Joomla! Community Magazine™

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!

During Joomla! Day West 2010 and the Community Leadership Team and Production Leadership Team Summit, Kyle Ledbetter and Jeremy Wilken were asked to produce a series of video interviews with Joomla! Leadership that was in attendance. Additionally, some interviews were done with other members of the community that were there. In this third installment we meet Paul Orwig, Sandra Warren, Ron Severdia and Louis Landry. They all take a few minutes with us to share their thoughts on the project, community, the impact Joomla has had on them and why they love it!

During Joomla!Day West 2010 Pearson Publishing announced the release of Joomla! Press. The mission of Joomla! Press is to enhance the Joomla! experience by providing useful, well-written, and engaging publications for all segments of the Joomla! Community from beginning users to framework developers. Titles in Joomla! Press are authored by leading experts and contributors in the community.

Casting call! Grab your camcorders! The JCM is looking for a few good videos of how you use Joomla! in your part of the world!

Team EaSE discuss passwords in general and stress how important password construction and safety are to the overall security of your website and backups.

In Joomla! we are exceedingly lucky with the quality of extensions provided to make backing up your site easy - just a few parameters and the job is done. In this article Team EaSE shows you three free backup extensions, one plugin and two components.

Illustration by:  YeprJane Beyond

During Joomla! Day West 2010 and the Community Leadership Team and Production Leadership Team Summit, Kyle Ledbetter and Jeremy Wilken were asked to produce a series of video interviews with Joomla! Leadership that was in attendance. Additionally, some interviews were done with other members of the community that were there. In this third installment we meet Sam Moffatt and Ian MacLennan as well as yours truly, Matt Lipscomb. They all take a few minutes with us to share their thoughts on the project, community, the impact Joomla! has had on them, and why they love it!

This article helps you, especially Joomla! beginners, get started with Joomla! CMS systematically by providing you with good sources of Joomla! tutorials. The selected websites have proven their reliability to many Joomla! users, and to me, for a long time. All sources are thoroughly designed with detailed instructions in both text and videos format so that readers have the best understanding of these tutorials.