Contributor Blogs

Few important changes in 1.5.15 release

kauselot@yahoo.com (Klas Berlič) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:53:32 +0000

To accompany the official release announcement, I would like to point out few of the most important changes in this release:

.htaccess change that prevents looking at your extensions XML files - while this was not a security hole by itself, it kept open doors for hackers to see what version of particular extension you are running. To put this fix into effect you have to uncomment (remove #) from corresponding section (lines 35-39) in htaccess.txt and rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess (or copy/paste that part into your existing .htaccess, must be inserted at the same place).
TEST before you put this on live site - if your site is serving publicly accessible XML than this is not directly usable for you - you would need to make exceptions for those files or use regex based rules for blocking. Also not usable for those without apache/mod_rewrite.

PHP 5.3.x compatibility - Joomla runs fine on PHP 5.3.x now (except of OpenID library)

Core components caching - com_weblinks and com_contact are using cache for the first time. Also com_content view cache comes with more refined caching logic, so that caching is disabled only where it needs to be (e.g. for users using filters). This should result in speed increases on high-traffic sites.

Other notable bugfixes:

TinyMCE is now working properly - all remaining bugs created by the recent TinyMCE upgrade should be gone now
Mootols were upgraded to 1.12 to ensure future compatibility with Firefox 3.6

Note:

For extension developers that would like to enable access to XML inside their extensions, one way would be to create .htaccess in each directory that contains .xml files and put reverse rule in it (or in a directory above those directories that need exceptions - it applies to current directory and all directories bellow):

<Files ~ "\.xml$">
Allow from all
Satisfy all
</Files>

or even more explicit rule, limited only to myfile.xml:

<Files myfile.xml>
Allow from all
Satisfy all
</Files>

A Preview of the New Template Manager in Joomla 1.6

andrew.eddie@community.joomla.org (Andrew Eddie) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:10:33 +0000

Joomla 1.6 will include some important new changes in the Template Manager. This article gives you a preview of what you can likely expect in the final product.

Joomla! Developer Conference

elin.waring@opensourcematters.org (Elin Waring ) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:38:05 +0000

The first ever Joomla! Developer conference is December 5 and 6 in New York City. Seating is limited so you should register now. The conference will focus on working with Joomla 1.6 and is oriented towards extension developers. Speakers include: Louis Landry, Sam Moffatt, Andrew Eddie, Ian MacLennan, and Hannes Papenberg.

A limited number of scholarships are available. These will only cover admission to the conference, not travel or lodging. The final day for scholarship requests is 12 noon New York time on November 4.

Please note that this conference assumes that you already have good working knowledge of Joomla! extension development and the Joomla API. It is appropriate for extension development firms, custom Joomla application developers, and in house Joomla development specialists.

Streaming is planned, so even if you can't come, you can watch.

Please note that hotel space in New York is very tight in December. It is extremely important that you make room reservations early; many hotels are already filled.

Joomla 1.6 Alpha 2 Released

ken.crowder@forum.joomla.org (Ken Crowder) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:09:53 +0000

The Joomla project is pleased to announce the immediate release of Joomla 1.6 alpha 2. This release contains many new features requested by the community; most notably, ACL. Other features are listed below as well as what you can expect in the future for Joomla 1.6.

This is an alpha release. It is intended to be a developer/hobbyist preview and is not intended to be used on a production web site.

Joomla Community Building - my view

brad.baker@joomla.org (Brad Baker) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:09:45 +0000

Of course, everyone has their own opinions on this subject, just like everyone has their own preferences on operating system, web browser etc. So, the following brief thoughts are just an expression of my opinion on this subject. BTW I prefer Mac OS, Firefox/Google Chrome

What prompted me to write this post?
Having recently (last weekend) attended the Sydney JoomlaDay and now preparing for the Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam JoomlaDay the subject of community is on my mind. Now that is out of the way.. here goes.

Everyone has their own expectations when it comes to their involvement with Joomla. Often, people ask me for my reasons, primarily I tell them "Joomla is a great platform to make a living upon". Perhaps you feel the same way, or not. I know some people are here to 'make a difference to the world' and I also respect their reasons for their involvement in the Joomla Community.

That being said, reflecting on the times when I feel most *among* the Joomla Community, it would have to be when attending a Joomla Event. Again, you may agree, or not. So, as I prepare for my own exciting trip to Vietnam to attend the Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam JoomlaDay I'm reminded that I'm going to once again rub shoulders with the Joomla Community, in the flesh.

If there is any Joomla Community building or grassroots effort to improve things, I'd have to say, at these events such as JoomlaDay's as well as Joomla User Groups (JUGS) meetings is where it will have to begin.

