Joomla News

Last year at the Joint Leadership Summit (JLS) (in San Jose, California from July 29-31, 2011) we've discussed about our project’s leadership structure (see this blog post: Proposed Leadership structure changes & request for community feedback).

A proposal for a new Joomla project structure was made by Alan Langford, Javier Gomez, Jeremy Wilken, Peter Martin and Christine Graf and is available at Google Docs.

An Infographic of this proposed project structure was made by Themepartner.

To comment and discuss this blog, please visit the JPeople site at http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/1485-proposal-for-a-new-joomla-project-structure.html?groupid=714

The Registered Joomla User Group team are pleased to announce that we are making some changes to enhance the relationship between the team and JUG coordinators.
 
* We have made a gallery page for the people in the team know who we are and what their special skills are.

* We are tweaking the JUG directory to ensure it stays up to date and is easier to handle that includes removing the deadwood and locating JUGs who have lost their way a bit.

* The rules are being translated to native languages similar to the German and Spanish ones already made. If you can assist in any way, please let us know.

* We will organise a regular JUG news spots and ask groups to have a general round up in the Registered JUG Google group. We suggest all sign up with the group,

Other behind the scenes improvements are :

* Have an ideal  7 day response limit from application to approval. (But this is not possible in all cases).

* Update and rebuild the JUG welcome pack
 
Thanks for reading and commenting in the people.joomla.org group .

Liam
 

 
 

MTV is one of the few TV channels that is truly famous around the world. Broadcasting in over 60 countries, MTV has has had a profound impact on the music industry and popular culture.

MTV recently re-launched their website in Greece using the power of Joomla: http://www.mtvgreece.gr.

Greetings, Community

Welcome to another Google Summer of Code (TM) (GSoC) update from the team! Back in March we were honored to be told by Google that we had made the list and that the Joomla project was accepted into the Google Summer of Code program this year.

Yesterday Google announced the eight students accepted to Google Summer of CodeTM for Joomla.  We’re excited about the projects these students have proposed and most of all about having these developers participate in the Joomla development community.

• Javier Gómez: Language Installation for the CMS
• Lucas Tiago De Castro Jesus: Language Translation Extension
• Aaron Schmitz: Google API
• Diana Prajescu: Facebook API
• Florian Voutzinos: Workflow API
• Kavith Thiranga Lokuhewage: JS / CSS Compression API -
• Prasath Nadarajah: MediaWiki API
• Stefan Neculai: Web Services API

The next few weeks are going to be key for the student’s success in the program. Mentors and students will be working together closely to formulate plans that will guide them through the rest of the summer. Students will be learning how to work with the development infrastructure and studying the Joomla APIs and design patterns.

The students have already been participating in fixing bugs and on the development mailing lists.

The community can get involved in helping and assisting the students by joining our mailing list, giving them feedback on development mailing lists, and following the work in their github repositories. Although the students are going to be taking their direction from mentors, input and advice from the development community at large will be very helpful and is an essential part of the open source development process.

These students were chosen from among more than 50 applicants, and choosing the final projects was very challenging. Thank you to all of the students who applied and community members who submitted project ideas and provided feedback to students.

Joomla! is one of 180 open source projects participating in Google Summer of Code 2012.  We appreciate Google’s support of student work in open source projects.

Last week we gave you a glimpse of a possible new design for Joomla 3.0.

To recap some of the key points:

• Kyle Ledbetter and his Joomla Usability team ( http://ux.joomla.org ) are redesigning Joomla using Twitter Bootstrap ( http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap ).
• Making Joomla 3.0 mobile-ready is a very high priority.
• The release of Joomla 3.0 is still over five months away and much work is still to be done. What you see here are ideas, but only ideas so far. Look for more information as work progresses.
• Head over to http://ux.joomla.org if you want to get involved.

Joomla 3.0 is due in September and the team have been hard at work bringing the next era of Joomla to life.

One of the most important changes will be an overhaul of Joomla's design. Both the visitor and administrator areas are being redesigned from top-to-bottom.

