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Joomla! in the Press/Media - July 2010
Welcome to Joomla! in the Press/Media. You will find links and short descriptions of where you can read recent articles about Joomla! in the Press and Media. Besides current mentions of Joomla!, we will take a “look back” into the history of the Joomla! project in future issues.
Media Links
- Source: CMS Wire – This article is about the “J and Beyond” conference that took place in Wiesbaden Germany May 30 - June 1, 2010. This was the 1st international conference organized by the Joomla! community.
- Source: Small Business Trends – This article takes a look at the E-Commerce options available for Small Business. Many options for various solutions, with VirtueMart using Joomla! being one of those options.
- Source: Netribution – A few months ago I downloaded an open source add-on for Joomla!, the (free) software that powers Netribution. So impressed was I after half an hour of using it that I checked out some of the add-ons available for it.
- Source: CMS Wire – Welcome to the June installment of our what's coming from the open source projects in the next month.
- Source: PRWeb – Acute Long Term Hospital Association launches a new website to promote client engagement and boost its hospital advocacy services.
- Source: The H Open – IBM has a new open source project for its TranslationManager/2 (TM/2) translation environment that integrates with Joomla!.
- Source: Boosh News – Joomla! is an popular solution for managing website content and appearance.
- Source: CMS Wire – The Joomla! open source content management system is nearing its first big release in over two years. To whet your appetite, you can now check out Joomla! 1.6 beta.
- Source: Smashing Magazine – This article explores the main difference in the mental models: of WordPress and Joomla for theming and extending their core.
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Source: PRLog – IP2Location.com, the leading provider of IP geolocation, today announced the release of July 2010 databases and the IP2Location™ Visitor Location & Weather Extension Module for Joomla!.
- Source: ZDNet – Microsoft has signed the contributor agreement for Joomla, one of the biggest PHP-based open-source applications.
- Source: The Open Press – Silver Touch Technologies Limited, the IT solution provider specializing in Mobile Application Development in CMS by making use of Joomla, is expanding its empire.
- Source: PRNewswire – Mitch Pirtle, core Joomla! developer, is named chief technology officer by TOTSY, the private sale site exclusively dedicated to delivering deals on coveted must-haves for moms and children.
- Source: The H Open – New server cluster manager for companies running large-scale PHP applications developed in-house or based on PHP projects, such as Joomla!
 
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Doctoring Joomla!
In an exam room with my doctor, I tell him, “It hurts when I snap my fingers this way.” My doctor replies, “stop snapping your fingers that way.” Ah, yes the obvious. Jokes aside, intelligent people, like doctors, break down hard problems into simple steps that don't seem obvious at first. I then proceed to ask him, “I think I need a second opinion, can your system just send over my records?” My doctor looks puzzled. I think to myself, “All those years of medical school and he doesn't know how to send over my records?” Where has the intelligence gone?
About a decade ago, I was given an assignment to work on a healthcare project. Back then, web based tools were emerging. And combining healthcare data with web technologies were at an infancy. As the years past, I become involved in companies that were ahead of their time taking advantage of the web to distribute healthcare data to those that needed it. But again, we were ahead of our time. Web based adoption in the healthcare industry felt like .001%.
In the US, with its private healthcare systems, physicians started to realize that they needed to market their practices on the web to attract patients in a competitive landscape. Using Joomla!’s predecessor, Mambo, I realized the best way to do this was to manage physician websites via its CMS.
For decades the healthcare data industry had worked in closed and proprietary caves. Although the industry did adopt some loose data standards, there were no regulations in sharing data. If a doctor wanted to send over my records, for that nagging finger, it was done through fax. If I wanted a copy of my records, it was photocopied. A paper wasteland of delays that in some cases caused death. Today, the needs of a physician’s practice are growing into more than just marketing. There’s a real need to transport and display medical data via the web. The biggest driver is the new Federal Stimulus HITECH act, commonly referred to as ‘Meaningful Use’. It’s a massive overhaul of healthcare information technology. Of particular interest are patient rights legislation for access to their medical data, also known as a personal health record (PHR).
As a Joomla! healthcare evangelist, I take data for granted. Yes, it’s not as simple as the snap of a finger. But it’s just easy to think of a world with Joomla! as the starting point for projects. l get that it’s powerful, free and open software. But Joomla! and its database take on a bigger meaning by easily molding that data for usable presentation. We’re moving away from a cosmetic ‘look and feel’ website model to one that functions as a set of applications working together under a common framework. With the era of Meaningful Use, the government mandates patient data be made accessible. The efficiency of the web makes it a viable delivery model in healthcare. The Joomla! framework is a good fit in healthcare because of its efficiency at presenting multiple applications under a unified management system. Joomla! will not replace existing medical software, but rather enable physicians to communicate with their patients, thus achieving a portion of the Meaningful Use requirements.
Joomla! developers and site builders should welcome these changes in healthcare. It’s easy for citizens to feel far removed from the workings of Washington D.C. but as with any government legislation, there are opportunities. A physician practice, especially smaller solo or a two to three physician group are not equipped to deal with the onslaught of requirements. That’s where Joomla! comes in. Unlike Drupal, which requires a higher level of expertise, or Wordpress, still deemed as a blogging system that lacks a framework, Joomla! has the advantage of easy ongoing maintenance for physician websites with a breadth of components to fill several needs at once. If you are considering a Joomla! deployment to physicians, here are just a few things to consider:
What to Expect
- Sell the SSL - Physicians come from a client-server world. For all the rhetoric of Microsoft security woes, having a database that runs locally, aside from an internal breech, is seen as far more secure for patient data. They’re use to owning their own data rather than subscribing to it. The concept of a hosted website for physicians is not new, however if Joomla! is used to manage any patient data, SSL is mandatory. As a rule of thumb, budget for SSL certs every time.
- Consenting Adults - Physicians rely on good old email SMTP for communication. Although the current legislation is working to adopt it as a portion of the patient communication model, it’s not covered under the 2003 HIPAA privacy act. Educate the use of Joomla! registered messaging in lieu of email exchanges between doctors and patients. The user registration process should include privacy disclaimers.
- Get My Message? - Physicians are used to managing problems by hiring more staff. A Joomla! based appointment system can take the place of having staff call each patient to remind them of their next appointment and transcribe voicemails to physicians.
- Mixed Up - Physicians are barely starting to see the power of enabling patient relationships from social media. For the most part it will take years. If you’re going to mix social media networks like Facebook with Joomla!, be aware that privacy laws are enforceable and that there are limitations as to what can and can not be communicated openly online.
- Lost in a Forrest - The use of paper in a physician practice is unsurmountable. The good news is that it’s slowly coming to an end. Joomla! can accelerate that process by enabling paper forms to go online. It’s best to manage form results via database than to only send emails for each submission which could be lost in the shuffle.
In general, healthcare poses some unique challenges mostly due to a lack of real standards and a slower than usual crawl to move to the web. Joomla! can easily fit into any healthcare environment like a swiss army knife.
Looking back, my doctor was never un-intelligent. He just didn’t have the right tools to find the simple steps to work through healthcare’s hard IT problems. Let’s make Joomla! the intelligent choice for a doctor’s office.
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Website Case Study: Joomla! Community Magazine
Basic website information
Website: JCM
Organization: The Joomla! Community Magazine is a monthly collection of Articles, News, Reviews and Tips about the award winning content management system, Joomla!. The JCM is staffed entirely by volunteers in the Joomla! community who are passionate about this open source software.
