Joomla! Community Magazine™

*On August 9, the name for the January 2012 Joomla release changed from Joomla 1.8 to 2.5.

Joomla's release schedule has been described in its development strategy, and much analysis has been put forth as to whether one should upgrade websites or not to the next version of software.

I have been part of the Joomla! Community Magazine team for an year now, and it has been a very rewarding and inspiring experience, not to mention the many new things I’ve learned and the wonderful people I have met as a result of my participation in the project.

So I thought it would be a good idea to give you my five great reasons for being a JCM writer, hoping that this quick list would help those interested in contributing to the magazine make a more informed decision and hopefully join us soon. So here goes…

Since the release of Joomla 1.6, back in January 2011, Joomla started to use a new development strategy.

Elin Waring recently blogged on the Joomla! Community Portal about some of the features coming with Joomla! 1.7, appropriately titled Peeking at 1.7. Aside from the separation of the framework and CMS, I think (and I may be a bit biased) one of the better changes is the ability to batch process items being added to the framework. A popular feature excluded from Joomla! 1.6, its return for 1.7 marks benefit for users and developers alike.

Don't build a long, straight road to your SuperAdministrator privileges for hackers to travel. Install a session timer instead.

One of the factors that first attracted me to Joomla!® was the number of Free (or low-price) Extensions available. These Extensions (Components, Module, Plugins, etc.) make it possible to build virtually any web site that my clients ask of me.

With so much happening in the Joomla! Community these days with all these brilliant people working on the new Joomla! Framework Project, and the geniuses adding great new features to the Joomla! CMS, I wanted to take a quick minute and highlight a crucial area of the of the Joomla! Project that everyone can help with, even folks like me who are pretty much useless when it comes to programming!

As the number of websites worldwide continue to grow at an incredibly fast pace, and the race to be at the top of search engine result pages is getting more and more competitive, SEO optimization is hardly a matter of choice any more. If you want to bring more traffic to your website — and not just any traffic, but visitors who are uniquely attuned to and looking exactly for the services and products that you offer, then take the time to optimize your website — it’s free, it’s easy to do, and most importantly, if you do it right, you can see real and tangible results within several months, or even sooner.

The long awaited Joomla! 1.6 is finally here and has been here for about two months now. Joomla! 1.6 introduced a lot of new changes and improvements and it was released 1084 days or 2 years, 11 months, and 19 days after Joomla! 1.5's release. Joomla! is now on a 6-month release cycle and Joomla! 1.7 is scheduled to be released in July 2011.