The Joomla! Forward is a community initative to move the development of Joomla forward. The initiative was started by Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos.

Yesterday, I had a chat with Nicholas, as well as Michel van Agtmaal about the Joomla! Forward initiative when I met them at the J and Beyond conference in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The keynote at J and Beyond 2010 on Monday morning was done by Ryan Ozimek.

In the keynote he talked about the role of the OSM (Open Source Matters), board in the Joomla! project. He emphasized that the role of OSM should be to support the community.

After the keynote I had a short chat with Ryan.

You can see the video of the talk in this post.

I'm here at the J and Beyond conference in Wiesbaden, Germany. Among the people I've met at the conference are the people behind the Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URL extension sh404SEF.

I met with lead developer Yannick Gaultier and CEO Victor Drover of Anything Digital for a chat about the upcoming version of sh404SEF. Yannick is based in France and Victor is in the U.S. They started working together last year after Yannick almost quit the project due to his day-time job. Yannick has now quit his day-job to work full time as a developer with Anything Digital.

A while ago, the Joomla Production Leadership Team decided to split the Joomla project into two parts. One part is the CMS we all know and love. The actual system we're using every day. The other part is the layer behind the CMS, the inner workings of Joomla. Simply put, it can be defined as the contents of the /libraries/ folder in Joomla. This is now called the J!Platform.

If you're an end-user of Joomla, you probably don't care too much about this. As long as it works, it's all good, right? Still, I believe you should know why the J!Platform can be part of what will ensure the solid future of the Joomla project.

As a PHP developer, you should really take a look at the J!Platform and what it can do.

Most people don't make a concious choice to use open source software. They choose the software by looking at its functionality. Or perhaps a friend recommended that they try it. Price is also a factor, of course, and that's where open source software really shines.

Choosing to use open source software might not seem like a big thing at first - but it is!

Open source software is changing the world, and the way people interact and communicate. And you are a part of that!

The guys over at JoomStew have started an initative to help Matias Aguirre. He's the developer of the jUpgrade migration tool for Joomla 1.5 to 1.6.

He will benefit greatly if he's able to attend the J and Beyond event in The Netherlands this May. And so will you - as it will improve the way his migration component works and what it supports.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have the $2500 required for attendance and accomodation.

That's why the JoomStew people have started a fundraising initative to help him go to the event.

When Joomla 1.6 was released, one of the first questions people had was if current Joomla extensions would be compatible. It's been known for a long time that the changes in Joomla 1.6 mean that every single extension used needs an update.

For some developers, this is an easy task. For others, it's something compared to a nightmare.

I asked a group of developers to share their opinions on the Joomla 1.6 release, and what it will mean for their companies.

As I wrote in my post on the Joomla 1.6 launch - much of the success of version 1.6 will depend on the availability of extensions and templates.

The Joomla Bug Squad has been instrumental in getting to where we are today. These people have relentlessly hunted for and squashed bugs in the software.

Without them, no-one knows when we would have seen the current version.

Although there are still many bugs in the software, they will be squashed in the weeks and months ahead. Again, the Bug Squad will be an important part of this process.

And so will you and I - we all need to chip in and report bugs, test the software and make sure 1.6 evolves into something as stable as the Joomla 1.5 we already know.