Don't you just love it: www.joomla.org

I just wanted to say a public thanks to Louis, Ron and others on the team who have worked so hard to make this new site happen. They have been working overtime (more than 12 hours a day recently I estimate) to bring this kind of amazing work to the community. Make sure you check out the new sites and it's many new features and sections.

If you see any of them around, make sure you say thanks. 

Primarily of course, this site is for people who have not heard of Joomla before, for the the rest us, we have community.joomla.org Make sure you keep putting it to good use. When will this site receive the new design? I can't wait.

... and if you want to be apart of all this, there is one new page you should see: http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/contribute-to-joomla.html

Enjoy!

The August 2008 Joomla Community Magazine is available now and it's loaded with cool stuff about the World's Greatest Open Source CMS. (Biased? pfff!) Month after month, you will find articles on Joomla 1.5 Web sites, GPL-compatiable extensions, events, communities around the world, ways to get involved, learning resources for beginners, site integrators, and developers, and the latest buzz on what's happening in the Joomla! project.

What kind of buzz, you ask? Well, this month, it's all about JoomlaConnect?, a brand new service that aggregates Joomla! community news from all around the world. Joomla Core Team member and Communications Team Lead Louis Landry developed this nifty new tool for us to use. So, if you are interested in some RSS action, get your blog firing J!, and see Getting Connected to JoomlaConnect.

Feature Articles

This month, Joomla Core Team member and Development Working Group Coordinator, Andrew Eddie kicks off the Features Section by revealing an encouraging external market survey that shows Joomla!, WordPress, and Drupal as leading Open Source CMSs worldwide. Hat tip to our friends and partners in free software. Andrew also discusses training resources for developers and calls on the faithful to lend a hand updating our dev doc. Come on, it'll make you feel good.

This is very cool --> International award winning author and illustrator Sarah Verroken shares her creative process that resulted in a captivating Joomla 1.5 Web site showcasing her unique and beautiful work. Then, more cool design --> Per Andre Ronsen combines creative talents in theology, music, and design into a hot Joomla 1.5 Web site for Soul Kids.

This month's Joomla Forum Member of the Month is Marieke van der Tuin, undeniably one of the hardest working contributors in all of J! land. Oh, and make certain to check out the great, new GPL'ed extensions highlighted by our very own Toni Marie.

Involved Community

Joomla is powered by an involved community all around the world. Case in point, Vancouver Joomla Day organizer Wendy Robinson shares Ten steps to a successful event. On the other side of the planet, Chorn Sokun and John T Denny highlight what's going on with the Cambodian Joomla! community. Then, from San Francisco, Ron Severdia, founder of PlayShakespeare.com, discusses his Joomla 1.5 site, also the subject of his recent CNN Comcast Newsmakers interview.

Then, Joomla! developer, Alan Langford of Toronto shares a thoughtful piece on why he participates in Open Source and Google Summer of Code participant, Mostafa Muhammad sends Greetings from Wikimania 2008 in Egypt. Core Team member and Fundraising Team Lead, Michelle Bisson, (Wait a minute! Isn't that a lot of Mounties?) invites the community to support Joomla! financially. Give until it hurts. Well, at least give, if you are able, knowing every little bit helps...

Joomla Learning

There are several great articles aimed at skill development for Joomla community members. Those just starting with Joomla 1.5 are encouraged to read the Learning Joomla using Sample Data written by Mark Dexter. Site Integrators will get good value from Sam Moffatt's Improve the Security of your Joomla Administrator article; practical tips from Andrew's Legacy Mode in Joomla 1.5 and Search in Joomla 1.5 pieces; and inspiration from J! talent Jennifer Marriott's Resources for Designers article.

For developers, Jens-Christian Skibakk's tutorial entitled Creating a single package for Admin and Site Languages will help you take advantage of recent Installer improvements introduced by Jens. If you are geek enough, check out the tutorial Dynamic loading of lists using AJAX in a MVC component written by the very talented, Mathieu Chauvinc.

Joomla Project

Really good effort from the Joomla! project this month. Development Working Group Leads Sam Moffatt and Anthony Ferrara share this month's release updates on Joomla 1.5.4 and 1.5.5 . The Joomla! Extensions Directory takes the Working Group spotlight -- and exceeds 3,500 Joomla Extensions! And, finally, there is that very cool announcement about JoomlaConnect?.

Next month?

Much more, and even a bit more on top of that. So, come back and get some. September's line up is all firmed up but if you are interested in sharing an article with the Joomla Community Magazine for October, we might have a spot for that. Just contact us at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it   and let us know what you would like to share. Until then, have fun with Joomla.

I was just shared some partial information on an interchange that occurred between a representative of OSM and a 3rd party developer.  All round, due to the cooperation and response everyone benefits.