Organization URL: http://magazine.joomla.org
Developer: Komrade, a web development agency based in Athens, Greece, creates cutting-edge websites and web applications that balance usable, effective content presentation with strong visual style. Developer URL: http://www.komrade.gr
A New Beginning
One of the keys to the Joomla! Community Magazines resurgence is the community volunteers who have spent over 6 months planning and preparing for the relaunch. The idea resurfaced in a group discussion at All Together As A Whole, and really took off from there. Community Leadership Team member Paul Orwig was asked to step in as Lead Editor to revive the magazine, and then set out on a course to make that happen around October 2009.
When asked why the need for a magazine when there is a blog in place, Paul had this to say: "The JCM provides a structured platform to regularly deliver a variety of content of interest to the Joomla! community. Much of the type of content delivered by the JCM is not regularly available elsewhere in the joomla.org family of websites. In addition, the JCM provides an opportunity for all members of the Joomla! community to share what they have discovered, experienced, and accomplished with Joomla! in ways that will inform, educate, challenge, and inspire other members of the Joomla! community."
Fresh Look
From the very beginning, Fotis Evangelou of Komrade volunteered to head the design and development of the new site. Regarding initial conversations about the new site design, Paul said, "Komrade was able to view and participate in public preliminary general discussions about all aspects of the JCM which took place on All Together As A Whole. Komrade created a screenshot mockup based on these preliminary discussions. Komrade then revised the mockup a few times based on feedback from the joomla.org style and navigation standards." This second design was used to produce what you see here now.
Content Construction
As the topic of the discussion turned to work-flow, it was determined the magazine might be better suited with a 3rd party content component, and Komrade suggested the K2 component, which fits the bill perfectly. It offers multi-author, front- end article submissions with author bios, built-in tagging, unlimited nested categories and custom content fields. All of which are used extensively on the Joomla! Community Magazine Website.
Under the hood
This build is pretty solidly a vanilla Joomla! install with a few extensions that add some necessary features for this project: flexible content construction, a robust content editor, backup and some customization JCM needed to accommodate bringing new authors on board.
Some of the extensions used on JCM include:
- K2 Content Component
Out-of-the box integrated solution featuring rich content forms for items (think of Joomla! articles with additional fields for article images, videos, image galleries and attachments), nested-level categories, tags, comments, a system to extend the item base form with additional fields, a powerful plugin API to extend item, category and user forms, ACL, frontend editing, sub-templates and a lot more.
www.joomlaworks.gr/
- JCE Advanced Link Plugin for k2
Use JCE's advanced link feature in order to seamlessly link to K2 content items.
- Joomla! Content Editor
Add a set of tools to your Joomla!® environment that give you the power to create the kind of content you want, without limitations, and without needing to know or learn HTML, XHTML, CSS.
www.joomlacontenteditor.net
- K2 Custom Plugins
Komrade and Akeeba Backup both stepped up to provide custom plugins for the Joomla! Community Magazine Website. Komrade integrated a custom mail feature for editors to get notices when an article is submitted to their specific topic, while Nicholas Dionysopoulos helped with a JCE-K2 link building plugin.
www.akeebabackup.com/
www.komrade.gr/
- GTranslate Module
Edvard Ananyan's GTranslate module is used to help translate the Joomla! Community Magazine into several different languages using the power of Google Translate. With the ever-growing international community that is Joomla!, it only made sense to make sure the magazine is presented in as many languages as possible.
http://edo.webmaster.am/gtranslate
Gaining Momentum
While the K2 component went through a rigorous security audit by Joomla! lead developer Andrew Eddie, the Joomla! Community Magazine set up a sub-forum at http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=573 to enlist a group of editors to staff the magazine. Topics were discussed and decided upon, and editors volunteered to staff the 18 different sections of the site in a matter of weeks. With just over 8 months of planning, design, development and content creation to get the project off the ground, that's a perfect example of a volunteer community coming together with the Joomla! project and it's 3rd party developers to bring a free and useful resource to Joomla! users everywhere.
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Did you know... that you can integrate Magento into your Joomla! site?
If you don’t know Magento™ you’ll probably be shrugging your shoulders by now. If you do, you will know that Magento is a feature-rich, professional open-source ecommerce platform. It's guaranteed to give you a whole new perspective on ecommerce and it will likely make existing Joomla!™ ecommerce extensions fade straight into the background upon first sight.
If you have ever worked with Magento before, you will know that it’s administrative backend is quite complex. While feature-richness is a desirable asset for any application, it usually comes with some drawbacks, and Magento – however well designed – is no exception to that rule. Configuring a more sophisticated website can take days with Magento. Operations that seem effortless in Joomla! can be a daunting task from within Magento’s administrator. And then there’s template customization - a process Magento developers refer to as ‘theming’. If you’ve ever had the pleasure to create a Joomla! template... well, it’s nothing like that. Instead, you have to squirm your way through dozens of xml, phtml and css files, and all in different locations.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could have all that wonderfully elaborate functionality of Magento cushioned inside the friendly usability of Joomla? This must have been the exact thought of Yireo, when they decided to write a Joomla! extension that does just so: MageBridge. As the name implies, MageBridge provides a bridge between Joomla! and Magento. MageBridge consists of both a Joomla! and a Magento extension. After installing the extension in both administrators all of Magento’s front-end content will feature inside your Joomla! site.
Usability
Magento’s entire catalogue configuration remains within the Magento back-end administrator, but all front-end rendering can now be manipulated through your Joomla! template. MageBridge allows you to link to all of the store-related functionality like Shopping cart, Customer Account, Login and Logout and Wish list from within the Joomla! Menu Manager. It also facilitates hot linking to specific products and categories so you can create the entire user interface through Joomla! which will prove to be an incredible time saver.
Modules
Magento’s content blocks – a feature similar to Joomla! modules – are also accessible to the Joomla! front-end. MageBridge shippes with a set of modules and plugins through which all Magento content is made accessible to Joomla. In fact, there is also a plugin that allows synchronization of Joomla! users and Magento account holders. Of course MageBridge is setup in such a way that these functionalities can – literally – be switched off individually should you not wish to make use of them.
Templates
Although templating for a MageBridge site is just as easy as it is for any Joomla! site, there is one drawback. Magento uses ProtoType as its JavaScript framework, whereas Joomla! uses MooTools. Like it or not, the two are incompatible. Although there are several ways to resolve the incompatibility (most of which are very labour intensive), the most practical solution is to simply switch off MooTools from within the MageBridge backend in Joomla – especially so since Magento’s shopping cart functionality relies heavily on ProtoType. When developing your template, you need to refrain from adding any MooTools based functionality. When you use third party based templates, you need to check that they do not make use of MooTools either. At the time of this article, the only known third party template that is 100% compatible with Magento is the Gantry driven ‘Quasar’ template by RocketTheme. Surely there are more to follow.
Learn to swim first
Although you may think you’re ready to dive straight in, you need to prepare yourself a little. Even though MageBridge takes away some of Magento’s more practical challenges (it’s even been said that it speeds Magento up a nodge) developing an ecommerce site with MageBridge requires a lot of planning. It also calls for at least some basic knowledge of Magento, including Magento theming. Also, you mustn’t underestimate the time involved in initial configuration of a new site. Luckily, both Magento as well as MageBridge are very well documented and Yireos support forum is very responsive should you run into difficulties.