The next web revolution will be the mobile revolution. As hundreds of millions more people come online, many of them will only be using mobile devices. Our aim is make Joomla 3.0 completely mobile-friendly, while still remaining recognizably Joomla.

Kyle Ledbetter and his Joomla Usability team ( http://ux.joomla.org ) are redesigning Joomla using Twitter Bootstrap. Twitter describes Bootstrap as being: "an extensive front-end toolkit for developing web sites and applications." Using Boostrap allows Joomla to create a mobile-ready experience based on a hugely popular framework that many other developers and designers already know and love. You can find the offical Bootstrap project homepage at http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap.

The release of Joomla 3.0 is still over five months away and much work is still to be done, but here are some teaser shots of where things are today. Look for more information as work progresses and head over to http://ux.joomla.org if you want to get involved.

De acuerdo a la Wikipedia, FLISoL, Acrónimo para Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre, es el evento simultáneo de Software Libre más grande de Latinoamérica. Se presenta en todos los países latinoamericanos y en él se habla acerca de Software Libre desde 2005. En 2008, más de 200 ciudades de 18 países participaron en la FLISoL.

According to Wikipedia, FLISoL, an acronym for Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre (Latin American free software install fest), is the biggest event for spreading Software Libre since 2005, performed simultaneously in different countries of Latin America. In 2008, more than 200 cities from 18 countries of Latin America participated on a FLISoL.

In mid-2011, the Production Leadership Team (PLT) announced a new release cycle for the Joomla CMS.  Rather than a "feature-based" release, which could take years for a new version to be released, the PLT chose a "time-based" release strategy.  Additionally, a new version numbering system was adopted to provide standardization to the versions.  If you are unfamiliar with this, or simply don't understand it fully, I recommend reading Mark Dexter's article in the Joomla Community Magazine this month.  The PLT's development strategy makes it clear that new versions will be released every 6 months and explains the goals behind this strategy.  The JED supports this strategy, however it has been a learning experience with new versions being released so quickly in comparison to the former release method.

Currently, you will see the version badges on listings for 1.5, 1.6, 1.7 and 2.5.  While this isn't ideal, it has helped developers and users incrementally move to the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version (2.5.4).  This cycle (from 1.5 to 2.5) has given the CLT the opportunity to review, in real-life, how the new cycle affects adoption rates on both Short Term Support (STS) and LTS versions and how best to adapt the JED to these new changes.  

The following outlines the way versions will be handled in the JED:

LTS versions will be listed in the directory for 180 days (6 months) after End of Life (EOL).

STS versions will NOT be listed in the directory, instead a "Series" will included both STS and LTS versions - which means that starting with version 3.0 you will see a badge for "Joomla 3x Series" and developers, if they mark that version as available on their listing, will need to ensure that the extension is compatible with the latest release of the series.

This means....

Version 1.5 - Will be listed in the directory for 6 months after it's EOL.

Version 1.6 - Will be removed (see below for more details)

Version 1.7 - Will be removed (see below for more details)

Version 2.5 - Will be listed in the directory for 6 months after it's EOL.

Joomla 3x Series - Will be listed in the directory for 6 months after the EOL of the LTS version in the series (version 3.5)

What happens with 1.6 and 1.7 badges?

The versions of 1.6 and 1.7, still currently in the directory, will be removed as of April 30, 2012.  There are still a substantial amount of listings that have not marked 2.5 compatibility and the JED would like to give these developers an opportunity to get caught up.  If you have a listing that isn't marked as 2.5 compatible but is marked as 1.6/1.7 compatible, you have until the end of the month to mark 2.5 compatibility

As of April 1, 2012, the JED will only accept listings that are compatible with the latest Joomla STS Version (2.5).  You may still mark the extension as 1.5 compatible, but no 1.5, 1.6, 1.7-only listings will be accepted any longer.

What happens with pending listings that are not 2.5 compatible?

