Joomla! Community Magazine™

JoomlaDay™ events are officially recognized, but not organized, by the Joomla! Project and Open Source Matters, Inc (OSM). Each event is managed independently by a local community.

This is the first article in a four-part series, based on my presentation at the Joomla World Conference. We've all been there. You deliver that shiny new website to your client; they are excited to have this new outreach on the Internet; and you're ready to get that final payment when they ask you the question:  "So, how do I change this word here?”   While the wording may differ from client to client, the underlying question remains the same:  “How do I keep my site up to date?” At that point, you probably realize once again that your least favorite task in web design and working with clients is something that once again you have forgotten to finish: documentation.

The Holiday Joomla! Extension Potluck was held December 5, 2012 at the NextSpace Union Square in San Francisco. An Extension Potluck is something we made up last year where at the end of the year, we meet together and bring a food dish to share with each other and each member shares a "mini-presentation" about a specific extension they enjoy using. 12 members were in attendance which was perfect from a time perspective - only a couple did not share.

Maintaining a secure web site is a top concern for many people. Everyone is looking for the one way to make sure their site is always running, safe, and secure. When someone expresses concern about the security of their site, I usually ask them how old their most recent backup is. Most don't know, or don't have any backup at all.

If you have been using Joomla for an period of time, its easy to forget what it was like to take Joomla for its first test drive. Andrea Dace is the owner of Aesage, an eLearning startup, and this year she chose Joomla to build her company website with Joomla.

You've never gone to a Joomla! event and you don't know what to expect from it? Here are my impressions before and after my first Joomla! event, the Joomla World Conference in San Jose, from November 16 - 18, 2012.

Joomla! is fast becoming one of the most popular content management systems in the world, powering almost 3% of the web and exceeding 30 million downloads - the chances are during your day you probably browse at least one website using Joomla!. Many businesses rely on Joomla! for their web presence, but often business owners are not empowered to ensure that their website is being managed properly, or is up to date with the latest security patches.  This article gives Joomla! website owners some simple tips to ensure that your website is up to date, and some tools to make that process easier!

What was it that attracted you to Joomla? Was it simply the fact that it's free? Was it the thousands of available extensions? Or were you thrown into the deep-end of an existing Joomla-powered site? Whatever the reason, you might be missing out on an important benefit, that for this slow-learner, took five years to discover.

I struggled with the necessity of this first article in an extension development series for a while, and finally decided that it was indeed a worthwhile post. It is important to make sure you build a proper foundation and there are several aspects of writing a Joomla! 3.0 component that should be planned right from the very first day. This is the first in a series of articles about extension development, which would not be complete without taking time to discuss the initial steps involved in planning and structuring the extension correctly. Here are those steps I have found to be most effective in beginning a successful Joomla! extension.