Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 42, 2013:
- We just want to say thank you
- Call for Marketing Working Group members
- Joint Summit Report - Nov. 7, 2013
- Marketing Request for Proposals
- Call for Joomla Event Team Members
- Useful Apps for Business Collaboration
- Improving frontend forms in Joomla
- Launching developer.joomlatools.com
- Sidetrack and Fullscreen Joomla 3 Templates now available
- How to use front end global configuration options in Joomla 3.2
- How to use content versioning in Joomla 3.2
- Cyber Monday Joomla Special
- Black Friday Special
- Can't find an update from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3?
- Our Free Joomla extensions can now be installed via Joomla 3 web installer
- Cyber Monday Savings for first time Watchful users
- Cyber Monday Joomla special - The Site Builder's Kit
- Takai, the official K2 demo site, now available as a free download
Written by Ruth Cheesley
Since launching Joomla 3.2 less than two weeks ago, we've watched the most incredible community come together, and we've been inspired every moment along the way. The marketing team created, artwork, infographics and videos.
This is just the beginning. Over the next few weeks, we'll be introducing some exciting new Marketing initiatives. As always, we'll share details on updates as we release them. A huge thank you to everybody who made this happen!
Members of the 3.2 Marketing team include:
- Christopher Nielsen
- Nick Savov (PLT member volunteer)
- Ryan Bernstein (Volunteer)
- Jonathan Neubauer
Call for Marketing Working Group members
Written by Ruth Cheesley
The newly-forming Joomla! Marketing Working Group is currently looking for new active members from the Joomla community to join our team.
If you know a fellow Joomla community member who has experience in marketing and would be available and suitable for the position, please nominate him or her - you can also nominate yourself. If you are nominating someone else, please make sure that you've asked their permission.
Please keep in mind that this is *not* a voting contest: asking all your acquaintances to nominate or vote for you doesn't give you any bonus points :-)
Joint Summit Report - Nov. 7, 2013
Written by Alice Grevet
Present: Michael Babker (PLT), Mike Carson, (OSM), Ruth Cheesley (CLT), Ofer Cohen (OSM), Chris Davenport (PLT), Victor Drover (OSM), Javier Gomez (PLT), Alice Grevet (OSM), Tom Hutchison (PLT), David Hurley (PLT), Peter Martin (CLT), Paul Orwig (OSM), Sander Potjer (CLT), Jacques Rentzke (OSM), Marijke Stuivenberg (OSM), Radek Suski (OSM), Matt Thomas (PLT), Sarah Watz (OSM)
On November 7, 2013 in Boston, the Joomla Project leadership teams (CLT - Community Leadership Team; OSM - Open Source Matters; PLT - Production Leadership Team) met for an all-day joint meeting prior to the Joomla World Conference. The text that follows is the notes from this meeting.
BUDGET DISCUSSION AND PROCESS (led by Vic Drover, OSM Treasurer)
The financial reports need to be simplified (irrelevant or unused account lines) and shared with all three teams regularly. Orbitz reporting should include more detail. The budgeting process needs to be done in a more timely fashion.
Marketing Request for Proposals
Written by Ruth Cheesley
Open Source Matters invites interested and suitably experienced vendors to submit proposals in respect of providing marketing and communication support services.
The Request for Proposals document can be viewed here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7W2qbjedkEFUVVFWTIzanZKLTQ/edit?usp=sharing
This Request for Proposals is intended to outline the current situation within the project and suggest areas in which we anticipate vendors will lead and support our 70+ strong volunteers (who form the Marketing Advisory Group) to deliver strategic marketing internationally, thereby positioning Joomla! as a leading Open Source Content Management System.
If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please ensure that you read the Request for Proposals document thoroughly, taking note of the Submission Timeline, and provide the required information by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. prior to the deadline.
Call for Joomla Event Team Members
Written by Radek Suski
The Joomla! Events team is looking for new energetic team members.
Due to constantly growing numbers of Joomla! related events being organised each year we are searching for volunteers to help us to manage the approval of those submissions and help expand our service offerings for Joomla event organizers.
What is the Joomla! Events Team?
The Joomla! Events Team is responsible for supporting, managing and approving submissions for JoomlaDay Events, Joomla! User Group Meetings and other Joomla! project related events.
Who is the Joomla! Events Team looking for?