These listing submissions will recieve an error code and won't be published until a 2.5 version is available and marked/uploaded on the listing.  Please remember that if you mark both 1.5 and 2.5 compatible icons, you must attach both versions to the listing and the download link must point to a page that includes both downloads.

To comment and discuss this blog, please visit the JPeople site at http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/1473-the-jed-and-version-support.html?groupid=714

We introduced the one-click update in Joomla! 1.7. When it worked, it was marvelous. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as robust when it came up against all the various hosting situations and differently configured systems. Many people turned to Nicholas Dionysopoulos’ AdminTools to do their updates.

We are happy to announce that with Joomla 2.5.4, we have added a new core component, Joomla! Update, that Nicholas wrote based on his experience dealing with updating across a wide variety of hosts with his Akeeba Backup, Kickstart and AdminTools. Once you have the component installed, you will be able to use it for the next release. So all of you who update to 2.5.4 will be able to use it to update to 2.5.5.

This component will also let you decide whether you want to continue getting updates for the 2.5.x long term support release or jump up to the newest 3.0.0 short term release when it comes out in September. See the section on Options for details.

Open Source Matters (OSM) is entrusted with providing organizational, legal, and financial support for the Joomla! project. You can find out more about the organization at http://www.opensourcematters.org.

Given those responsibilities, and the recent departure of two long-serving board members, and the OSM officer changes resulting in the election of the Treasurer to President, the decision has been made to expand the board once more.

We are looking for your nominations for new OSM board members.

We acknowledge that the greater worldwide Joomla! community can help us a lot in this election process, and make us aware of potential candidates we may overlook.

Nomination Information

We are looking for up to three new board members. Useful areas of experience and expertise include:

• Accounting, bookkeeping or financial
• Legal or trademark
• Organizational or managerial skills
• Non-profit organizations
• Fund-raising
• PR and Marketing
• Education or certification development work
• Events planning and support

Nomination Criteria

We are looking to recruit the very best and the brightest members in the Joomla! community.

Some of the criteria that will be used when evaluating nominations include:

• Community: the nominee should have a strong track-record of successfully collaborating with, enabling others and earning the respect of the Joomla! community.
• Character: the nominee should have proven themselves a person of high character, with a history of acting honestly, fairly and openly when in leadership roles.
• Experience and Expertise: if the nominee is being proposed for a specific role, they should have strong experience and expertise in that area.
• Success: the nominee should be able to point to a history of success and leaving previous roles in a better state than when they arrived.
• Diversity: to work towards gender balance and geographical diversity, we are committed to seeking nominations from talented members of the Joomla! community who are female and / or are fluent speakers of languages other than English.

Nomination Schedule

• Nominations close: April 11
• Appointments announced: April 25
  

Joomla! 2.5 was released in January of this year and the stable version is now available to download at joomla.org. New features including automatic notifications of core Joomla! and extension updates and a powerful internal indexer and search function have brought a new realm of usability and functionality for both site administrators and users.

What you may not know is that there is a free training webinar outlining the 24 new features, and, more specifically, the core Joomla! multilingual functions available in Joomla! 2.5. One of the things that Joomla! focused on with this release is the internationalization of websites and encouraging users and website owners to create sites that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. One of the biggest barriers to that is language accessibility. The Joomla! Community has tackled that head on with the new and refined Language Manager and other multilingual capabilities now available in Joomla! 2.5.

What We’ve Done

It is an incredible honor to be a part of the team that helped bring Google Summer of Code (GSoC) back into the Joomla community for 2012. This year, the Joomla community is certainly shaping up to be an exciting one. We’ve had Joomla 2.5, undoubtedly the most advanced and functional version of the CMS released early this year. On top of that, the community has been able to get their hands on yet-another top-notch OSM president who will continue to bring new energy, ideas, and direction to Joomla’s legal entity.

On Friday, March 16th, around 2:00pm EST I got the email. Google had approved Joomla’s application. We were in. We waited about an hour to make sure it wasn’t a dream and to fill out our Google-Melange profile. Then, the social-media-sphere took over. Tweets, Skype messages, and Facebook comments all started to pile in congratulating us. The team, had they been able to, would’ve clinked glasses of champagne at the news. It was a big, exciting moment, and I’m honored, and proud to have been a part of it.

