Community Magazine

One of the big challenges in Joomla is we don’t have enough volunteers to do the work. Or rather: the volunteers we have are often overloaded with work, and no one is available to help new people find their way, so they don’t know what’s expected from them and just start working nevertheless. This is a vicious cycle we can’t seem to break out of. As a result, not every contribution gets the friendly reception it deserves. To put it mildly.

It's been six months since Crystal Dionysopoulos started her term as President of Open Source Matters (the not-for-profit organization facilitating Joomla). Time for a mid-term evaluation: what's happening, and what's to expect in the coming months?

Get a brief overview of OSM happenings from the current board president.

There's more to a website project than installing, templating, and populating a CMS like Joomla!

One of the most important aspects to be respected is UX (User Experience). This is an emerging humanities science that fascinates Jonathan Magoga, so much so that he has made it his specialty, with a strong focus on UX Strategy. 

Next in our Joomla User Group series is JUG Athens, Greece. Here the organizers do more than "just" organizing the JUG as you can read in this interview. So, let's visit Greece!

For many of us, making a promise is a strong moral engagement. For some of us, it's also linked to a musical souvenir since decades.

Since version 4.1 (and so also in 5.x series) Joomla introduced a very interesting new feature called "Scheduled Tasks".

User of Joomla, you probably know that Joomla is an open-source content management system (CMS) that is licensed under the GPL version 2 or later as are the extensions published in the Joomla! Extensions Directory (JED).
But did you ask yourself about the main reasons for this choice and the impact on Joomla and its extensions?

Search is such an important part of a website especially when there is a large amount of content. It helps improve engagement, or dwell-time as it’s sometimes known. Most of all it makes the site user-friendly as it helps visitors find what they’re looking for.

The JCM Team is proud to present you the October Issue of the Joomla! Community Magazine.

The advent of Joomla 5 heralds a new era for web developers and site managers, as it promises a suite of enhancements, optimisations, and fixes that streamline website creation and management. As we delve into the new features and improvements, it's pivotal to appreciate the developmental strides and transformations from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5.

These are more than just code!

For the July 2023 issue I had written a Joomla Magazine article about my first experiences with Joomla 5.0alpha1. I started with an empty installation and tried out some features: Creating articles, installing and using extensions. Now we are in October 2023. The final release of Joomla 5.0.0 is out since October 17, 2023, as well as the “bridge release” Joomla 4.4.0. One day later, I had all my sites on J4.4.0 without significant difficulties.

My next goal was a reality check for Joomla 5.0.0!

So you created your own Joomla extension, maybe for a client, maybe for general usage, and now you're wondering how to best manage it for the future. You will have to handle bugfixes, store it somehow, create releases and maybe improve it with new features. So how could we do this? There are several ways you can do this, but today I'd like to show you the one possible solution that works good for me.

We all know that volunteering is a challenging decision and time consuming. In the case of Joomla, it can also be very difficult for no tech people and for non native English speakers.

What is our marketing strategy? How are we going to increase our volunteer base? What will we do to make Joomla more popular? These are just a few of the issues on the plate of Joomla’s Outreach Department. Right up the alley for Louise Hawkins, who was the Marketing Team Lead until she got elected as Outreach Department Coordinator.

“fyi now that the main joomla.org site is on j4. my next target is the magazine”. That was the first sentence of the very first direct message I ever got from George Wilson. Followed by a link, and “i've got a backup here that i'll be working on over the next few weeks. don't need anything from you either (for now). but just to make you aware so that when the moment comes it isn't a total surprise”.

Come and meet Joomla User Group Wien! It has been active for almost a decade now and also looking for new Joomlers to come and visit. This time we found Florian available to answer our questions. I would’ve loved to do it in person, as I (Hans) liked Vienna when I was there for a half marathon. But enough about me, let’s go and start the interview.

Sigrid Gramlinger loves to contribute to Joomla. In her opinion, her role as newly elected Production Department Coordinator entails: making sure everyone in the department does their work the best way possible, providing them with a safe and pleasant place where they can excel and grow together, and keep improving Joomla so it remains the best CMS to create websites with. 

Maybe you’re wondering if volunteering for Joomla is your thing. You might be uncertain about your English or your knowledge, or about what would be expected in terms of commitment and time. I get that. I was really hesitant about all these things myself. But I did it anyway, I found a team that suits me, started working, and soon discovered that volunteering can be rewarding in ways I had never expected. And I’m not the only one: in this article, five Joomlers tell us what volunteering brings for them! 

She has been passionate about Joomla since version 2.5, and over the years become more involved in the Joomla Community. After her first term as Joomla’s treasurer on the Board of Open Source Matters, she got re-elected for a second term. It very much looks like together is her favorite word. Here’s Nadja Lamisch!