So, in conclusion: Whatever your reason for being here, if you want to share that reason, help make a difference, or just increase your contacts with the Joomla Community, be sure to come along and attend a Joomla Event sometime.

I'd also just like to add, it's always a pleasure to get together with people like Andrew Eddie and Sam Moffatt who also attended the Sydney JoomlaDay along with a large number of others. When it comes to ensuring the Joomla Project codewise is sound, and driving ahead, these are the kinds of people who deserve our support. When was the last time you thanked someone like them?

There are a few more I'd like to mention by name (though I will obviously be forgetting some) who continue to be invaluable members of our community: Louis Landry, Chris Davenport, Elin Waring, Mark Dexter, Hannes (and all the other devs working hard on 1.6) all the JED and JRD Editors, the tireless hardworking forum moderators, as well as the people like Paul and Airton who help to look after this very site. There are scores of humble people who you don't hear much from that do so much, like Wendy Robinson, Dave Huelsmann, Ryan Ozimek and Claire Mandville.. and many more who's names I know I've forgotten.

Lift your eyes just a little, and you see people doing similar things in the Joomla International Communities. When was the last time anyone thanked people like Jean-Marie Simonet (JM) for their efforts? This guy's a trooper who continues to devote himself to Joomla. I think I could go on, but hopefully you get the picture. If you call Andrew Mr Joomla, JM is surely Mr International Joomla (hopefully the Mr Joomla contest doesn't include a swimsuit part).

Ok, and now for the actual final conclusion: See you somewhere out there in the Joomla Community, on our forum etc, or even better at the next Joomla Event I attend, like in Ho Chi Minh City on November 1 2009 at the Vietnam JoomlaDay or next year at Melbourne JoomlaDay 2010.

The Most Popular Open Source CMS

elin.waring@opensourcematters.org (Elin Waring ) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:01:54 +0000

According to a report issued by CMSWire (registration required), the Joomla! community has created the world's most popular open source content management system. Congratulations to everyone who contributed to this: core developers, people who answer forum questions, team members, translators, site implementers, extension developers, template designers, Joomla fans and everyone else who helps make Joomla the great platform that it is.

Millions of people around the world use Joomla everyday to communicate and collaborate. How big is Joomla? In the past month the joomla.org websites had about 5 million visitors from 230 countries. In the Elance Work Index Joomla! is the top ranked application in jobs offered and at oDesk Joomla jobs have doubled in the last year. There have been over three million downloads since June.

The report contains lots of interesting information compiled by Water and Stone. Statistics include everything from downloads to books published to social media mentions. Joomla! lead in many but there is definitely room for improvement on some. This year's report included a small web survey of just over 600 self selected individuals. Although it is always hard to know how to interpret surveys like this, the results did show room for improvement in that a surprisingly high number of respondants reporting having a negative impression. Not that Joomla is anywhere near the worst on that, but it's below four other CMS on this. Social media mentions of Joomla were also lower expected on some metrics, but some of that may be due to the Joomla.org forums being excluded from the analysis.

All in all the report makes for interesting reading with both plenty to smile about but also room to improve. It is great to have this external acknowledgment of the accomplishments of the Joomla Community.

Joomla Connect Feeds Hit with a Hammer

clare.mandville@community.joomla.org (Claire Mandville) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:02:34 +0000

There have been several non joomla.org blog posts about the current situation of the feed content appearing in Joomla Connect.
To this end, without giving several URLs to the many blog posts appearing questioning why their posts have been removed and in some cases dropped altogether, here are some reasons.

So far I have taken a step back approach to (mostly spam) reports on the Joomla Connect Feed. However I and many others will now be a bit more vigorous on the feeds and posts.

Those that don't comply with the terms of carrying the feed and posts will be removed.

Joomla Projecting

ron.severdia@community.joomla.org (Ron Severdia) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 07:55:06 +0000

If you've been following the developments lists (or even if you haven't), you've noticed a flurry of activity around Joomla 1.6 in recent months. While we haven't been very good about keeping our milestones, there are a few very good reasons for that.

The first and biggest reason is we've been trying to shoot at a moving target. The scope for Joomla 1.6 was pretty basic—adding ACL and nested categories. Had we stopped there, we could have theoretically had Joomla 1.6 out by now. But while working on it, we and others in the community have been constantly saying to ourselves "wouldn't it be really friggin' cool if Joomla had...?" This kind of scope creep happens all the time in the real world, and there's a propensity to go overboard when our hands aren't forced on a specific deadline. There's always that "one last thing" we can squeeze in.