We are looking to recruit a few individuals who will be able to examine submission of an event. The candidates must be able to communicate with events’ organisers in a gentle and friendly way. Good communication skills are very important in this role.
Useful Apps for Business Collaboration
Written by Ryan Pierson
One of the fastest growing trends in the business world right now is working remotely. This trend has been growing over the past ten years, accelerated by rising fuel costs and the proliferation of the Internet. Indeed, technology is becoming increasing pervasive, and it's because of that so many companies (including RocketTheme) have opted to go with a business approach that doesn't evolve a traditional office.
Our staff is spread across the world, and while we do try to get together at least once a year to share notes and build a stronger team, the vast majority of our work is done remotely. This work is done on schedules that are as diverse as our staff's locations. Despite all this separation, we still manage to get a lot done. This is largely thanks to a number of business collaboration apps that we use throughout the day.
Improving frontend forms in Joomla
Written by Johan Janssens
With the upcoming stable releases of our Joomlatools extensions we are working hard to get the remaining issues out of the way. One of the problems many of our customers reported during the release candidate phase are extension and template conflicts on our frontend forms. To re-solve those conflicts and to further improve the usability we have completely redesigned our forms for both frontend and backend.
Whats the problem?
More than often we get reports from customers that either some form button isn’t working or that our frontend forms don’t look like they expected. For example recently a customer reported: “I cannot add documents in DOCman on the frontend, the ‘save’ button in the form is not working.” Most of the time those problems are caused by conflicts between our output and the used template or javascript elements loaded by us and other developers. In the specific case of the DOCman ‘save’ button it’s a javascript conflict where multiple version of jQuery where loaded on the site.
Launching developer.joomlatools.com
Written by Johan Janssens
If you are a developer and create custom Joomla websites and components you need tools that allow you to focus on what matters most: solving your client’s problems.
At Joomlatools we have created a number of awesome developer tools over the past few years to help our team be productive. We already released two tools in the past months; “Joomla in a box”, which is a Vagrant box for Joomla development and “Composer for Joomla”, a Joomla Composer extension installer plugin.
Today we are happy to announce our very own developer portal, at developer.joomlatools.com. A dedicated area on Joomlatools.com for Joomla developers. We are opening up today with additional documentation for our Vagrant and Composer tools.
Sidetrack and Fullscreen Joomla 3 Templates now available
Written by Anthony Olson
It's been a while since we released a Joomla 3 update for one of our previous Joomla templates, but today I am happy to announce that Sidetrack and Fullscreen are both now available for Joomla 3. In addition to this let me introduce to you Zen Grid Framework v3.
Both of these new themes have been released for Zen Grid Framework v3 which we are also releasing today. So how did this new version of the framework come about?
Before we answer that let's retrace our steps.
As a little bit of history we made some changes to the club back in January 2013. We moved all of our Joomla template development to the T3 framework. We wrote a long blog post outlining this decision which could be summed up as Joomla 3 + Bootstrap = time for us to make a change.
How to use front end global configuration options in Joomla 3.2
Written by Igor Mihaljko
One of the interesting new features in Joomla 3.2 is the ability to manage the Joomla CMS Configuration details from the front-end. This means that you can now change certain but not all website configuration parameters from the front end of your website.
How do you enable front end configuration options?
Although you can publish a menu item for that specific feature from the menu manager to be visible by anyone, only users logged in to the website front-end which have special user access can actually change something with the front-end configuration manager.
How to use content versioning in Joomla 3.2
Written by Igor Mihaljko
In previous versions of Joomla, you are able to change the articles as well as categories and use that latest version only. In the latest version of Joomla 3.2, you can make changes and keep track of the changes, make comparisons or restore all changes that have been made. Content versioning is one of the key new features of Joomla 3.2.
Use Versions in the Article edit page
- Go to Article manage
- Click on the Options button to check if Versioning is enabled and configure how many copies of articles do you want to keep.
- Click on the Editing Layout tab on the Options page and check that parameters marked with a red square on the following screenshot are enabled and configured.
Written by Anthony Olson
On Friday when I announced our Black Friday sale I mentioned that we would also be releasing an awesome new initiative for Cyber Monday with some of our other Joomla friends. The Joomla site builder kit is a special collection of Joomla products and services that we think will be very helpful when you build your next Joomla site.
For $37, you get over $100 worth of value including:
- A 3 month subscription to Joomlabamboo (normally worth $45) and access to 60+ Joomla templates.