Happy selling!
More info
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The Joomla! Setup
The Joomla! Setup is a series of interviews with developers in the Joomla! community, talking about the tools they use to get the job done, inspired by the setup. We kick the series off with one of the ‘old ones’ of the Joomla! community. Can you tell who it is?
Andrew Eddie: Wearer of Many Hats
Who are you and what do you do?
I’m Andrew Eddie and I turned the big four-zero this year. I started my professional life as a civil engineer and did that for about 10 years. In the background was a love of computers and programming that started when I was 13 when I was introduced to the Apple ][. I cut my gums on Apple Basic, but then learned Fortran and C in university. My final year thesis in engineering was writing a solids model for building wireframe meshes (to punch into structural analysis software). After that I taught myself C++ and when I landed a job as a web developer in 2000 I started to learn HTML and Perl, then PHP came along and I was in my element.
Right now I work partly for myself, doing Joomla! consulting and training, and partly for the Joomla! project itself, right now mainly working on the new Joomla! 1.6 release.
Apart from my love affair with programming, I am keenly interested in astronomy, in the origin of the universe and what makes it tick. Closely related to that is the involvement in my church. My wife is a pastor and we are planting a community church in our local area. Add three kids and a scotch collie and that’s me.
What hardware are you using?
I used to be an ardent PC guy, but through some misfortune (with the PC), I’m an Apple guy now. I’m on my second MacBook Pro (I upgrade hardware every 3 years) — the 2.53 Intel Core 2 Duo model with the stock 4 GB of RAM. I should have gone with the next model up with the extra video card because now I’m doing a lot of video work — ah, well, only 2 years to wait to upgrade again.
I’ve recently invested in a RODE Podcaster microphone for better recording and very happy with that. My office is starting to look like a recording studio.
Also have an iPhone 3GS and am very excited about the prospect of my current plan ending so I can upgrade to a 4. Not really interested in the iPad until it gets a forward facing camera. I can wait for gen 2 or 3 on that one.
And I also have a PC (I can’t remember the specs on it now) for the accounting software and games (cheaper than prozac).
And what software?
I've all the stock OSX stuff. I use iLife's iMovie and Garage Band heavily for video production in conjunction with iShowU and Stomp.
For development my main tools are Eclipse with phpEclipse (haven’t tried Helios yet nor the new PDT – was too heavy last I looked). I use Smultron for light file edits; Sequel Pro for database administration; DeltaWalker for file and folder diffs.
For business and productivity I use Keynote for presentations and Pages and Numbers on occasion. I generally use OpenOffice for document and spreadsheet heavy lifting. TimeLog is indispensable to track my billable hours. I use OmniOutliner for advanced note taking.
As for browsers, I’ve got Safari, Firefox and Chrome installed. Until recently I was on Firefox but I’ve moved to Safari since the release of 5.0. Firefox was just getting too heavy for me. Chrome is really nice but a bit buggy with the WYSIWYG editors still (not sure why).
What would be your dream setup?
I’ll need a PC and a Mac. For the PC I’ll need something good enough to run Lost Planet with settings maxed out (I’m not up with the Intel hardware anymore but it’s going to be a quad-core, 16 GB of RAM and probably dual video card with an obscene amount of memory).
I love laptops so I’d upgrade to the best 15" (17" is just a bit big)— the 2.66 Intel core i7, 8 meg of RAM, hi-res (1680x1050) anti-glare screen and the biggest cinematic Apple display there is. Then we’ll have to upgrade the actual office as well so I can deck it out with 5.1 surround sound.
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Community Leadership Team: Volunteer Profile-Airton Torres
The Joomla! Community Leadership Team has responsibility to manage the Joomla! forums, the Community website, the JCM, the Joomla! Resources Directory, the Joomla Extensions Directory, Joomla! Events, and Joomla! User Groups. For this issue’s article from the Community Leadership Team, we want to recognize Airton Torres and his significant volunteer contributions.
 Airton, please introduce yourself to our JCM readers.
My full name is Airton Vieira Torres. I was born in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais, Brazil. I have lived in the USA in the Boston area from May, 1989 to May, 1990. I now live in Votorantim, Sao Paulo, Brazil since 1995.
My family includes my wife Grisiela and my two sons Daniel, who is 21 years old, and Giovanni who is six years old.
I have attended college (Engineering classes), and I hold technical degrees in Chemistry, Electronics and Computer Science.
My current job is as a Telecommunications Technician working for the local Telecommunications Company (Telefonica). Before that I have 14 years experience as computer programmer and systems analyst working with many different computer languages, such asBasic, Cobol, Fortran, Pascal, Delphi, Dbase, and Clipper.
My hobbies are soaring (gliders) and creating web sites – with Joomla!, of course :-)
How did you first learn about Joomla!?
In 2006, my brother asked me to create a site for our flight club which I did using plain HTML and some JS. But we weren’t completely satisfied with the results and with how difficult it was to add new content. So, in 2007 I started looking for a simpler and more “automated” way to add content to the site, and got to know the term CMS. At that time I came across Joomla! and fell in love with it.
What caused you to decide to volunteer to help support the Joomla! project?
When I started working with Joomla! many doubts and issues showed up while creating my first site. I went to the official fora where I received such a warm reception and found so many thoughtful people willing to help me without asking for anything in exchange, that I decided to give back to the community whatever knowledge I could get about Joomla!, and to help wherever I could.
What different areas of the Joomla! project have you volunteered for, and what areas are you currently involved with?
I started with the fora, where I’m still active. I also volunteered to join the Joomla! Bug Squad, where I’m currently a Testing Team Leader together with Marijke Stuivenberg, I’m also share the Webmaster position at the Joomla! Community website with Paul Orwig. I’ve been recently invited – and have accepted the invitation – to join the Joomla! Security Strike Team.
What goals do you have for improving the areas of Joomla! that you are currently volunteering with?
The work I’m more strongly engaged right now is to help get J!1.6 to RC and finally to General Availability. Another goal is to help refactoring the Community site together with all the official sites to make them more attractive and useful for our users.
What are some of the challenges you face in the areas of Joomla! that you are currently volunteering with?
At the JBS we have a very tight schedule to get J!1.6 stable, with a new beta release every other week. The same process will be repeated when we get to RC until General Availability. It’s a big challenge to coordinate all the people who volunteer and all the work necessary to achieve that goal.
What do you enjoy the most about volunteering?
No money can pay the joy of helping other people or of knowing that your contribution is being useful to millions of users around the world.
What do you find the most difficult or challenging about volunteering?
In an international community like Joomla’s, the most difficult task is to work around the cultural differences that sometimes make it hard to communicate one’s ideas and opinions.
What do you like the most about Joomla!?
I LOVE our community. Also Joomla’s power and ease of use.
What would you personally like to learn more about which is related to Joomla!?
I’d like to become a better PHP/MySQL developer (only 1.5 years since I started learning) to be able to help even further.
What would you say to someone who is thinking about volunteering to help with the Joomla! project?
Don’t think twice. No matter if you are a user, or a designer, or a developer, or a security expert, or whatever. There’s always a place in the project where your knowledge can be useful.
