Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 1:
• Joomla training in Australia
• Joomla! goes CeBIT 2013
• Heathrow Airport Uses Joomla
• Call For Joomla! Community Leadership Team Nominations
• It's Official – Joomla! CMS to Add 3.2 Release
• OSM Draft Goals for 2013
• Zentools responsive lightbox and fonticons
• Zen and the art of Joomla templating
• For those who like to collect - the Collector Joomla template
• Winners of the Melbourne Joomladay Competition
• 25% off tickets to Melbourne Joomladay 2013
• The not so end of days coupon
• Good bye old friend we will miss you ... Joomla 1.5 end of life
• Virtuemart 2 released today
• Sh404SEF - Maximizing Joomla SEO with just a few clicks
• Our Twitter handle has changed to @AnythingDig
• sh404SEF selected as an inaugural Joomla Community Choice winner
• Turn Joomla into a Blog with These Free Extensions
• JoomlaShine launches Affiliate Program
• Year-end recap: A momentous 2012 for JoomlaShine
• Discover how JSN PowerAdmin rocks Joomla! world
Written by Brian Teeman
In the middle of 2012 I was invited to speak at the Joomladay in Melbourne Australia in January 2013. I've tried the virtual presenter thing before and I really didn't enjoy the experience. A Joomladay is not just about the sessions that you attend but also the people that you meet. You just can't do that properly in a virtual world, at the very least no one can really buy me a beer (cold or not) over skype.
So on January 14 I will be boarding a flight for the rediculously long flight to Melbourne. At a little over 21,500 miles (34,700 km) it will take my air miles for the preceding 12 months over the 100,000 miles (160,000 km) barrier. It is truly amazing how many bad movies you can watch on a tiny screen when you are trapped insode a flying tin can.
Written by David Jardin
In September 2012 I got a call from Stepahn Luckow, who is President of the German Drupal Association called "Drupal-Initiative". He told me about his idea of presenting all interested Open Source content-managment-systems at a common stand at the CeBIT 2013 event. CeBIT is the world's largest IT trade fair and takes place in Hannover, Germany, from March 5 - 9, 2013. He asked me whether I would like to represent the Joomla! project during the planning phase and work as a "hub" to inform the national and international Joomla! community about the project called "CMSGarden" - and of course I agreed immediately.
One could ask why I agreed to help in the project. The answer is quite simple: I strongly believe that every single participating CMS can benefit a lot from it. CeBIT is the world's largest trade fair for computer and internet technologies and offers us a unique possibility to reach people who are using internet technologies in their business every day. But even more important to me is this: a common project of multiple Open Source systems helps everybody understand that we're not really competitors.
Written by Steve Burge
Heathrow is the major London airport and, by some measures, is the busiest airport in the world. For their main shopping site at http://boutique.heathrow.com, they needed a platform able to handle heavy traffic and showcase brands like Bulgari. They choose Joomla ...
Call For Joomla! Community Leadership Team Nominations
Written by Peter Martin
The Joomla! Community Leadership Team (CLT) is currently looking for new active members from the Joomla community to strengthen our team. If you know a fellow Joomla community member who is active in the Joomla.org or in a local Joomla community, and who would be available & suitable for the position, please nominate them. You can also nominate yourself. Please keep in mind that this is *not* a voting contest: asking all your acquaintances to nominate or vote for you, certainly doesn't give you any bonus points :-)
What is the CLT?
The Community Leadership Team (CLT) is the leadership arm of the project responsible for the Community Workgroup (CWG). The Community Workgroup (CWG) consists of certain sites/areas where hundreds of volunteers help out:
It's Official – Joomla! CMS to Add 3.2 Release
Written by Mark Dexter
After much public discussion over several months, the Joomla Production Leadership Team (PLT) has made it official. We will release version 3.2 in September 2013 and move the 3.5 release to March 2014. This pattern is expected to continue for the version 4.x releases. Now, version 2.5 will be the current long-term support (LTS) release for two years (March 2012 to March 2014) instead of 18 months. Here is the revised release schedule through version 4.5.
Version 2.5: March 2012 (LTS release)
Version 3.0: September 2012
Version 3.1: March 2013
Written by Paul Orwig
During the joint leadership summit meeting in San Jose, California on November 15, 2012, one item that members of Joomla's Production Leadership Team (PLT), Community Leadership Team (CLT) and Open Source Matters (OSM) agreed on was to try and finalize their 2013 team level goals by December 31, 2012. OSM's draft goals for 2013 are published below. Our next step in the goal setting process is to invite feedback from the community. Please share your questions and comments in this forum thread about OSM's 2013 draft goals. Beginning December 21, 2012, OSM board members will begin finalizing these 2013 goals, taking into account feedback from the community.