The Road Ahead

Now that we’re in, the real work is about to begin. Running the program is going to take a lot more effort, and that’s the road we face now. The work that students will be doing for the Joomla program won’t stop here. The mentoring they receive will travel with the student wherever they go. Future education, and future jobs - the student will get a lot from the program.

Get Involved

The next Joomla Roadmap Meeting is being held as part of the J and Beyond conference that is taking place May 18-20 in Bad Nauheim, Germany. Ideally, we'd like to come out of the meeting with some tangible accomplishments, but we recognise that may not be possible given the time constraints. More important is to bring people together to bounce ideas around and to form groups that will work to bring particular features into Joomla.

To encourage features to be brought forward in a timely and organised process we would like to see those people with an interest in promoting a major feature or change get together in a team under the Production Working Groups banner.

If you are interested in helping with a feature for Joomla 3.x, whether or not you can come to the Joomla Roadmap Meeting at J and Beyond, please fill out the Joomla Roadmap Meeting: Production Working Group form and let us know.

Thanks to everyone who helped with squishing bugs and writing documentation this weekend at the Joomla Pizza, Bugs, and Fun global party. Volunteers from around the world helped to commit, or make ready to commit, over 30 bug fixes. Work was done on another 70 trackers. We'll post graphs shortly showing the work that was done.

A number of people tackled the documentation, fixing, updating and adding to the information available at docs.joomla.org. You can see a list of the recent changes at http://docs.joomla.org/Special:RecentChanges

Thanks for all the time and effort you put into making Joomla a better product and in giving back to the project.

To comment or discuss this post, go to http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/1456-discussion-on-thanks-to-all-who-gave-back-at-the-joomla-pizza-bugs-and-fun.html?groupid=713

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?

Hi Paul,

Congratulations! You’ve been elected to a key leadership role in one of the world’s most successful open source projects. This is going to be a fun ride, I promise. Okay, it might not always be “fun”, but I can promise you that it will be one of the most memorable jobs you’ll ever take. And yes, I did label it a “job”.

As you get started, I thought I’d share some lessons I’ve learned from my two years as President, and five years as an OSM board member. Take the advice as you see fit. Ignore some of it, absorb some of it. Heck, many times, I didn’t follow my own advice, and I can assure you that it often lead to less-than-successful conclusions. Don’t be me. Be better than me by learning from my challenges.

Just know that each of these morsels of advice has an hour-long background story to it, so if you’re looking for more details, grab me a drink and we can chat. I’ll take a Pacifico, if you’re asking.