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Production Working Group: Updates
The Production Leadership Team manages all areas of Joomla! development, including documentation, design, coding, and development cycle. In addition, the Production Leadership Team manages all areas of the Joomla project which relate to the production of the Joomla! CMS software and it’s documentation. This issue’s Leadership connections contribution from the Production Leadership Team focuses on the status of Joomla! 1.6 as well as some general questions looking a little further into the future.
How is the the PWG organized to manage these different responsibilities? (Looking here for a sense of what different teams exist within the PWG, and who are the leaders of those teams)
- Documentation team (Chris Davenport)
- Bug Squad (Andrew Eddie, Ian MacLennan, Mark Dexter)
- Translation Teams (Jean-Marie Simonet)
- Development Coordination Team (Louis Landry, Sam Moffatt, Andrew Eddie, Mark Dexter, Ian MacLennan)
Do you have an estimate on how many community members are currently involved in the PWG’s activities?
- Translation Teams: 95+ representing 64 languages.
- Bug Squad: 50+
- Documentation: 12+
- Development: 12+
- Other??
Joomla! 1.6 beta 3 was recently released. Are you able to give an estimate on when 1.6 stable will be released?
- Depends on how quickly we can fix the remaining bugs in beta version
- Beta4 is June 28. Beta5 will be July 12. Beta6 or RC1 will be July 26.
- We would hope that will have RC by end of August, if not before
What can the community do to help the PWG get 1.6 stable released sooner? (Please include links or contacts to follow up with)
What was the rationale for the the PWG’s plan to release a new 1.6 beta every two weeks? How is that working out in practice?
- Doesn’t make promises or deadlines that may or may not be possible
- Helps us to keep things moving – we aren’t waiting for some nebulous point of readiness for another beta
- Fits with incremental improvement model we will be adopting into the future
- It is working well in practice.
- We have active participation of large group in Bug Squad.
- Can see significant progress in each 2-week time period.
How is the work on 1.6 documentation progressing?
Total Help Screens: 67
- Reviewed: 3
- Waiting for review: 10
- Started: 40
- Not started: 14
Are there any other areas where the PWG needs more help, either for 1.6 or otherwise? If so how can community members get involved?
At one point the PWG was discussing plans to make regular ongoing time-based 1.6.X releases? Is that still the plan, and if so what is the rationale for that type of release schedule? If not, is there a new plan in place for the scheduling of 1.6.X updates?
Plan is to release 1.7 six months after 1.6 production release. During this time maintenance releases will be made for 1.6 (eg, 1.6.1, 1.6.2) and these will continuously improve that GA version *but* will also be fed back into the 1.7 development tree as well (this is a change for what we did in 1.5 where changes in the stable version where not duplicated in the development tree).
- Rationale is predictable time-based releases
What are some of the major challenges that the PWG plans to focus on more once 1.6 is released?
- How to involve the community in work on 1.7 and beyond
- How to tune the contribution process so that we can determine and marry the needs/wants of the user community with those of the developers (and hopefully we get some overlap which will result in the delivery of new features and improvements).
- How to recruit more developers to help code Joomla!
Once 1.6 is released, can community members give input on 1.7 feature requests? If so how will that happen?
We are working on defining that process right now. Should have an announcement on this soon (next 2-4 weeks?) A possible scenario is that anybody can work on anything they like. However, we are looking at ways of allowing the broader community to introduce ideas and ways of triaging the interest (aka, popularity) in these ideas, but we also have to consider how to involve people in the community to develop the most needed or the most popular ideas as the case may be.
On the other hand, if an individual or small team put the hard yards into developing a solid feature without any other consultation, there should be room in the process to give it appropriate consideration for inclusion in the core, providing it’s in keeping with what “we” want in the core, and working that out is another story as well.
Going to 6 month releases means everyone has to work a bit smarter and bite off things in smaller chunks. The end result is that 1.7 and 1.8 are less dramatic than 1.5 to 1.6 which reduces the overhead of upgrading. With luck, the 1.5 to 1.6 upgrade is the last of the “big” upgrades where people need to go through a process with possibly unpredictable results.
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Interview: The Joomla! People Portal Admins
With the recent launch of people.joomla.org the community has seen a shift in the way it communicates. The new site, branded as the J!People Portal, launched as a “beta” version on 12 May 2010 and was quietly introduced in a simple blog post. Now, after just over two weeks, the new community networking site boasts involvement of over 2500 community members. We decided to sit down with the two site administrators, Philippe Tassin and Sandra Warren, so we could find out the inside scoop and more!
I wanted to first of all say thanks to you both for your involvement and leadership on this arm of the project. I can only imagine the amount of volunteer hours and brain cells that go into a site like this. Throughout the last few weeks the J!People Portal has taken on a life of it’s own, and though it has had glitches and technical issues, it seems as if the community participants on the site are overwhelmingly happy.
What do you contribute the phenomenal acceptance of the site in the community and the growth of participation to?
Philippe: Most people that are active in the community are looking for a more personal relationship with their fellow Joomla! fans. The family of Joomla! sites has many things to offer, but not really a place to network or collaborate at the regular user level. A group is a great way to get people with the same interests together. It makes them feel they are part of a team with the power to impact the whole community through collaboration and discussion.
Sandra: This fabulous group of people from all over the world enjoy talking, collaborating and networking with each other. They requested more freedom to talk openly and candidly with one another to help improve this amazing platform. J!People answers that need and the growth confirms that.
The first 48 hours after launch was somewhat “disjointed” and seemed to be a “land grab” of sorts. Why or how was the decision made to launch without a more structured set of guidelines and group structure?
Philippe: Before the soft launch we didn’t know how the community was going to react but we knew the concept of groups wasn’t defined clearly. We were anxious to get the site rolling and learn how its users would interact before setting any kind of guidelines. Since the beginning the vision has been about allowing the community to somewhat manage itself by keeping rules to a minimum. We wanted to create the guidelines to meet the needs of the community and not anticipate the rules prior to understanding our unique community dynamics. We did not think a blog post would result in that many members or groups created in such a small amount of time!
Sandra: It was near impossible to know how the members would use the community and how to adequately have everything in place right out of the gate. It seemed necessary to watch the way the users wanted the community to function. We created a simple set of categories and guidelines and monitored the forum feedback so we could create an organized plan that could be embraced by any J!People user within 48 hours. There were certainly other ways to accomplish this launch but I really feel I understand the community needs better having gone about it this way.
That is not how other parts of the project have been done in the past. What made the J!People team decide to go this route?
Philippe: The great thing about the Joomla! community is that each project is managed by different people and each team is more or less independent. This strategy just made sense to us.
One hot topic has been commercialization of the groups and user profiles. This seems to have been addressed with the inception of “Fan Clubs”. Care to explain what those actually are and why they even need a place in J!People?
Philippe: There were many discussions on the subject. Do we allow promotion/advertising or not? How do we prevent spam and excessive self promotion? How do we support projects that are GPL and complying with the TM while allowing virtually any discussion on any project/company? Most importantly, how do we define all those concepts while keeping the guidelines clear, simple and easy to follow? Who “owns” a group and what does it mean to be the group creator and a group admin? It all became clear once we decided to focus on the discussions within groups that belong to the whole community.
Sandra: It has been important from the beginning for every face of the community to be represented on J!People. The Fan Club Groups address the needs of those who have a company, or following that they wish to promote their services to or collaborate with. This solved many issues including self promotion and spam since the membership to groups is optional. Fan Club Groups provide the only area on J!People in which advertising, self promotion and marketing is allowed.
