Joomla! Community Magazine™

Unless you've been stuck under a REALLY big snowdrift, hopefully you're aware that Joomla! 1.6 was released on January 10, 2011.  Over three years in development, this new version adds many important features, lays a new architectural foundation for future releases, and starts us down a new path of time based release cycles. Joomla! 1.6 marks the beginning of a new era for our project. Here is a story about how our community worked together to announce this new era to the world...

Here is an easy and fun way for you to share your feelings about Joomla! with the rest of the community: Simply write a haiku about Joomla! below in the comments area of this month's page. Be sure to check back here to read the haikus submitted by other members of the community. We will have a page for new haikus in every upcoming JCM issue.

On January 10, the Joomla! leadership and community celebrated the healthy arrival of version Joomla! 1.6, weighing in at a strapping 8MB. January has been a month of celebration, as a new era is born!

One of the biggest challenges facing Joomla! 1.6 is the lack of a clearly defined migration path to get from Joomla! 1.5 to 1.6. No More! With the brainchild of one Joomla! developer, and the willpower of the Joomla! community, the ability to easily move your site to Joomla! 1.6 with just a few simple clicks is becoming a reality! We caught up with that developer, Matias Aguirre, to get his take on the development of the jUpgrade component and the community efforts to make it a success...

Joomla!’s temporary off-line mode is a very handy option to temporarily take your site down while performing maintenance —e.g. updating the Joomla! core or an extension— and is even suggested by the official documentation for the unfortunate time that your site has been compromised. However, is this really off-line, or are there any pitfalls you should be aware of?

Welcome to Joomla! in the Press/Media. You will find links and short descriptions of where you can read recent articles about Joomla! in the Press and Media.

First off: no, I'm not a bonsai expert. In fact, it takes me a lot of effort to keep the one bonsai tree in my house (which was a gift) alive. Why I'm writing this article about the similarities between bonsai trees and Joomla! then? 

When I ask my school customers about Joomla! and how it helps them do their job, they all have the same answer — they say that what used to take them hours to accomplish before, gets done in minutes with Joomla! — from adding new pages, to creating new events, to managing documents, etc.

I promise you, this article doesn't have to do anything with religion. It talks about site security. The beast I am referring to, is unwittingly opening a back door to your site to potential hackers. You may not know it, but you could be a sitting duck. It all lies in the dark world of ownership, users, groups and permissions. This is a long article, but I promise you that you will learn things you would have never imagined. Let us shed some light to the mystery of the 777 number, and kill the evil beast!

It’s Back! J and Beyond is back for its second annual event, and it’s out to please! Joomla! Community Magazine editors caught up with Robert Deutz, Events Team Leader for OSM and Coordinator for JAB11, as well as Brian Teeman, Joomla! Co-founder and Organizer for JAB11, to get the scoop on the upcoming event!

A global leader in E-Learning solutions, Kineo needed to update their website, and employed Philip Locke of Fastnet Web Design to help them get the job done. The previous Kineo website was running on Mambo, and it was time for an upgrade to Joomla! Using available migration tools, Fastnet Web Design was able to keep the content, categories and menu structure in place as they cautiously moved the large database and site from Mambo to Joomla 1.0, then to Joomla 1.5 successfully. Today, Philip will share with us how he made the successful transition to Joomla in just 8 short weeks.

Here is an easy and fun way for you to share your feelings about Joomla! with the rest of the community: Simply write a haiku about Joomla! below in the comments area of this month's page. Be sure to check back here to read the haikus submitted by other members of the community. We will have a page for new haiku in every upcoming JCM issue.

Illustration by:  YeprJane Beyond

OSM is starting off the New Year in road map mode. Coordination, foresight and planning are key ingredients to a successful project. In the coming weeks a budget process and timeline will be submitted to the community for feedback. Our goal is to include a unified road map in this process with input from all the leadership. In addition to mapping our course, a road map can help identify areas for community involvement.

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”.

Welcome to 2011! We're looking forward to an exciting year in Joomla! With Joomla! 1.6 to be released soon, and the Joomla! community constantly growing, there's lots to do around here! Hopefully you've already made some plans for the upcoming year, but if not, we've got some great suggestions for how you can contribute to Joomla! in 2011! So get your pen out, check out the list of opportunities for you to help, and add a couple to your resolutions for this year!

Welcome to Joomla! in the Press/Media. You will find links and short descriptions of where you can read recent articles about Joomla! in the Press and Media.

A few weeks ago Kyle and I set about the task of choosing our top 5 templates for 2010. To say it was a difficult task is an understatement.

It's time to CELEBRATE! Joomla! 1.6 will be out this month! Put on your party hats, crank up the music, pop open the bubbly, grab a partner and do the happy Joomla! dance of joy!