• This leads me to my first point, and a critical one at that for any OSM President: be prepared to drink quite a bit. As you know, the Joomla community likes to have a good time, and when they’re having a good time, they’d like to sit down and share ideas with you. This is awesome. I remember going to the first J and Beyond and running a marathon of meetings. Of course, this also means they’ll likely want to grab a drink with you. This will continue many times during each Joomla event you attend, so start training now.
• While it’s not appropriate to sleep during a presentation at an event, it’s perfectly reasonable to sleep between sessions, outside on lawns, in taxis, and anywhere else you can get some shut-eye between chats. I’ve found using empty plastic water bottles can make exceptional pillows. Feel free to ask me for more travel advice as needed.
• After taking in all the information you think is appropriate to make a decision, do what you believe is right and move forward. You’ve been selected for this position by your peers to lead them, and more often than not, you’ll be walking into new or unknown territory. It’s okay if not everyone is happy with your decision, but making a decision is more important than making everyone happy.
• Support the continued internationalization of the project, in every way possible.
• Delegate as much as possible by empowering those around you, but when you do, make sure to ask the delegates if they have time for the role. Nothing is worse than the fun of reading an email from someone you just volunteered for a position they didn’t want.
• The clearer the role, the more likely its outputs will meet your goals and lead to higher levels of satisfaction by volunteers. More satisfied volunteers mean a more productive project. A more productive project means you’ve accomplished a slice of your job. Quickly smile to yourself, and move on to your hundred other things to tackle.
• Setting measurements and metrics before assigning responsibilities and tasks are critical components to volunteers’ success. Remembering that everyone supporting Joomla is doing so voluntarily will help you in setting appropriate measures of success.
• There’s only so far we’re going to be able to take OSM and Joomla leadership without hiring staff. I think we’re actually already beyond a point of volunteer comfort for some roles office roles within OSM. Push forward a discussion on deciding the best route forward for OSM and Joomla that recognizes the limits of a purely volunteer team and balancing that against a focus on effectiveness. I believe Joomla’s leadership can be more effective if certain office roles have paid-staff to support them.
• Remember that all of this is supposed to be fun. If you’re not having fun, find ways to make it fun. Start by realizing your predecessor took the stage at every Joomla event with a three-foot tall inflatable penguin. The bar has been set very low, so I suspect you’ll have no problem bringing your own sense of fun to keep everyone on their toes.
• Within your first few weeks, have a one-on-one voice conversation with every member of the Leadership Team. Spend the time listening to their ideas and opinions, and open a line of communication. Their views on the project’s next steps should help you craft your own direction for OSM. Plus, they all have great personal stories that will give you insight on the pure awesome opportunity we have to bring all these talents together to better the community.
• The President serves the community. This role is different than other volunteer opportunities within the project. You’re both a leader and a servant of the greatest open source community. Be vigilant of the needs of the community, while recognizing you serve at the pleasure of the COC.
• Spend the majority of your communication time listening. Go out of your way at Joomla events to have as many one-on-one discussions as possible, and while there, ask as many questions as possible. Not only will this enable you to make more informed leadership decisions, but it will also save your voice.
• During OSM board meetings, lead by getting out of the way. Consider your opinion to be the least important during discussions. Start discussions by encouraging others to share their thoughts before sharing yours.
• Set the level of decorum you wish to maintain in meetings early. It will serve you well when times are tough, especially during passionate and difficult conversations.
• We’ve spent the last two years saving money and building a strong reserve. Now it’s time to spend it wisely. Gain consensus and move forward building the next generation of leadership structures.
• Fill roles that are well-defined. Don’t create positions just so people can have titles. Aim to build task lists not teams. All the above will help avoid the politics that too often troubles open source projects.
• Push forward the discussion on the critical leadership changes needed for the project to reach its next level of success. See it through to either success or failure, but don’t let the discussion end without aiming for a decisive decision.
• Burritos. Eat lots of burritos. That’s obvious.
• Have the team start working on next year’s budget now (February). While you’re at it, start working on the following year’s budget now too. It’s going to take a while, trust me. Wait, you already know that.
• Support an increased of investment in Joomla events, especially in countries that have not already hosted a Joomla!Day.
• Aim to increase regional diversity on the OSM board by including a member of the board from South America. Aim to increase gender diversity on the OSM board and encourage more women to apply for board positions. Both efforts can help the board better reflect the needs of the community.
• Lead the effort to continue making it easier for the community to leverage our brand to spread the word about this terrific project.
• Keep legal costs as low as possible, but not at the determent of the project’s assets. We have terrific lawyers that provide great advice, but at the end of the day, OSM’s mandate is to make the appropriate legal decisions taking in a number of factors. A balanced approach is useful.
• Use legal tools as necessary, but aim to use diplomatic channels before legal routes. Every dollar spent on legal procedures is a dollar that could have otherwise be spent on a community event, evangelism, etc. Keep the opportunity cost in mind.
• The Joomla project has a few very valuable assets. One of those is the trademark. Protect it. Like legal advice, however, there is a realm of diminishing returns on investment and opportunity cost. Keep both in mind when deciding where to invest the project’s money.
• As tempting (and fun) as they might be, drop your other Joomla responsibilities. Being OSM President is going to take focus, and buckets of it. You won’t be able to achieve all that you want as President without giving it all your energy.
• Set your term’s vision and values early, and be as consistent as possible in communicating it to the community and the Leadership Team. Simpler the better. You get to lead in setting the tone for OSM, so do so wisely and clearly.
• Talking about communicating your values, I still think a focus on transparency, empowerment, and accountability are key items that can use improvement across OSM. It’s a never-ending job, so I’d appreciate it if you kept pushing that forward.
• If re-elected, serve only two years. Always keep your eyes opened for potential successors, and be inclusive in your decision making processes to help spread the knowledge for the next potential President.
• People outside the community will try to force you into taking opinions about how Joomla stacks up against other open source projects in an effort to have you say something derogatory about another project. Don’t fall for the trap. Take the high road.
• Attend as many Joomla events as possible, but don’t believe that you need to be a road warrior to make an impact.
• Don’t sacrifice your personal and work life for Joomla.
• Don’t try to fill anyone else’s shoes, especially mine. They’re size 12.5 narrow, they stink, and they’re likely not going to fit you anyway. Fill your own shoes and lead with your own style.
• Work to build stronger relationships with our Joomla communities in Africa and Asia. Amazing work is being done in these regions, and their involvement in our community is critical to our success moving forward.
• Take a lesson from tai chi: deflect negative energy, don’t fight it head on. The people sending you negative energy likely have more time on their hands than you, so you’ll never get ahead...and likely never please them. Take the morsels of lessons learned from the criticism and move on. Sending positive energy is what you’re all about now.
• That said, don’t ignore constructive criticism. Don't let it get personal.  Every critical comment on your work is free focus group feedback. Consider it an opportunity for you to set the bar higher.
• Family, friends, and work all come before Joomla. Repeat that over and over in your head.
• When you’re having a tough day, remember this: you’re serving one the greatest open source projects ever created.  You’re an integral part of the best success story for collaborative leadership in the software world...possibly the technology world as a whole. Your work is making Joomla a better community.
• I’m here to help whenever you need it. Put me on your speed-dial. Sometimes it might feel lonley, but you're not alone.