So, in essence, you could compare the Fan Clubs to “permission-based marketing” or “opt-in advertising”?
Sandra: Absolutely! The owners of these groups have full permission to market within their group to their members. The only requirement is GPL and Trademark compliance which will be enforced before the official launch.
Philippe: Fan Clubs are simply a way for us to support GPL and TM-compliant projects (commercial or non-commercial) by giving them a place to communicate with their fans.
Typically the word “Beta” means that no new features will be added. Is this the case for J!People or are their some new things coming down the pipeline?
Philippe: Even though the word Beta was used, we really are doing a soft launch. This phase is a way to test the community’s dynamics and adjust the tools to meet its needs. I hope there will be many features added shortly and we are working on them daily.
Sandra: There are many features and tools in the works. Look for many upgrades before the official launch.
Looking back at the preparation and launch of the site, what would you have done differently?
Philippe: Even though there are many things that could have been done differently, I don’t think over planning this site would have been a good idea. Now that the dynamics are in place, it is our job to adapt and adjust the site. The only thing that could have really been useful: more advanced moderation tools.
Sandra: I really don’t have anything that I would have done differently at this point. I may change my mind though :)
What advice do you have for other site developers who are considering launching a community networking site?
Philippe: Listen and adapt to the community, research and learn about community dynamics, choose the tools carefully, give the community a purpose and a sense of belonging, find community “leaders” who will keep it going.
Sandra: Organization is key at every step of this development. There are many many facets of the project and it is absolutely imperative to keep on track and organized for each and every phase.
Not to sound rude, but – the community has not seen either of you on other teams. How were each of you selected for your positions on the site?
Sandra: Much like many others in the community, I had asked to help with the project in any way that I could be of service. Later I was contacted by Wendy Robinson and told that there was a need for the new Social Site and the rest is history.
Philippe: It was time for me to give back to the community, so I was looking for projects to be involved in. After a few days I was contacted by the team about this new social site.
Care to tell us a little about yourselves?
Philippe: In short: married to a traveling wife, father of a 4 year old, professional skydiver, hot air balloon pilot, moving every couple of years, victim of adrenaline addiction. Originally an electrical engineer (MSEE), I switched to web development in 2005 when I discovered Mambo and Joomla. Owner of two online marketing and design companies in the US and France, I enjoy business and software development.
Sandra: I am married with 4 children ages 29, 27, 6 and 5. Our older girls married and left us with an empty nest so we started over again by adopting 2 more, one from The Republic of Marshall Islands and the other from Guatemala. We also now have 6 grandchildren and another due this year. Needless to say I multitask very well.
Any last thoughts or something you would like to share with our readers?
Sandra: We would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for the project and it is very important to us to have transparency and open communication. This is the best group of like minded individuals making up the most amazing community on the planet! Submit your feedback at the people.joomla.org forum at http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=576
Well I know both of you are very busy and want to thank you for taking the time out to candidly answer some of the questions we had. I would love the opportunity to have both of you back after the site has been out of beta for a few months to get some more feedback.
Editor’s Note:
  Sandra is the CEO of Joomla! Web Group by Magnolia; a custom design and development firm that focuses on the Joomla! CMS.
Philippe is the CEO of NewNectar Media; a design and development firm that focuses on the Joomla! CMS and Social Media and provides the popular JoomFB Extension.
A special thanks to them for taking time out of their busy schedules to spend a few minutes with us and our readers!
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Trends in Joomla! Template Design
At the end of every year the various design blogs that I follow come up with predictions for what they think will be trends in web design for the following year. I thought it would be a good starting point for the design section of the JCM to see how the Joomla! templates released from the various developers so far this year stack up against the predictions from the wider design community. (Please note: You can see a list of the blogs at the end of the article.)
The concept of a design trend is of course highly subjective and obviously depends on the aesthetic of the person that is putting the list together and it can only really canvas a small selection of the designs used in the millions of sites that are launched on the web each year. There is however what seems to be a degree of consensus among the lists and from what I’ve observed in my favourite web galleries (see the notes at the end), most of the predictions below certainly cover a majority of the sites that have made it onto the online web galleries so far this year.
As a template designer myself, I know from first hand experience that the Joomla! template market is incredibly competitive and that design is not always the key driver behind a template release. The power of Joomla, as you probably already know, is that it can cater to a wide range of website purposes so having a cutting edge design isn’t necessarily the biggest priority for a site and thus the biggest factor in a template shop putting out a theme. That being said, Joomla template design has matured considerably over the last few years and as other commentators have noted, Joomla has certainly influenced theme development in other content management systems like Wordpress and Drupal.
The list of Joomla templates below is not a defininitive list of cutting edge Joomla Templates but I think they reflect the trends as outlined by the design blogs.
Typography
A greater emphasis on typography. Larger fonts and big intro text blocks. Serif fonts and slab typography.
Postnote by Gavick
Design
Sketches and hand drawn elements. Subtle texture backgrounds.
Grunge by Rocket Theme
Images
Large images, oversized logos and headers.
JA Norite by JoomlArt
Single page layouts
Foto Plazza by Template Plazza
Minimalism
White space, minimalism, minimal grids.
LeBlanc by Prothemer
Layouts
Stricter grids, wider designs, horizontal page layouts, intro blocks, intro boxes, magazine layouts, oversized footer, change of perspective.
Bloc by Yootheme
Designing for the mobile platform
Mobile Design
Predictions
It's going to be interesting to see how the rest of the year unfolds in terms of keeping up with and setting new design trends. Template design and functionality will certainly continue to evolve, and as the growth in Joomla! template frameworks has proven, Joomla! template developers will continue to be part of the leading edge when it comes to influencing where this amazing content management system of ours can go.
Web design blogs that I used as a source for the 2010 trend predictions:
Web design Galleries
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Joomla! Template Tools Part One
The enormous power and flexibility of the Joomla! Content Management System adds complexity and time to the task of creating a truly custom template. In this series of articles, Team EaSE looks deeply into several of the Joomla! Template Community's solutions to greatly speed that process.
The Joomla! community has so many manufacturers offering templates for our content management system that there's almost always a template to license that will suit anyone's taste. When you want a site to have a truly unique look and feel, though, you will need to create something original. It’s not necessary to re-invent the wheel. Many template manufacturers have begun employing template frameworks on which to base their templates.
Flexible Design Requires Careful Coding Choices
If you've ever tried it, you may have discovered that beginning the development of a Joomla! template from scratch is a drag. As with any web project, you'll need to convert the creative concepts of your graphic artist into HTML, graphics and CSS. But the powerful features of Joomla! web site add complexity to this task. A successful Joomla! template, even a graphically simple one, requires special attention to the dynamic nature of menus, modules and native Joomla! page elements.
Custom Joomla! Templates: Where to Begin?
When creating a template for your Joomla! site, you have three options:
- Commonly, you might use a template from a template manufacturer and modify it for your needs. By changing the logo, colors or other key elements, it’s possible to make a more individual experience from a template used on many sites worldwide.
- Another option is to make your own template from scratch. As we’ve pointed out, planning for all the contingencies of a powerful Joomla! site—for instance, styling a login module, creating classes and ids for collapsing module positions not in use can be quite time consuming.
- And lastly, you can use a Template Tool.