Of course the names etc have been removed, but enjoy this wonderful example of cooperation in part of the exchange below:

Currently you are distributing something labeled the "Joomla! ****" from the **** site and mirrored at Joomlacode.org. Unfortunately, the naming of this package is very problematic for Open Source Matters and the Joomla! Project because of the strong likelihood that users will believe that it is an officially supported release. ....  there is a strong likelihood that your users will believe that these are in fact Joomla! products and nothing on your site leads them to believe otherwise.  The steady flow of emails we get for **** support via the OSM contact form indicates that this confusion is fairly widespread.

So, what do we need you to do? ....For example, "***** Preinstalled on Joomla! 1.5.x" would be descriptive.

However .... First, we need you to add  prominent disclaimers to your site indicating that what is being downloaded is not an official Joomla! release, will not be supported or warranted by the Joomla! Project or Open Source Matters and that all support questions should be addressed to your team. Second, we need you to include this statement "Joomla! is the trademark of Open Source Matters, Inc." Also, the first use of the term Joomla! on each page should be accompanied by a superscript TM. 

and the reply:

thank you for your email. I fully understand that you want to prevent
confusion among Joomla! beginners. You also need to take care of the
Joomla! trademark for OpenSourceMatters and we at **** of course
respect it.

I have added a prominent notice at our downloads page
The **** will be renamed to "**** (with
Joomla! 1.5) and so will the package files be renamed.
The next release of this "bundle" (with J! 1.5.4) will include this notice
(that it's an unofficial release) too.

The Trademark notice was added to all pages on ****.

Let me know if it's ok now-
Best wishes!

How about that for community cooperation! Great work to the developer for setting such a fine example.

Our infrastructure currently is made up of 6 servers. Currently, three servers are used to serve the heavy loads of joomla.org (including sub domains like forum.joomla.org, extensions.joomla.org, community.joomla.org, developer.joomla.org, docs.joomla.org etc.) and two others are used for serving JoomlaCode. The Joomla! extension Directory (JED) is our busiest site and needs a server upgrade. Time to add a new server to the Joomla! 'cluster' by moving away the Joomla! extension Directory (JED) to this new box.

This new server is a Dual Xeon 3060, 4 Gb Ram, SCSI drives for faster read/write performance. This new server is located in a different data center and will host just JED. The old JED server will be used for a few other sites, probably developer.j.org, docs.j.org and community.j.org. With an Apple Xserve for future package generation we then will go to a total of 7 servers used to host the complete Joomla! infrastructure.

On the development - and community blog several blogs have been written on people contributing to the project. In the donations blog I have briefly discussed another way of contributing back to the Joomla! project; donations (hopefully an update on this will be blogged soon). Anyway, there are dozen of ways to contribute back to the project and in this blog I want to focus on the infrastructure this project is using to serve the community.

Rochen is putting in a tremendous effort on helping out this project by donating most of the infrastructure needs, not only by offering most of the hardware but also by providing professional resources to keep the infrastructure running 7 days per week. Rochen is adding this new server as a service to the project for free! As we did earlier on we want to thank Rochen for their endless support to our open source project and the very high level of support we receive 365 days per year since this project started in September 2005!

Rochen will be handling the move, and there should be hardly any downtime at all. The move is planned, but if all goes well no one will even notice the site has been moved. As usual we expect their skills to be used to tweak and optimize this new box for peak performance.

 Yes.. that is a very common forum post title, sad, but true. So where can you get help? Which forum should you post in?

• First and foremost, have you used the search feature on the forum? Despite what you may think, Google does know how to search. As a result using the Google Search up the top right is a MUST. Did you know it also searches the Extensions as well as Documentation website? (We may add others soon as well) PLEASE use it. After your initial search you can refine your search by clicking on the respective refinement that shows up.
• Second, please THINK before you post, unless of course you are not really looking for an answer. Have you read Which Forum Should You Post In? Did you know each day, I move more threads that are posted in the wrong forum than I post replies to peoples questions. What a waste of time, for everyone.
• Third, have you read the rules that explain how to 'Post Questions the Smart Way' as well as Ken's: Making the Most of Your Posts ?
• Forth, do you thank people when they help you out? The bus driver thanks you when you get off the bus, and yet when someone helps you out for free, too many people do not even bother to thank them. 

I just wanted to take a second to point out an example that I saw today of the power of the Joomla! Community in action. A community member named Clive reported a problem he found using the contact form with the banned words feature.

When he reported the problem he was articulate about what he did, what happened, and what went wrong. He was clear and polite.

Within 10 minutes, Robin confirmed his report and created a tracker item. Elin asked follow up questions and Clive quickly responded.

Within an hour, Anthony had a patch on the tracker and members of the Bug Squad tested it. Robin shared the patch in a more user friendly way with Clive and provided instructions on how to use it.

Clive reported the results of testing clearly, outlining his tests and the results, ending with, "I think the error is fixed. Thank you everyone."

Eight hours, start to finish. That's not always how it happens of course, but when it does it's pretty cool. It pays off to be a part of this community and help make the software better.  Not only did Clive get his problem solved, but he is now a part of the solution for everyone else that might have run across this problem.  Great work to all involved.