Secondly, it's the fallacy that "this will only take a few minutes to implement." Many developers (and not just developers) often fall victim to the notion that a task will be short, only to discover that it's more complex under the surface than initially thought. Minutes quickly turn into days or even weeks. It's human nature.

Third of all, there's a feeling that if something doesn't go in now, it won't go into the Joomla core for years to come. We have a pretty progressive roadmap for the next versions of Joomla and we'll try to keep a regular pace of development. Since Joomla progress is primarily determined by its contributors, the pace will be commensurate with such. So while this isn't true, some have the feeling it is.

In the past, we've had some false starts and sometimes been unclear about direction or needs, but we hope to be better at it. The Joomla Project has taken a lot of criticism during it's relatively short existence, which, deserved or not, comes with the territory. But, all in all, we're all working towards a common goal of making the next version of Joomla as powerful, extensible, and compatible as it can be.

If you work with Joomla, you know full well that the community is pretty vocal about the things they like and don't like. Joomla events are prime occasions where we receive feedback on what's working for people and what isn't. There may not always be an answer to every issue, but we do listen.

Essentially, the process of working on Joomla 1.6 is where all of this activity comes together—all those emails, forum discussions, Joomla Days, and other random "ingredients" of information go into a giant bubbling cauldron and soon becomes (hopefully) the tastiest soup you've ever eaten. Decisions are made based on what ingredients we can combine and recommending against others that won't taste good (or even spoil the stew). All is done with a keen eye on the quality of the end-product—it has to look good and taste good.

At this time, the bubbling cauldron of Joomla 1.6 is getting near time for us all to get our first good taste. We've added the ACL, nested categories work, a new Article Manager is written, new core libraries like JForm have been added, and we're working on fresh new templates for both the front-end and the back-end. We're also working on a way to make upgrading from Joomla 1.5 as painless as possible. So, in order to get a round of solid feedback from the community, we're looking to release a second Alpha very soon and follow up with a quick Beta after that.

So please be patient.

Joomla Resources Directory Clean Up

wendy.robinson@forum.joomla.org (Wendy Robinson) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:27:24 +0000

Greetings from the JRD Editorial Team,

The Joomla! Resources Directory has seen some excellent growth since it's inception back in June of this year.

We started out with an overwhelming response from community members to help us 'test drive' the new site and then an absolute FLOOD of listing submissions when we launched the site for public use. This proposed a few problems. Mainly, there's only 4 of us active in the editorial team. Don't get me wrong, we work great as a team but that initial workload for four volunteers with full time lives was trying for all of us and especially for the many
patient people waiting to have their listings approved.

Joomla!Day Mongolia a Great Success

ryan.ozimek@opensourcematters.org (Ryan Ozimek) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:26:54 +0000

In great showing of success, the large auditorium in Ulan Bator's IT Park held a great crowd of Joomla! users from across the city for the first ever Joomla!Day Mongolia. With leadership of the day's events by Mr. T. Altansukh and the Mongolian translation team, this event had much great news to celebrate.

The day's events kicked off with a terrific guest speaker, B. Dolgor, Head of the Cabinet Secretariat for the Mongolian government. She reminded the room of an amazing statistic: nearly the entire Mongolian federal government is now running a Joomla Web site!

Later in the day, the Mongolian Joomla translation team was able to show off their 2 years of hard work, completely translating both the front-end and back-end of Joomla into Mongolian.

Check out the Joomla!Day Mongolia slideshow and an interview of me by a Mongolian television station!

Key to my goals for attending this event was to ensure that the Joomla project had a strong focus on expanding its efforts for outreach into the Mongolia, a vibrant community that's excited to take on new challenges in the technology and policy worlds with Joomla.

I'm happy to report that this goal was met and exceeded!

The Joomla!Day event itself included a variety of presenters and topics, including:

Role of ICTA in providing low-cost Mongolian language IT solutions
Role of EPRC/USAID and international cooperation
Open Source software: Philosophy and licensing requirements
Introduction of Joomla! 1.5 Mongolian language package
Demonstration of websites and portals using Joomla! 1.5 Mongolian language package
Joomla’s availability, licensing requirements, distribution, technical resources
General discussion, questions and answers

On the second day of events, Mr. Altansukh lead a full room through a complete guided training of Joomla, utilizing their new Mongolian language package.

Many thanks to Mr. Altansukh and the rest of the Mongolian translation team, as well as to EPRC/USAID for their continued support of the Joomla project.

Check out the Joomla!Day Mongolia slideshow

I'm looking forward to seeing continued success in the Mongolian community, and I'm excited to share the lessons learned from the Mongolian on their huge success with the Mongolian Federal government.