The Spectrum of Frameworks and Tools
In this—and in a few subsequent issues of the Joomla! Community Magazine—we will:
- explain what Template Frameworks and Template Tools are;
- discuss the significant advantages that they present the aspiring creator of a custom template;
- and evaluate several Template Tools and Template Frameworks, and explain our methods so that you can make informed choices.
Blank Templates
A “blank Joomla! template” which has already defined the CSS styles and some modules is perhaps the most basic labour-saving tool for the custom template creator. Whilst these provide a good starting point, blank templates often do not include the “extras” which make a Joomla! site a more exciting user experience. What do we mean by extras? Consider, for instance, Javascript-enhanced menus such as Suckerfish; dynamic date and time displays; or font resizing features that make your site more accessible to visitors with visual impairments. Properly used, these features greatly enrich the experience of the visitor to your web site. Yet writing—and testing—the code to implement such features adds significant complexity and time to the process of creating your custom template. Wouldn't it be easier if a lot of it was somewhere out there for us to use—something like a lending library of code for templates?
Template Frameworks
Happily, there is. Many template manufacturers are now offering the ready-made and developer-friendly templates frameworks, rich with features, which they use to make the completed templates they offer their customers. These frameworks define many layout choices with collapsible modules and offer snap-in feature sets such as advanced menu systems. You can use these highly configurable templates as building blocks to make a stunning template for your site, saving you a substantial amount of time. You leverage the manufacturer’s code by adding your graphics and binding them to create your dream site's template.
Template Generators
Lastly, some Joomla! developers are offering point-and-click desktop software or web services to fully configure a custom template from pre-loaded graphics, color selections and common template features.
Our Evaluation
The manufacturers of these template tools have had very different goals in developing their solutions. What they all have in common is the noble goal of allowing the easy creation of Joomla! templates by focusing on artistic elements than fighting with code. Diverging from there, each company has had their own approach to customizing the code needed for a template. Some have stellar documentation, some none at all. Some are highly intuitive to use, some require a lot of reading. As with all software, choosing one—or none at all—is a matter of both of taste and informed choice about the capabilities of the product. We hope to offer you some insights into the latter.
Now that we’ve framed the big picture, join us on our exploration of the world of template tools!
Check out Issue 1 Comparison Spreadsheet .pdf below
{tab=Artisteer}
  Artisteer is a Web design Template generation tool that can be used to quickly and easily create Joomla! Templates without requiring deep understanding of CSS, HTML, or Javascript.
The tool is especially useful to those who are just learning how to build Templates or those who work with a number of other Web site environments, like WordPress, Drupal, DotNetNuke and Google Blogger. The software can be used in Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. A beta copy of Artisteer is available for the Macintosh.
The user interface is recognisable for those who use MS Office. A simplified learning curve makes it easy for entry level Joomla! users and template designers to quickly create Artisteer Templates. The choices available in the environment are impressive. There are thousands of randomly generated mock designs. Design elements, such as layout, background, header, menus, fonts, buttons, tabs, colors, and color schemes, are very easily configured and changed.
The layout of every Artisteer template has 22 modules positions. With a working knowledge of Joomla! template development, designers can modify their template and add additional module positions. The power of template overrides does not accompany Artisteer generated templates, but can be easily added using overrides - see additional information link below. Template overrides are recommended for more accessible output.
Once your design decisions have been made, you can export your Joomla! template by simply pressing a button within the Artisteer interface. This creates a standard Joomla! template .zip that installs in Joomla! like any other Template. Once the Template has been installed, it can be modified and further customized in Joomla!, just as any other Template. An Artisteer template can also be exported as files for further offline editing. Artisteer is a very flexible tool and it works nicely with Joomla!.
Artisteer Advantages:
- Easy point and click dialog boxes;
- Quick development of basic Templates;
- Familiar MS Office User Interface;
- Ability to build Templates without deep knowledge of CSS and HTML;
- Limited knowledge required of underlying content management systems;
- Support for multiple content management systems;
- Well documented software with tutorials;
- Supports Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2+, Opera 9+, Safari 1+, Google Chrome 1+;
- Produces valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2 output;
- Support forums for license holders.
Disadvantages:
- Table based layouts used;
- Menu requires use of Javascript;
- No support for RTL;
- Not SEO friendly;
- Only beta support for Macintosh at this time.
Links & Further Information:
{tab=JoomlaBamboo}
  Joomla Bamboo's Zen Grid Framework has been available since November 2009, with many improvements added. It is used to Joomla! Bamboo to produce their commercial Template designs. It is a very simple to use and designed to help even those with limited HTML, CSS, and Joomla! Templating skill.
Installation of the Zen Grid framework is as simple as installing any other Joomla! Template. Once installed the user can access the slick administrative interface, which allows for complete management of the layout and design of the template. A 960 css grid based tableless layout, hidden pop-up panel, and basic html tag overrides are just some of the features that come rolled into the Zen Grid.
Four sub-panels labeled as follows make-up the administrative panel: Overview, Appearance, Layout, Scripts and Extras. There, you can control the Fonts, Tag Lines, override the CSS, control the layout sizing and column widths, and adapt the Logo as needed, along with many other types of modifications.
It is a very well constructed interface, clearly documented, and very easy to use.
Template Designer
Designers will appreciate it the 960 Grid System. The Style Overrides interface makes defines the Template Features, like the Banner, Footer, Frontpage, and so on, and allows the designer to specify their own layouts needed. This creates ability to design very unique styles for a customer.
Packaged CSS includes Joomla! core and standard element styling. Defaults are automatically used, which is helpful for beginners, but Template Designers will find useful tools for overriding the styles. Menu and panel options make available the type of interaction that is industry standard and expected by customers today.
Zen Grid Framework is a great option and the support at Joomla Bamboo is excellent.
Zen Grid Framework Advantages:
- Installs like any other Joomla! Template;
- Font, layout and color changes are easy to make by beginners;
- Accessible tableless output;
- Comes with a set of K2 layouts;
- Menus work with, or without Javascript;
- Works with Joomla!'s Media Manager which makes uploading images easier;
- Ability to easily add JS plugins without the need to create Joomla! Modules or Plugins;
- File compression for JS and CSS files, resulting in performance gains and SEO improvements;
- Mootools is removed for those who prefer jQuery;
- Framework provides for core CSS layouts by the Template can override values;
- Excellent documentation;
- Professional 960 grid system and ability to easily change layouts and columns;
- Supports multiple browsers and browser versions;
- Excellent support forum for club members;
- Produces valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2 output.
Disadvantages:
- Not GPL so it's not useful for a developer to add to or include in a distribution;
- Somewhat limited in terms of what can be done or how it can be extended;
- Does not use the Joomla! JS Framework (although many prefer jQuery which is used);
- No RTL support.
Team EaSE Podcast: Anthony Olsen interviewed by Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos:
{mp3remote}http://cdn.akeebabackup.com/audio/jcm/EaSE_interview_JoomlaBamboo.mp3{/mp3remote}
Download JoomlaBamboo Podcast 15163Mb .mp3
Links & Further Information:
{tab=RocketTheme}
The Gantry Framework is a very powerful and flexible Template Framework for building and creating Templates. It can be used by people with a wide range of skill sets, including those who are just starting with Joomla!.
It is also an exceptional tool for developing professional Templates with modern Ajax interfaces and clever design. In fact RocketTheme creates all of their commercial Templates using the framework and have made it available free of charge, licensed under the GPL, for the Joomla! community.
