Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 9:
• Beware the Black Hat template developer
• Volunteers for Community Channels Workgroup wanted
• Joomla! 2.5 template updates Joomla
• RokSprocket & March Joomla Template Release
• The template is dead, long live the template
• Another responsive Joomla template into the mix
• Subscription plan changes for JCal Pro calendar and Agora bulletin board
• Joomla days 2012
• The JoomlaShine templates latest features and improvements
Beware the Black Hat template developer
Written by Norm Douglas
Recently I have taken on some new work with an awesome little graphic design/branding house. They are great people and I'm really looking forward to working with them. Previously they used their own in house employee for web work. The employee was a good person but probably lacked some real web skills and was at times out of his depth in regards to building sites with Joomla, which he used exclusively for all sites. I was amazed to see that all the previous work done by this cool and funky design house were all completed using commercial templates and hence starts my first little "rant".
Volunteers for Community Channels Workgroup wanted
Written by Sander Potjer
During the past years the amount of Joomla community channels grown substantially. New ideas were developed and many of them came with a new subsite somewhere in the joomla.org family of sites. Today actual Joomla information can be found on many places, you possible need to visit several sites to keep yourself up to date, maybe too many meanwhile...? And are all these subsites still needed and relevant? Or do we need to combine them in a new improved channel that fit all our needs?
One of the goals for 2012 of the Community Leadership Team (CLT) is to assess the amount of data channels currently in use and try to condense where possible. We want to create a new workgroup that will perform an analysis of the current community channels and see where some merging of resources and content can be done. This will result in a report that will be shared with the community and what will be used to actually make the suggested changes and improvements.
Joomla! 2.5 template updates Joomla
Written by Jonathan Shroyer
We have received many enquiries about Joomla! 2.5 upgrades for our templates, so we figured it would be a good idea to tell you the roadmap we are planning and when you can start to expect these updated templates. You will be happy to know that most of the templates are around 80% completed. The most time consuming part of the other 20% is changing the CSS from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 2.5, getting rid of any tables in the template layout and adding some basic features.
We are going to do a feature template upgrade with all the extra features we did with Eleglance at least every other week. All other templates will be basic upgrades to start with (Phase 1), then we will add additional features to them over time.
RokSprocket & March Joomla Template Release
Written by Andy Miller
For those that follow us on Twitter, or Facebook, may have seen references to a new extension we have been working on for some time. RokSprocket is a revolutionary new Joomla 2.5 only extension that has been designed to replace a variety of our existing ‘content’ modules. These include RokStories, RokTabs, RokNewsPager, RokNewsflash, RokMicronews, and basically any module in the RT arsenal that manipulates and displays articles.
What makes this such a powerful extension is that it has been built to be highly plug-able with the ability to support almost any data source. At launch we plan to include Joomla, K2, ZOO and Seblod CCKs, with more platforms being added in future releases.
The template is dead, long live the template
Written by Anthony Olsen
I often feel like I am part of some bizarre templating monarchical system where as soon as I release one template I immediately announce it's successor ... And so it is today after the release of the Epicure Joomla template yesterday I'm announcing (well just giving you a sneak peek) at the March template release called Vintage.
It is another David Vuu gem and as you can see from his dribbble shots it's a regal looking tumblr/polaroid/vintagey kind of design that we are aiming fairly and squarely at the Joomla blogging community. I'll post some more screenshots as we work through the build and flesh out the colour schemes but for now check out the Full screen and internal screenshots of the initial mock up.
Another responsive Joomla template into the mix
Written by Anthony Olsen
I'm happy to announce the availability of our latest responsive Joomla template. Epicure is an elegant template with subtle textures, refined typography and a stunning responsive slideshow. You can see the Epicure demo, read about it's features, check out the extensive documentation or go straight to the download area to grab yourself a copy. Epicure is available as a combined download for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5 and also comes with Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5 quickstart packages.
Six responsive Joomla templates and counting. We are committed to creating cutting edge (nice alliteration!) responsive designs for Joomla and it is my hope that in the next few weeks we should have a few of our older themes ported across to version 2 of the Zen Grid Framework and also sporting marvellous mediaqueries that make for mobile friendly (couldn't help myself) Joomla templates.
Subscription plan changes for JCal Pro calendar and Agora bulletin board
Written by Victor Drover
Last June we migrated to a new cart-based subscriptions system. To ease the migration process we maintained a set of subscription bundles and other legacy subscription plans. However, the new cart-based checkout provides a lot of flexibility and replaces the need for these bundles.
We have slowly reduced our bundled offerings as announced recently when we retired the Events + SEO plan. In addition, we have been looking to add consistency to some of our product lines that are sold in packages targeted at new, intermediate and advanced users.
In the first step of this process, on Friday we rolled out changes to our subscription plans for JCal Pro® calendar and Agora bulletin board. The available packages will now be called Starter, Standard and Ultimate.
Written by Catherine Pham
Recently, a guy - my roommate kept saying about Joomla over and over again until I got sick of it. However, I'm a little curious about this kind of thing. What the heck is it, anyway?
Why do people take so much care of it?
Then I do some Google search and finally find this: Joomla Day 2012 event - sounds interesting, huh? What Is Called Joomla Day? Joomla Day actually is occasion when Joomla users (including those who are newbies as well as addicts) gather together to spread the word about Joomla and share their passion for it. Every year, Joomla Day event is hold in different places or nations and there's only one Joomla Day at a time in a specific location. So it's very exciting for Joomla users to prepare for this event in their local area.
The JoomlaShine templates latest features and improvements
Written by Nhung
With the new release of all JoomlaShine templates such as JSN Epic 4.3.0, JSN Dome 2.3.0, JSN Tendo 1.1.0 and JSN Teki 1.1.0, the JoomlaShine Team is proud to announce to you many of the hottest template improvements and features. All these bring you a more stable, convenient to use, and customizable Joomla template - just like our other products.
