Joomla! Community Magazine™

On January 6th, I saw an interesting post on the Joomla Facebook group from Alex de Borba that began, "Let's start something different, shall we?". Alex was offering his help for anyone who had a question about Joomla. I read through the comments and was extremely impressed with his courteous, helpful and well-written replies. I asked him to get in touch with me if he would be interested in writing for the JCM. He did. Here is the interview I had with Alex, a bit long, but very informative. I look forward to his future articles.

Meet Jennifer Gress, a mom, a co-author of "Using Joomla!", published in 2014, and a member of the Joomla Update Working Group and Joomla User Group Teams. Read this "no holds barred" interview and see what Jenn has to say on how she became involved with Joomla as a CMS and a community; on her highlights of 2014; on her book; on why you should migrate to J!3; on the struggles of a large Joomla User Group, and on how the world totally missed the California baby boom of the 1970's.

Sander Potjer, talented Dutch Joomla developer and passionate Joomla Community Leadership Team member, agreed on this interview with me for Joomla Community Magazine readers to share with them his thoughts on Joomla User Groups, his vision for newly launched Joomla Volunteer Portal, recently revamped by its team Joomla Extensions Directory, his competitive rowing schedule overlapping with JoomlaDay "season" and other Joomla related matters.

What takes place when the marketers meet the developers? In 2014 I've watched the most incredible community come together, and we are inspired every moment along the way. Each year, we reflect, we remember challenges and we celebrate success. We celebrate the moments that connect us. Here is a glimpse of the marketing successes of 2014.

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!

Everything started a few months ago when I posted this question on my Facebook profile page. It was amazing how many people answered my post. But, really, what do Italy and Mexico have in common? Reading this article, you will realize that they share much more than just the colours of their flags!

Joomla is a very unique Open Source project. Joomla never had a benevolent dictator or a corporate backer. There is no office building and Joomla has no paid staff. Still, Joomla has grown to be one of the most popular CMSs in the world, thanks to volunteers!

Michael Babker has been specializing in Joomla based development and contributing to Open Source for more than four years. He was an active member of the Production Leadership Team recently, and now works on CMS Joomla code as a volunteer. I was happy to ask him some questions related to technical features and the entire development process which should be interesting to read for any developer.

Some of the readers out there may know that I have been audio podcasting about Joomla for almost two years now.January 2015 will actually be the two year birthday of the Joomla Beat Podcast, one of the many passions in the Joomla Community that I have been carrying on almost every week. I was proud to hear also that I had inspired someone in the Spanish speaking community to start their own Joomla podcast in Spanish! Something I’m very excited to hear more about and see grow over the next few months.  

The last four years has seen quite a lot of excitement in the Joomlasphere as the community continues to grow and the software continues to be driven by innovative ideas. As with everything in a quickly evolving software marketplace, platforms come and go and Joomla! 2.5 is no different. Today we reflect back on its nearly four year life span and the framework it laid for Joomla to grow.