Communications
Improve communications through simplifying and targeting communications channels for external as well as internal audiences, and facilitate volunteer involvement.
Zentools responsive lightbox and fonticons
Written by Anthony Olsen
I'm happy to announce the availability of Zentools v1.8 - our all in one responsive content and image gallery module. The main additions in this release are a beautiful new responsive lightbox, the introduction of font icons for some of the module assets and a new simple slideshow theme.
Responsive Lightbox for Zentools
One of the weak points in our responsive arsenal, up until now at least, has been the zentools lightbox. It certainly looked pretty but became problematic once you started changing the browser size or adding oversized content on smaller screens.
Zen and the art of Joomla templating
Written by Anthony Olsen
Earlier this month I spoke about the Melbourne Joomla day that will be held on the 19-20 January in 2013 and I hinted at a developer focussed session I will be running based on the Zen Grid Framework, Zentools and Zenkit.
This session is in addition to the talk I'll be giving about more general templating strategies during the conference program and will focus on getting into the nitty gritty of developing Joomla templates using our framework and other zen products.
What will it cover?
The session will be indepth and technical and cover the following: Introduction to the Zen Grid Framework and the tools of the trade. How to create your own custom template with the Zen Grid Framework. Understanding layouts, media queries and custom template overrides. Creating your own styles and adding effects using jQuery.
For those who like to collect - the Collector Joomla template
Written by Anthony Olsen
I'm happy to announce the release of our December Joomla template - Collector. Collector is an all in one Social media collecting / streaming theme that can pool and display content from your favourite social media sources.
The activity stream can source content from all of your favourite networks, including:
Winners of the Melbourne Joomladay Competition
Written by Anthony Olsen
Around a month ago I announced a competition for some free tickets to Melbourne Joomladay which is being held later this month. In the post I was a little cheeky and said that I only had a ticket to give away but as it turns out I have three. So thanks to all who responded on the blog post and via twitter ( and no an air fare doesn't come with the ticket :)) but we have three winners ...
Drum roll please ...
So a big congratulations to Rowan, Jinx (I'll see if I can find another one for you too) and Gidge. Please get in touch with me via our contact form and I'll let you know what you need to do to grab the ticket. Looking forward to meeting you all soon.
25% off tickets to Melbourne Joomladay 2013
Written by Anthony Olsen
As a special offer to all members of the Melbourne Joomla Group (and their friends), the MJUG organising committee have just announced a special discount off the price of tickets for the Melbourne Joomalday. Use the coupon code MJUG2013 when you book your conference tickets at http://melbourne.joomladay.org.au to receive 25% off the ticket cost.
Nine Fantastic Workshops
Even though I wrote about the line up for the Joomladay just a few weeks ago, I thought it was worth reminding you of how incredible this event promises to be. There is a great mix of local and international talent for both the workshops and the conference sessions, covering all facets of design and development for all levels of Joomla users.
Written by Anthony Olsen
Despite the wild claims that we were close to the end of days, it appears that the world did not come to an end on December 21. After all of the speculation it looks like we will indeed see and get to use Joomla 3.5 and beyond.
To celebrate this joyous occasion I have just made available our final coupon for 2012. If you use the coupon maya on our checkout page you can receive 20% off the cost of a subscription. Current and renewing members can add this to the usual 10% and 20% coupons to save even more on your subscription renewals.
This coupon offer is valid until 1st January, 2013.
Good bye old friend we will miss you ... Joomla 1.5 end of life
Written by Anthony Olsen
Some time ago I wrote about the end of life for our Joomla 1.5 range of products and sadly that time has come.
I actually feel quite emotional about letting Joomla 1.5 go, but I think this is only natural given that we have worked so closely with this codebase for the majority of the Joomlabamboo lifetime.
Sure Joomla has moved on since Joomla 1.5 was released in 2008 - transformed, evolved and improved - but Joomla 1.5 really has been like an old friend. It wasn't perfect but we knew it's secrets and we could easily forgive it's shortcomings.
Written by Thomas Kahl
Finally - and after more than two years of work and testing - Virtuemart 2.0 was released today. It seems that it has been a hard piece of work to completely refactor the most important ecommerce solution for Joomla!.
Imagine - when the development started, Joomla 1.5 was still up to date and the only goal was, to make Virtuemart MVC-compatible. In the meantime, Joomla 1.6 and 1.7 was released and 2.5 is coming in the next weeks. It wasn't easy to keep track with all the framework changes.
From today, the new version has to prove that it was worth the time. Though (and this is no secret) I personally would have preferred another way for Virtuemart 2, I wish the team all the best for this version! Virtuemart has to be an important component for Joomla. Virtuemart IS Joomla Ecommerce. Again - congratulations to the Virtuemart-Team!
