Last week, I wrote about the new extension from Open Source Training: OSToolbar. This is new extension places video tutorials throughout your Joomla administrator area.

I talked to Steve Burge to hear a bit more about how and why they created the extension, and how it can help the different types of Joomla users.

A few weeks back, OS Training released the extension OSToolbar.

This is an innovative new extension that places video tutorials throughout your Joomla administrator area.

Yesterday, Fotis Evangelou of Joomlaworks tweeted a message about their work on a newsletter component for Joomla: Newsletter Designer

I've previously written a post on why I don't use a Joomla newsletter component myself. I'm using the Aweber service, and think it fulfills my needs.

However, after seeing all the great extensions created by JoomlaWorks, I'm anxious to see how this will work out. If you don't know JoomlaWorks, you might recognize K2, K2Mart, Frontpage Slideshow and a host of other extensions these guys have made.

The upcoming newsletter component from our Greek friends will include integration with K2, Virtuemart and Joomla, alongside other useful functions.

Today, the VirtueMart Developer Team announced the release of VirtueMart 1.1.6.

As I mentioned in a previous post called What's going on with Virtuemart, it's been a long time since the last update of Virtuemart. Now, version 1.1.6 is here, with around 30 bugs fixed. There are not many features added, but the bug fixing is good to have.

Important: please read on before upgrading or installing!

Virtuemart has been the largest ecommerce solution for Joomla for a number of years. However, the component has started to show signs of age.

The way VirtueMart was built is quite different from how Joomla is put together, and a growing number of users are feeling frustrated about the system.

In this post I take a look at the current state of the VirtueMart project (as I see it), and the future ahead of us. Will VirtueMart keep up?

As a Joomla user, I hope you're familiar with the Content Creation Kit extension K2 from JoomlaWorks. It's a great piece of free software from our Greek friends.

In the beginning of September this year, Joomlaworks released their new component K2Mart. K2mart integrates Virtuemart and K2, allowing you to build your product catalog using K2's advanced content, taxonomy and templating options with Virtuemart's powerful cart and checkout functionality.

This week, version 1.3 of K2 Mart is out, with several exciting new features. Among them, better image handling and a new

The most wanted feature of Joomla! 1.6 is probably the new permissions system, called Access Control List (ACL). With Joomla! 1.6 ACL, you are able to define who has permission to do what on the website, called actions, like the login, configure, access, create, delete, edit and edit state.

These permissions are given to a group of users. You can configure the group permissions on 4 levels: Global configuration, Components and, if applicable, for Categories and Items.

Joomla! ACL is a great tool to define your own groups and their permissions. Unfortunately you will probably not enjoy the new Joomla! permissions system immediately due the difficulty to understand how the system works. It can be quite abstract.

This is where the ACL Manager for Joomla! 1.6 comes in!

JomSocial, the community component for Joomla, will soon get chat functions. JomSocial is in use on a lot of sites, among them the popular people.joomla.org - the official Joomla! community site.

Later this month, Azrul will release a chat add-on for JomSocial called SookaChat.
The extension will enable users of JomSocial powered sites to chat directly on the site.

As you might know, Joomla will celebrate it's fifth anniversary this week.

Joomla! was the result of a fork of Mambo by the Joomla! development team on August 17, 2005. On Sept 1st 2005, the new project was officially named "Joomla". The name is the English spelling of the Swahili word jumla meaning "all together" or "as a whole."

This marked the beginning of a great open source software package that you, me, and millions of other website owners use and enjoy every day.

Just a day later, on Sept 2nd, the template and extension provider Joomlashack was founded. Like Joomla, JoomlaShack has gone through some big changes since then. New team, new Premium Joomla Templates, launching Joomlashack University and releasing new Joomla Extensions, too! To celebrate the anniversary, JoomlaShack has decided to do an anniversary Sale: 25% OFF EVERYTHING Until Sept 2nd.

Today, Anything Digital announced the immediate release of sh404SEF version 2.0, Release Candidate 1.

This version is the first major version of the extension since Anything Digital and the lead developer Yannick Gaultier started working together last year.

The version released today is a release candidate (RC1), and should work well for most sites. It is fully backwards compatible with sh404SEF v1.5 in case you need to roll back for any reason.