You’re going to do a great job. The community and your teammates are here to help you be successful.  Blaze a new trail!  I've got your back.

In Joomla! we rock,
Ryan Ozimek
OSM President, 2010-2012

We are announcing a Joomla! Pizza Bugs and Fun event scheduled for Saturday, March 3, 2012. The event is global for virtual participants with local venues where ever they are organized. We squashed a lot of bugs last month, but as more people use a new release, we always find more. We'll also have documentation ready to be worked on.

Con el lanzamiento de Joomla! 2.5, la comunidad de usuarios ha puesto un gran énfasis en que la instalación del CMS y el proceso de gestión de cambios sean tan simples y directos como sea posible.

Esto permitirá a los usuarios migrar más fácilmente y con frecuencia a la última versión de Joomla!, y aprovechar todas las ventajas de seguridad asociadas con el funcionamiento del nuevo código. Creemos que los usuarios Joomla! de todo el mundo agradecerán realmente este nuevo proceso.

Comience ahora mismo:

• Descargar Joomla! 2.5
• Joomla! 2.5 - Anuncio de lanzamiento
• Nuevas características en Joomla! 2.5
• Joomla! 2.5 - Historial de cambios y detalles
• Nuevas caracteŕisitcas en comparación con Joomla! 1.5

The Joomla Project’s latest CMS release includes a release of the project’s PHP Framework: Joomla Platform. In 2010 the project made plans to officially decouple the core of Joomla (now the Platform) from the CMS. This allows site implementers to utilize both the full featured CMS, and as well as allow developers to use the light but powerful Joomla Platform core to power web applications.
The Joomla 2.5 CMS release includes notable features that until now have been available only to those developers who have been using the Joomla Platform as a stand alone application. Among others, some of my favorites are:

• JWeb
• JImage
• JWebClient
• JGrid

Joomla 2.5 is right around the corner. For those of you who want to blog about the launch, talk with your customers or update your extension / template information, here are some resources you can use: