Joomla! Community Magazine™

Like the Joomla! Site Blueprints we reviewed earlier the Joomla! 1.5 Top Extensions Cookbook contains a step-by-step approach. With over 80 recipes for taking control of Joomla! extensions, this is a great book for getting to know many extensions. Again, I do recognize this is about J! 1.5 - 1.6 is out, but even today we see new extensions for 1.5 appearing in the Joomla! Extensions Directory.

Yes, I have heard the rumors. Joomla! 1.6 is out. So why review a book on 1.5? My main two reasons are: 1.) If you want a “production” site working now with a stable version of Joomla! and stable versions of the extensions used. 2.) This book is a great starting point to get into Joomla!. Yes, it is called “Joomla! 1.5 Site Blueprints”, and even author Timi Ogunjobi states that this book is not an introduction to Joomla!, nor an in-depth manual for using Joomla!; but... it's the book I wish I had picked up when I first got started with Joomla!.

A little while ago there was a need for a forms component for the Joomla! Community Magazine. Out of this discussion I started to think that it would be interesting to do a comparative study of forms components for Joomla!. In my initial research, I started out with a forms component I know best: ChronoForms. I have worked with other forms components, but I just keep coming back to ChronoForms. It is one of the first extensions I install on any given site I am working on. One of the reasons why I like Chronoforms is it's highly configurable and fairly easy to extend. One of the things I stumbled upon in my initial research was a book called, “ChronoForms 3.1 for Joomla! Site Cookbook, 80 recipes for building attractive and interactive Joomla! forms”.

There are quite a few Joomla! Days in the near future around the globe thanks to so many volunteers including Bade Adesemowo of the 4th Joomla! Day in Nigeria. But I think a Joomla! night is a first, so I had a skype chat with the organizer Martin Blodau.

One of many Joomla! Days around the globe in the coming weeks is Joomla! Day Denmark — a small Scandinavian country of 5.5 mil. citizens, but it has the most CMSs per capita. Since the mid '90s every web company developed their own inhouse CMS. But the state of the economy is in the favor of Joomla! and more and more webdevelopers and companies are realizing the benefits of deploying Joomla! because they can cut down on development time — and save money, get their websites up faster — and make money.

Many exciting Joomla! Days are coming in the near future all around the globe. While on-line communication and collaboration is great, nothing beats the opportunity of meeting in person. I am delighted to see so many Joomla! Days being announced from Nigeria to Denmark, Brazil to the US. So many chances to meet, share and learn.

Joomla! Day USA West 2010 in San J! California, October 1-3 and Joomla! Day DC October 16.

Have you visited the Joomla! User Groups pages on Joomla.org lately? For a few months, Sandra Warren has been working with a small team to re-design and revive the JUG team and the JUG pages on Joomla.org. After having read many reports about how hard it has been to register a new Joomla! User Group, it's been a great pleasure to see how the new JUG team has been able to streamline the registration process, clear the backlog and redesign the JUG pages. Many new features have been added to the JUG pages and more features will be added over the coming months.

The first weekend in October, Joomla users and developers will converge in San Jose, CA, for Joomla! Day USA West 2010. This is the third Joomla! Day to be held in California’s Silicon Valley, and the 2007 event was the first-ever USA Joomla Day. Opening ceremonies begin at 7pm on Friday, October 1. The following two days, October 2 – 3, will be non-stop Jooming! Starting at 9:30 am and running until 5:30 pm, attendees will have the option of choosing 4 break-out sessions to complement the two group sessions each day.

There are Joomla! User Groups all over the world. I am excited about this opportunity to help showcase the various Joomla! User Groups.

Even many great relationships are formed on line, there is still nothing that can replace meeting in real life. As great as tutorials, videos and books are being able to ask questions just sometimes is the fastest way to gain knowledge and solve problems.