- A 12 month subscription to the sh404 SEO and SEF component from Anything Digital.
- Plus one month access to OS Training and their incredible training videos, books and expert support from their friendly forum staff.
Written by Anthony Olson
This year we have two very special deals for you for the start of the holiday season because we know how much you love them. The first is a Black Friday special that will let you take 40% off any of our subscriptions when you use the coupon "blackfriday". This coupon will be available for the next 24 hours or so so you need to be quick if you want to grab this one.
Also if you have signed up in the last few days let me know via the contact form and I will add the equivalent amount of time to your subscription - I hate to see folks missing out on deals.
The other deal is a new initiative for us. We have teamed up with some good Joomla friends to create what we are calling the Site Builders Kit.
So on Monday Joomlabamboo, Anything Digital (makers of sh404) and Os Training are going to be offering a very special deal for Joomla site developers and builders alike. It's a bit of a taste test of all three of our services but I can't tell you much more than that at this stage.
Can't find an update from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3?
Written by Anthony Olson
I've received this odd error a few times now as I start to move some of our older non Joomla 3 templates from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3. Despite the fact that Joomla 3.2 is well and truly out, the updater tells me that I have the latest version of Joomla.
This usually happens when the Joomla updater is set to look for releases only in the long term stable stream. Joomla 2.5 is the current long term stable release and it will remain the case until Joomla 3.5 is released.
So even after I switch the Joomla updater to look for the short term releases (ie Joomla 3+) it still tries to assure me that I have the latest version.
Our Free Joomla extensions can now be installed via Joomla 3 web installer
Written by Anthony Olson
One of the best features added to the recently released Joomla 3.2 is the Install from web feature. Other CMS's like Wordpress have had something like this for some time of course, but this addition is feature rich and more importantly easy to use.
What is the Install from the web feature
The Install from Web tab in the Joomla installer draws in listings from the Joomla Extension directory and displays them in a easy to use interface in the Joomla administrator. You can sort the listing by popularity, rating, name, updated or newest ordering, find the extension you want to install and install it with a few mouse clicks.
Our free Joomla extensions use the install from web feature.
Our free extensions including JB Type, Fitvids, jFlickr, Hoverbox and Captify Content are now all compatible with the Install from web feature and can be installed on your site with a few clicks in your Joomla 3.2 site admin. There are currently some pull requests in the Joomla CMS repo that will make it easier to list commercial listings and as soon as those changes are made we will also make the Zentools module available via this method.
Cyber Monday Savings for first time Watchful users
Written by Jessica Dunbar
To celebrate Cyber Monday, we are offering incredible savings — 80% or more — on our most popular plans to manage between 5 and 100 Joomla websites.
Normally the Professional plan would cost $74.99/month, we have made coupons available making the Professional plan $4.99/month for the first month.
Remotely backup, update and monitor
The Watchful Subscription plans let you remotely backup, update and monitor your Joomla websites from our innovative dashboard.
Cyber Monday Joomla special - The Site Builder's Kit
Written by Jessica Dunbar
Spend $37, get $107
Get the Site Builders toolkit with products and services from the top three industry leaders in design, training, SEO and site security — JoomlaBamboo, OSTraining, and Anything Digital . That’s right, a $37 sh404SEF® purchase gets you a free, no-strings-attached month of training from OS Training and over 60 Joomla Templates from Joomla Bamboo - a $107 value! You'll also receive up to 80% off Watchful - the one dashboard to manage all of your sites!
About Joomla Bamboo
JoomlaBamboo is known for their clean and elegant designs. They pioneered responsive design in Joomla, so they know a thing or two about taking Joomla into the future.
Takai, the official K2 demo site, now available as a free download
Written by Fotis Evangelou
Nuevvo has just released Takai, the official K2 demo site, as a free Joomla!/K2 template, available for everyone to download and use.
This new iteration of the demo site has been fully modernized to be responsive, uses multi-color variations (with the option to create yours as well), is built using flexible grids, features cool off-canvas navigation (when on mobile) and uses Nuevvo's awesome no-framework template parameters & standard features.
Takai is the best starting point for everyone just joining the K2 Community.
Learn more about Takai and download the template package and the quickstart packages for both Joomla! 2.5 & 3.x at the Nuevvo website at: http://nuevvo.com/joomla-templates/free/takai
