wide. On the appointed day, members of the community all gather at the family's farm that needs a barn. They bring their tools, nails, lumber, paint, and they also bring their skills, knowledge, and diverse experience. These assembled members of the community come together and work together, and in a single day they build together ("raise") a barn for the family. That barn will serve an important purpose for many years to come.

That same spirit of community, hard work, and collaboration exemplified by a "barn raising" is clearly alive and well in our global Joomla! community. What has powered, is powering, and will continue to power Joomla! as one of the world's leading free open source content management systems is nothing more and nothing less than you and me and everyone else who makes up our global Joomla! community. If we can continue to consistently demonstrate that same "barn raising" spirit by helping each other, working with each other, and supporting each other, then there are really no limits to the great things that we can build together that will stand for years to come!

In this issue:

Thanks to the members of the Joomla! community who are contributing authors in this month's issue: Manolis Markatselas, Peter Bui, Jarrod Nettles, Anh Tuan Bui, and Nicholas Dionysopoulos.

Feature stories

• Dianne Henning introduces us to a developer who is equally talented and helpful in her Born to be wild: An Interview with Chris Marinou.
• Alice Grevet unveils how all the great Joomla! 1.6 launch content came into existence in Kyle Ledbetter: King of the launch room.
• Jon Neubauer highlights the crucial work being undertaken to simplify migrations from Joomla! 1.5-1.6 in Developing jUpgrade: An interview with Matias Aguirre.

International stories

• Manolis Markatselas has submitted an article in the Greek language 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 January on behalf of the Joomla! project.
• CLT member Matt Lipscomb takes us behind the scenes one final time at Joomla! Day West 2010: The 2010 Video Interviews - Final selection.

Website Case Studies

• Peter Bui invites you to pass judgement on the Joomla! solutions implemented on the High Court of Australia website.

JUGs and Events

• Alice Grevet shares her experiences in connecting with Joomla! 1.6 celebrations all over the world in Let Them Eat Cake!.

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: Removing Mootools. 

Did you know…?

• Anh Tuan Bui shares some really helpful links in Good resources for Joomla! beginners.

Designer's studio

• Anthony Olsen shares a lot of great ideas in Fourteen secrets of Joomla! templating.

Administrator's toolkit

• Nicholas Dionysopoulos asks some hard questions and reveals some possible pitfalls in How off-line is Joomla!'s off-line mode?.

Joomla! in the Press/Media

• Mark Bender bring us Joomla! in the Press/Media — February 2011.

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 February 2011 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!