Joomla! Community Magazine™

From July 29 - 31, Gunner acted as facilitator for the Joomla! Leadership Joint Summit in San Jose. His unique background of techie, open sourcerer, and non-profit enthusiast made him the perfect person for this role. Here Gunner talks about his history with Joomla!, the experience of the summit, and his inspired vision of technology and the internet. Gunner is Executive Director of Aspiration.

Joomla! turns 6 in September, and what a wild ride it's been! Milestones since Joomla's last birthday include:

In the field of astronomy, when two or more celestial bodies appear close to each other, that event is called a conjunction. Astronomical conjunctions are beautiful and rare occurances in our night sky that don't last for very long. Right now a rare and relatively short-lived convergence of important milestones and activities are all taking place for our project. Right now is our Joomla! conjunction.

If you are a professional site builder, but not a professional developer, then you have likely wished you could quickly build custom Joomla! extensions that would allow you to collect exactly the data needed, presented in the precise manner, as required by your client.

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.

Volunteering to help with Joomla! is fun! Check here for listings of current volunteer openings throughout the Joomla! project that have been posted in the "Help wanted in the community” forum.

August was a month for the Joomla! leadership to travel home from the Joint Summit, resume jobs for some, vacation with family for others, and begin to formulate plans and continue conversations begun in San Jose. As the hot summer sun beat down on many of our whereabouts, the big wheels of Joomla! continued to turn with new events and developments taking flight…

Software Freedom Day (SFD 2011) will be celebrated world-wide on Saturday, the 17th of September 2011.

On the 19th and 20th of August, the Joomla! community in South Africa (including guests from seven countries) came together in Cape Town, to share their experience, and to learn from each other.

The Joomla!Day events are organized by the local Joomla! communities.

A lot happened in the Joomla! leadership in July... read all about it!

For three days this weekend, 21 members of the Joomla! project leadership met in San Jose to bond, exchange, and make plans for the future. The days were packed with many important topics. Fortunately Gunner, our facilitator, mixed the right amount of humor and physical movement as he deftly moved the agenda points along and constantly verified that each person had a chance to be heard.

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.

"What is Joomla!?" , "Learning Joomla!, is it hard?", "Mastering Joomla!, how long does it take?" — They seem to be the FAQs of all Joomla! users, at whatever stage — beginners, beginner plus or advanced users. How do you get them answered?

Due to its simplicity, ease-of-use, scalability and popularity, Joomla! CMS seems to be gaining some ground in South African government. Despite having immense human resources and skill in Joomla! CMS, our government’s willingness to adopt this popular CMS has been a bit slow.

A new version of Joomla! always attracts new people to Joomla!. Therefore it is very important to embrace beginners. Sometimes they are very experienced in cms related stuff, sometimes not. After the launch of Joomla! 1.7 on July 19th, it was time for a new Joomla! 1.7 - Beginner's Guide.

*On August 9, the name for the January 2012 Joomla release changed from Joomla 1.8 to 2.5.

Joomla's release schedule has been described in its development strategy, and much analysis has been put forth as to whether one should upgrade websites or not to the next version of software.

I have been part of the Joomla! Community Magazine team for an year now, and it has been a very rewarding and inspiring experience, not to mention the many new things I’ve learned and the wonderful people I have met as a result of my participation in the project.

So I thought it would be a good idea to give you my five great reasons for being a JCM writer, hoping that this quick list would help those interested in contributing to the magazine make a more informed decision and hopefully join us soon. So here goes…