Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 42:
• Free Halloween Icon Pack 1
• The countdown has began to something new
• Targeting images for different screensizes
• A small change in currency + coupon
• Captify Content available for Joomla 3.0
• Understanding Joomla security with SiteGround
• Reflections on Joomladay Sydney
• JCal Pro 3.1.2.1471 released
• sh404SEF 3.6.3.1478 released
Written by by Andy Miller
We hope you enjoy this new free mini-pack of halloween icons. This spooky set by RocketTheme is free for use with personal and commercial projects with attribution and released under the Creative Commons 3.0 license. These highly-detailed icons come in 5 sizes, each hand-edited to ensure details are size-appropriate and each pixel is perfectly placed. Each icon comes in 48x48, 64x64, 128x128, 256x256, and 300x300 pixels in transparent PNG format.
The countdown has began to something new
Written by Phil Taylor
We have mentioned a lot recently about something we have been working on for many years – well next month sees the first ever release of this new unique service. Be sure to be following us on twitter @securejoomla for updates You can also watch the countdown live, and maybe see some sneak previews at http://www.joomla-security.com/
Targeting images for different screensizes
Written by Anthony Olsen
I've just released Zentools v1.7 which adds a really handy new feature - the ability to load images in the module based on the users screensize. This means that you can now tell Zentools to load small images on mobile browsers and large images to desktops, which will significantly reduce the asset payload for our responsive Joomla templates on mobile devices.
Responsive jQuery
The new functionality comes courtesy of the response.js jQuery script which uses data attributes to determine which size image to load on the site according to your visitors screen size. This has the benefit of making sure that your image assets loaded through our zentools module are optimised for the context in which they are being viewed.
A small change in currency + coupon
Written by Anthony Olsen
Most of our members will already know that subscriptions to our Joomla template club are priced using US Dollars. In an effort to make our life a little easier and process our accounts faster, I've just changed our prices from USD to AUD.
What does this mean to our customers?
The difference in USD and AUD at the moment is very minimal and has been for the best part (or perhaps more) of the last 12 months. The currency change will only mean an extra few dollars across all of our subscriptions. Current exchange rate for USD to AUD is sitting at $1 AUD is worth $1.03 USD.
Captify Content available for Joomla 3.0
Written by Anthony Olsen
Yesterday I released an update for the Captify Content module which is now compatible with Joomla 3.0 as well as K2 2.6. You can read more about Captify on the captify feature page and also download the latest version for free.
Stay up to date with our releases.
As a little reminder if you want to keep track of our Joomla template and extension releases there are two key places to look:
The JB Activity twitter stream contains all of our template and extension releases.
The recently updated page is also a handy place to check any recent updates. Periodic dates are also added to our facebook page.
Understanding Joomla security with SiteGround
Written by Anthony Olsen
Last week I announced a new partnership with Siteground as our preferred hosting providers. One of the key features of SiteGround's feature list for me is their focus on server security.
Server security, as you are probably aware, is an important but often misunderstood and overlooked part of running a website. There are a number of solutions out there for hardening a Joomla website and while most security experts will agree that making a Joomla website secure needs to be a multi-pronged process, nothing beats a secure hosting environment to begin with.
I recently had the chance to talk to Valeri from SiteGround to find out more about how SiteGround goes about securing their servers. Valeri was the key developer of the free SiteGround jHackGuard plugin which as you will read below is part of the SiteGround arsenal in their fight to keep your website secure.
Reflections on Joomladay Sydney
Written by Anthony Olsen
On the weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the Sydney Joomla day. This was actually was the first day long Joomla event I've attended and it was from my perspective a hands down success. It's great to meet folk that I've only ever spoken to via twitter and to spend more time with some of the local Melbourne Joomla crew too.
Joomla is about people.
I've heard people say this before and I must admit, it always sounded like hyperbole. However this Joomla day really helped me to see that Joomla at it's core is about people. Even though I communicate (via keyboard) every day with people on our forum, via email, skype and twitter, nothing beats talking face to face with other Joomla users and in particular users of your own product.
Written by Ron van Schaik
Today we are proud to announce the immediate availability of JCal Pro® 3.2.1 (build 1471), which is fully compatible with Joomla! 2.5! This is a maintenance and feature release. This release includes fixes for various reported issues as well performance related improvements and language updates. Most notably this release includes additional functionality such as the configurable email manager which now uses a standard editor, can be configured using data from the JCal Pro 3 Database, and is fully compatible with Joomla's multilingual capabilities.
Written by Victor Drover
Today we are proud to announce the immediate availability of sh404SEF® 3.6.3 (build 1478), which is fully compatible with Joomla! 2.5.
Release notes: Maintenance release, a few bugs and checks for various uncommon situations. Also of note in this release is the use of a database and caching library that can vastly speed up a site if using memcache or APC cache server for SEF url caching and for Joomla! general database operations. The Open Graph data tags have been updated to reflect Facebook's new documentation. In addition to this, several mobile sites improvements have been made.