There is nothing tricky about installing the Gantry Framework. It works just like any other Joomla! Extension. The support website is loaded with videos and tutorials to help you get started and to learn everything there is to know about this powerful tool.
Template Designer
Designers will appreciate it the 960 Grid System. It is easy to use to define different layouts and looks, and then assign those designs to a Web site based on Menu Item. Gantry introduced the concept of Template Styles, which will be available in Joomla! 1.6.
65 module positions are more than enough to develop nearly any Web site, but if you need more, it's easy to create more positions and to make your own layouts. The output is accessible and does not use tables for layout.
Packaged CSS includes standard Typography and Joomla! core element styling. You can use the defaults provided or adjust as needed. This alone makes custom site development much easier. Those just getting started would not even need to change these settings.
Developers
Gantry's XML driven overrides and customization environment allows you to create innovative interfaces. You can create professional Templates with defined presets for your customers. Browser recognition is available, enabling you to offer browser specific CSS, as needed.
The AJAX communication layer makes it easy to interface with Joomla! AJAX Extensions. The framework allows establishment of parameters by URL, Cookie, Session, or Preset, providing developers with many tools for innovative interfaces. All of your configurations can easily be stored in INI files for packaging.
There are so many built in features like RTL Language support, Font-resizer, Google Analytics, "to-top" smooth slider, IE6 warnings and more.
Gantry Framework Advantages:
- Free of charge and GPL licensed;
- Extremely powerful and useful to a wide-range of skill sets from beginners to site builders and developers;
- Parameters can be defined once for the entire site, or on a per Menu-Item basis, and stored and reused as Presets;
- Excellent documentation, videos, and GPL'd Templates all with accessible tableless output;
- Many options for creating unique looks, including menus, CSS styles, Typography choices, and Font Resizing;
- Attractive, easy to use Administrator area for extensive configuration options;
- Professional grid system and ability to easily change layouts and columns;
- Advanced panel controls forced positions, feature order, enabling of code compression, RTL, title spans, page suffix, and other options;
- Supports multiple browsers and browser versions;
- Produces valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2 output;
- Built in Ajax System;
- Support options include IRC for all and forum support for RocketTheme members.
Disadvantages:
- There are so many options, it might be overwhelming to new people;
- Additional Gantry-specific Template commands (although these are well documented);
- Can be complex to debug;
- Easy to create Interfaces that are heavy on Javascript and slow if you are not careful.
Team EaSE Podcast: Andy Miller interviewed Amy Stephen:
{mp3remote}http://cdn.akeebabackup.com/audio/jcm/EaSE_interview_RocketTheme_Gantry.mp3{/mp3remote}
Download RocketTheme Podcast 4827Mb .mp3
Links & Further Information:
{tab=You!Joomla}
  You!Bubble is a highly configurable Template that can be used to quickly and easily create unique designs for Joomla! 1.5 Web sites. It is a good option for those starting out with Joomla who want a starter Template that doesn't have a lot of weight. It's elegant design makes it suitable for many purposes. The fact that it's GPL licensed and free of charge certainly makes it a very good deal.
Take a moment to view the demo for You!Bubble. It is a very nice three column design with a handsome right column sidebard. The forms are styled very nicely and that tends to be a difficult job for new designers. There are several Typography choices available and the options are nicely presented. It makes good use of image lists that can dress up a page.
You!Bubble comes with several Module Styles that take advantage of Joomla 1.5 Module Chrome. (See below for tutorials on creating your own Module Chrome.) There are 12 Module Positions, sufficient for most designs. By specifying a Module Setting, you can take advantage of three distinctive style options.
Template options available are very good, allowing you to activate server side compression of JS and CSS files, set your top menu, select a color choice, establish the width of your site and columns, and set your font site.
It is also very helpful to have three choices in layouts and Menu types, including a split menu, to vary the effect of your site.
The You!Bubble template is installable like any other Joomla Template and can be further customized if you have skill in that area. Another nice feature is the ability to download the Template already packaged with Joomla and sample data needed to show off the Templates features.
Certainly, You!Bubble is a great option for many different uses and it's appreciated to have such a quality Template available at no charge.
You!Bubble Advantages:
- Free of charge and GPL licensed;
- Very fast with only three images weighing in at 23kb, which is good for search engine optimization;
- Server side compression of CSS and JS files, another advantage for search engine placement;
- Context help with toolbar popups help define configuration options;
- Tableless design;
- Many options to help designs create unique looks, including menus, CSS styles, Typography choices, and Font Resizing.
- Ability to easily adjust the site width and columns;
- Template comes with 12 collapsible module positions;
- Supports multiple browsers and browser versions;
- Produces valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2 output;
- Support forums for club members.
Disadvantages:
- Must signup to download the free Template, and it's difficult to find the Free Membership option;
- Options are more limited than a full bodied Template Framework or a Template Generator;
- Difficult to achieve unique design;
- Contrast and font sizing not very accessible;
- RTL Support not functioning at time of assessment;
- Updating Template requires uninstalling, which removes all customized settings;
- Does not use Joomla!'s site description and keyword meta. The "SEO Settings" in the Template Administration Panel might be confusing. These fields are actually for a hidden H1 Page Title and Link Description used beneath the logo. Users must be careful to change the defaults in the interface. It might be less confusing if the Template used the Global Configuration Site Name and Site Keywords instead.
Team EaSE Podcast: Dragan Todorovic interviewed by Miljan Vujosevic
{mp3remote}http://cdn.akeebabackup.com/audio/jcm/EaSE_interview_YouJoomla.mp3{/mp3remote}
Download You Joomla! Podcast 1117Mb .mp3
Links & Further Information:
{/tabs}
Summary
Power, function and flexibility is what you find when researching template tools throughout the Joomlasphere. In this first issue we focused on a group of randomly selected frameworks that serve the needs of the entry level user to the advanced designer/developer. Artisteer, Joomla Bamboo's Zen Grid, You!Joomla's You!Bubble, and Rocket Theme's Gantry framework each bring strength and versatility to the Joomla template development world. Although different in many ways, each template and/or framework tested shares some of the same basic elements.
In the August 2010 issue, Team EaSE will continue the evaluation of Template Tools with an in-depth look at offerings from four more manufacturers, as well share our insights on the impact a well-crafted Joomla! template can have on Search Engine Optimization.
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Interview: Robert Deutz, Events Team Leader for OSM
Robert Deutz, founder of Robert Deutz Business Solutions, a software and web development company in Germany specializing in Joomla!, serves as Events Team Leader for Open Source Matters. The following interview explores his approach to organizing global gatherings in the Joomla! community that inspire passion and participation.
You were recently named Events Team Leader for OSM. Would you please describe your vision for this position?
It is important to bear in mind that Joomla! is a multi-lingual and multi-cultural community.
My first goal is to support local Joomla!Days by making it possible for people from the leadership to join in these events, to participate and listen to what is being discussed. Some countries, like Italy and Thailand, host one Joomla!Day a year, with numbers close to 1000 attendees. The last Italian Joomla!Day was in-language with simultaneous translation of the English-speaking guest speakers. These are very strong Joomla! communities who, for the most part, are quite separate from joomla.org. Local Joomla!Days are our opportunity to connect with the people in these communities.
Secondly, I would like to see more community-driven events like JandBeyond. While Joomla!Days tend to be business- and end user-oriented, JAB10 was a first time opportunity for high-level developers to come together to talk about their components, and share tips and ideas. This kind of exchange makes us all better, and there is a need for more developer-oriented events of this nature.