Sh404SEF - Maximizing Joomla SEO with just a few clicks
Written by Victor Drover
Rather than a powerful Joomla SEO tool, sh404SEF® is often misunderstood as simply a friendly URL manager. To help clear this up, we've produced a new video that really hits the highlights of sh404SEF® features that make it the market-leading search engine optimization add-on for Joomla. The transcript for the video is shown below. We hope you enjoy it!
Transcript
Everyone knows that Search Engine Optimization — or SEO — is a critical factor when building any web site. sh404SEF® combines traditional SEO techniques along with an ever-growing list of modern approaches. The result is the most feature-rich and powerful SEO add-on available for Joomla.
Our Twitter handle has changed to @AnythingDig
Written by Ron van Schaik
As of today the Twitter handle for the Anything Digital Twitter account has been changed from @vdrover to @AnythingDig
Follow @AnythingDig to hear about our latest products updates and Anything Digital news. @AnythingDig will also tweet about Joomla news, SEO and all the web technologies and mostly related items we find interesting. There will likely be very few links to pictures of exceptionally cute cats. Current followers do not need to change anything, and we will continue to follow your tweets as we have in the past.
You can also find us on facebook at the Anything Digital Facebook Page and do not forget to subscribe to the important new version notification newsletters we send out for all our extensions.
sh404SEF selected as an inaugural Joomla Community Choice winner
Written by Ron van Schaik
Although the presidential elections are only once every four years, you can vote for your favorite Joomla extensions every month.
There is no greater honor than the recognition of the community for a job well done by selecting our sh404SEF® Joomla SEO extension as one of the winners of the inaugural Joomla Community Choice Extensions.
The Community Choice Extensions winners were announced last week on the Joomla's Community Magazine site. The competition received over 150 submissions. We congratulate all the winners and are honored to be among these leaders in Joomla Extension development. sh404SEF® was the only Joomla SEO related extension selected. The choices of the community reflect the sophisticated nature of Joomla users. The Community Choice Awards is a wonderful showcase for the use of the extensions by independent users.
Turn Joomla into a Blog with These Free Extensions
Written by Gere Jordan
Unlike its content management system rival WordPress, Joomla doesn’t come with many core blogging features. But that doesn’t mean it can’t make a great blogging platform. You just need to make some modifications first. This post will highlight some of the free extensions that can help you turn your Joomla website into a fully functioning blog.
The most obvious blogging feature that Joomla lacks is the ability for visitors to comment on your posts. Thankfully, there are a variety of comment extensions available via the Joomla Extension Directory (JED). Within the extension directory, there are two categories of comment extensions: article comments and social comments. Extensions listed under “article comments” are components and plugins that build comment functionality into Joomla. Extensions listed under “social comments” integrate with third party websites and bring their commenting capabilities into Joomla.
JoomlaShine launches Affiliate Program
Written by TamNL
We are excited to announce great news: We’re launching a new JoomlaShine Affiliate Program using the Post Affiliate Pro system. The JoomlaShine Affiliate program is a great way for us to thank you and reward you for introducing JoomlaShine products to others.
How does it work?
We have tried to make the affiliate process easy for everyone, even you are a beginner. You can see the image below to understand our process.
Year-end recap: A momentous 2012 for JoomlaShine
Written by Huyennt
Energetic, Busy and Enjoyable are 3 words we at JoomlaShine can say about the year 2012. In the past 365 days, we released 10+ products and organized or took part in dozens of related activities. This is the most visually active year as you can see. Most of the milestones were planned. The others were unexpected. But they were all accomplished, finally! Now should be the time to take a look back what we have done. And we invite you to travel back in time with us. Just fasten your seat-belt tightly and here we go!
We welcomed 2012 with just 4 Joomla templates and 1 Joomla extensions. In 2012, we released more 8 templates and 2 extensions:
Discover how JSN PowerAdmin rocks Joomla! world
Written by K3nnyart
Very often that we heard complaint from users about how difficult it was to do simple tasks in Joomla! such as changing module positions, hiding an article's title or relocating the menu items. Therefore, we decided to take a deep research at how people were using Joomla and the possibility of the solution that would satisfy most Joomla! users. As a result, JSN PowerAdmin was born. JSN PowerAdmin was built with one single goal in mind: to make Joomla easy and joyful to use.
What we wanted to do was to contribute to a wonderful Joomla CMS and expressed our vision about the Joomla administration interface. Immediately, JSN PowerAdmin had rocked the Joomla! community with because it was dead-easy to use and had incredible functions. Look at the infographic below to see what JSN PowerAdmin brings to the users and how the users love JSN PowerAdmin. (Click on the image for the full size)
