As you know, it's the birthday of Joomla today!

At the J & Beyond 2010 conference in Wiesbaden earlier this year, some people coined the phrase "Joomla Rocks!". This stuck with during the conference, and the sound of "Joomla Rocks" could be heard throughout the Joomla universe for weeks and months.

Now, a group of Joomla Community members have gathered and taken the "Joomla rocks" phenomenon a step further. In the spirit of gratitude rocks, the concept of physical Joomla rocks is introduced on the brand new site ourcmsrocks.com.

Today Joomla! turns five years old. Congratulations to all!

There are lots of people congratulating Joomla in their own special way today. Read on for a list of exciting posts and info.

Andrew Eddie, one of the original founders of Joomla and a key developer in the project, has announced through Open Source Matters (OSM) that he will resign from his position in the project.

After the release of Joomla! 1.6 GA (General Availability), Eddie will no longer be a part of the Joomla development team.

Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 33.

Not too much this week, but I found a piece on the upcoming new version of joomla.org (which created quite a discussion), as well as a post on JoomlaDay DC (don't forget the early-bird pricing, which is soon to expire) and a post about a Linux/Joomla event in Vellore, India.

Have a great week!

On October 16th, the 2010 Joomla! Day DC will take place in Washington DC.

People are traveling from the District of Columbia, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Nebraska, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas to go to this event.

They're even expecting visitors from England and Greece! (I think I know who that is, btw - lol).

Make sure you register before the early-bird pricing expires. This will be a great event.

Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 31.

This week, I found several posts by Steve Burge from the Joomla Community blog. There is also a good read by Jeremy Wilken on software usability, as well as part 5 in the series of new functions in Joomla 1.6.

Enjoy your week!

Yesterday, the Joomla project announced the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6 beta 8 (download).

IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a beta version and is not intended to run any type of production site. It is intended to be used for evaluation purposes only.

Since the Joomla 1.6 beta 7 release on August 9, the Joomla Bug Squad have fixed approximately 90 issues in the tracker. This progress is directly related to the continued efforts of the Joomla! Bug Squad. Thanks for all your hard work in bringing us one increment closer to stable!

See the CHANGELOG below included in the download for details of what has been changed in this release.

Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 31.

Sandra Warren has written a post on the new and improved system for Joomla User Group applications. There is also a post on Joomla and distributed version control, as well as info on the new Ecolift template from Joomla Bamboo.

Enjoy your week!

Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 30.

Jen Kramer has written a great post on the Access Control Leves in Joomla 1.6, there's a post about the Community Workgroup and a new template release: The Eco friendly Joomla template from JoomlaBamboo.

Enjoy!

Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 29.

This week, we have a techie tutorial by Torkil Johnsen, the first post in the 5x5 series of blog posts on community.joomla.org, the top 10 Joomla extensions as chosen by Brian Teeman and some info on the Joomla! Student Outreach Program, to mention some.

Enjoy the read!

The Official Joomla Community site was launched earlier this year. Yesterday, the site reached 4000 members.

In this post, you'll meet Mary May from Brazil - she's member no. 4000.

Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 28.

There's a post on how to deploy large-scale websites, an post on an advantage Joomla has over WordPress (just one of many, IMO), as well as a commentary by Jeremy Wilken on the GPL feud going on in WordPress land. I'm happy those times are over for Joomla! ;)

Enjoy your week!