Community Magazine

It’s been awhile since the last leadership update was published in the Joomla Community Magazine. But that certainly doesn’t mean nothing is happening in leadership... on the contrary.

I hope this article can help both you and me. I have been working with Joomla! for some time now, and I've improved my knowledge of it since version 2.5.5. As time went by, I got a job and then went back to college. Joomla! is the best CMS in my opinion, and thanks to it I have already created two personal projects.

Today I’d like to introduce Jessica Dunbar — a famous Joomla! contributor, Joomla! Production Leadership Team (PLT0 member, Joomla! marketing lead, online marketer, speaker, system administrator and a lovely mom. She is also into SEO, strategy management, start-ups development and also works for a web agency in Milwaukee. We have had a talk about Joomla!, marketing strategy and about other subjects. So, here we go!

Many people consider using Joomla! to create a classified ads website or to expand functionalities of an already existing portal. There is such a possibility of course, and the Joomla Extension Directory (JED) offers at least a dozen components to use. However, there are only a few dynamically developing solutions worth recommending.

This article describes how I migrated a big website, with over 10000 articles written in Cyrillic and using special characters, from Joomla 1.x to Joomla 3.x.

Joomla! User Network Ahmedabad (JUG Ahmedabad) co-organized a Joomla Workshop with Ahmedabad University. By doing this workshop our goal was to help university students learn and make Joomla learning easier for them, which they never expected. We hosted this workshop at an Ahmedabad University class room, with 26 students and faculty participating.

Peter has been working with Joomla since its beginning and is a member of the Community Leadership Team (CLT). He co-leads a web design and development agency based in Sydney, Australia and runs probably the most popular Joomla weekly podcast/videocast called Joomla Beat wherein he explores the Joomla world and gives light to talented newbies as well as talks with well-known people. Being a professional web-developer, Peter also loves working with new technologies and engineering templates, or doing strategic planning or consulting. In his spare time people may find him practicing yoga. I am glad to introduce an interview with this interesting and creative person. Enjoy!

Throughout the past few months I’ve been participating in the Joomla Marketing Team, and I have been in contact with many Joomla users around the world. At the same time, my son got admission to a medical college in the Philippines. I accompanied him on a college visit recently but I also wanted to meet Joomla people in the Philippines to share some knowledge and our passion for Joomla. After doing a little research I found that the once active JUG Philippines had become inactive. So, I set a goal: I decided to make my recent trip to the Philippines useful for the Joomla community by getting this JUG back together.

Recently I was at the 2014 JoomlaDay Sydney. It was a fantastic day and great to see so many familiar faces. A wonderful group of speakers, great location, food, atmosphere and Joomla! What an amazing, powerful, mighty application and it is all for FREE! The Joomla CMS, it can do so much and has so many amazing features: ACL, content versioning, over 65 languages supported, downloaded 10s of millions of times, runs about 3% of the Internet and growing. This all appears to be very positive, however, I am sorry to say this, but this is also a sign of what we are doing wrong!

I set out to the Joomla! World Conference seeking inspiration and to learn how to create better websites. Little did I know it would also turn into a great vacation with a visit to a Mayan archeological site, morning yoga sessions on the beach, enjoying varied dance performances, great food and perfect weather. Remember, there were four simultaneous presentation tracks running concurrently in English, and one in Spanish. What follows includes brief descriptions of what I took away from the sessions I chose.