Thirdly, my goal is to help the local team to organize a World Conference that will be so exciting no one will want to miss it!
And last but not least, I will review our processes, making them simpler and easier where possible, as well as providing advice and guidelines to non-English-speaking people, so that they can receive instructions in their own language.
Given the success of JAB10, are there any plans to make JAB an official annual event?
What does “official” mean? I am not a fan of saying JAB10 was not an official event. We are one community, and we are putting on events. What is “bad” about an unofficial event and what is “good” about an official event? It doesn’t make sense.
Yes, JAB will definitely become an annual event. We don’t yet know when or where JAB11 will be held, but we will do it. Official or not, JAB10 had strong and significant OSM support. We as a project can jump on this running train and promote it and say it is good. That didn’t happen this time, but I'm practical. Of about 70 proposed talks, 55 of them took place, and some 50 were video-recorded. These resources are now shared on the JAB10 website. In the end it was a great event, drew lots of attendees, and stayed within budget – it was a big success. Official or unofficial, I don’t care!
What can you tell us about the Joomla! World Conference, as the community looks forward to this next global gathering?
After discussions with the organization team last week we decided to start over, and ask the right questions. Rather than focus on number of attendees and venue, let’s talk about passion! What should this world conference address? What is special about it? Why the hell should I attend? We need to create a feeling that this event can't be missed. The rest is simple. So we are still in the process of addressing these basic questions.
What ingredients are key to planning a successful event?
Most importantly you must know your audience. Plan carefully and be prepared. Something goes wrong in every event, so have a Plan B and a Plan C.
We learned some lessons planning JAB10. From the start you must say “We will do it!” Our small team had well-defined roles and responsibilities. It was hectic but everything came together from logo design to T-shirts to sponsors. All tasks were accomplished. Since everyone has his own business to run, next time we will split roles and get more people involved. Communication is important, as well, and we plan to use a newsletter to engage people and promote the next conference.
What specific challenge does the cultural diversity of our community bring to organizing events?
The challenge is always about communicating across language and cultural barriers. Straightforward expression is normal in some cultures, which can surprise people from other cultures. And it’s always worse when it comes to writing. An email beginning without a salutation may be standard for some, but feel abrupt, even rude to others. All in all, people want to get along and are friendly and helpful, and we can override these cultural barriers.
What kind of help do you need? How can people get involved?
If anyone has specific knowledge or a skill and you’d like to be involved, send an email to events@joomla.org explaining what you can do. And if you take on a job, I expect you to take responsibility and deliver!
Spreading the word about upcoming events is something everyone can do, and it is always helpful and appreciated.
Let’s all spread the word... upcoming Joomla! events are not to be missed! Thank you Robert for an insightful and informative interview!
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JAB 10: Joomla! to infinity and beyond
There has long been a desire for the international community to have a chance to meet and exchange ideas. Robert Deutz took a chance and in 2009 began to organize an event focused not just on his native Germany but a global audience. Over the course of almost a year, he recruited several volunteers to help organize and drew on the community to propose and present sessions.
In Wiesbaden, Germany, May 30-June 1, 2010, this became a reality for the first international event focused purely on Joomla, called J and Beyond. The event drew 190 attendees from 27 countries, over 55 sessions were given, and created a vibrant energy over Joomla.
Since the sessions were proposed and presented by the community, those who attended created the event. It was not targeted at any specific group, but those who attended were mostly advanced users, intergrators, and developers. The topics covered ranged from product demos, to cutting edge development topics, to marketing techniques, to business practices. It was truly a diverse set of topics presented completely by the community.
The setting for J and Beyond was a retreat tucked away outside of the main city. This gave the event a very relaxed atmosphere, and compared to the hectic nature of many conferences it was a refreshing opportunity to sit down and chat with people from around the world.
J and Beyond proved that the Joomla community is diverse. The attendees were able to personally share lots of thoughts and opinions related to Joomla and beyond. The Joomla community really shined in the numerous conversations, jokes, and discussions between people from very different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives.
A great way to judge the success of an event is to follow up with those who attended and see what they say. There is a blog post on the Joomla.org website, numerous blog posts from attendees, some videos and interviews, and a lot of social media buzz. If you didn't make it, you can get a glimpse of some the action at http://jandbeyond.org where the session videos are being made available. The videos only give a small taste of the event, as the time outside of the sessions was as valuable, if not more, than the time spent listening to the amazing group of speakers.
A 2011 J and Beyond conference is planned, but no details are available yet.
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Open Source Matters: Report for June 2010
Open Source Matters is the non-profit organization which was formed to manage the legal, financial, and trademark related matters for the Joomla! project. In this issue's Leadership connections article from Open Source Matters, OSM board member Steve Burge shares some of the work that OSM has been doing recently on behalf of the Joomla! project.
New Board Positions
The big change happening in Open Source Matters this month is that we’ve been putting in place concrete measures to mature and grow as an organization. Until earlier this year there were only 6 board members and even that number included a treasurer and a legal advisor from the Software Freedom Law Center. As a result board members had to focus on many different things.
In February, the board grew to 10 members, and so increasingly members have been able to specialize. This month, Ryan Ozimek, the OSM President, appointed three of us to different positions:
Events Team Leader: Robert Deutz was recently responsible for the very successful JandBeyond conference in Germany. He’s now going to take the lead in handling Joomla events worldwide.
Trademark Team Liaison: Marko Milenovic is already on the board of Free Software Foundation Europe (http://fsfe.org), so he was the ideal choice to take over working with the Trademark team.
Community Liaison: That’s me. I'm going to be responsible for making sure OSM is clear and transparent in it’s communications with the community, but also that the community members have the opportunity to communicate with OSM. OK, you might say, that’s nice in theory but what does it mean in reality?
- We now have a group on people.joomla.org for you to ask us questions.
- Our members are often on the Ask the Joomla team sessions held each Wednesday. Watch the community.joomla.org blogs for each week’s time.
- I’ve an open door policy to community blogs, podcasts, events and more: invite me and I’ll come. Want other board members? I’ll bug them for you.
- We’ll have a communication policy in place very shortly. One key aim is to ensure that community is never surprised and particularly negatively, by any decision we take. Another is to fully leverage social media and improve Joomla’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other sites.
New Organization Type
We have finalized a change in the type of organization OSM is. Technically we moved from 501(c)3 status to Type B not-for-profit status. You can read more about the details here.
Practically this means that, for the first time in a long time, we can ask for donations.
New Organization Development Project
Our next step, starting this week, is an organizational development project. We’re lucky to be working with an organization development consultant of over 20 years experience. She’ll be trying to help us professionalise the board even further.
Why are we doing all this?
Hopefully we’re setting OSM up with a stable structure that will be a platform for years to come. Ideally when we leave the board these will be clear and well established positions so that our successors can slot right in and get working on their first day in office. In fact, I’d bet that our successors are reading this article right now, so now you know a little more about what you’ll be getting into!
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Things to do before your site gets hacked
Joomla! is often bashed by unknowledgeable people as insecure. How little they know! The fact is that no system is airtight, unless you do your part to secure it. Most people coward away hearing as much as the word “security” itself. You don’t have to! Securing your site is rather easy, if you know what, where, and how it needs to be completed. This article may only scratch the surface, but will provide you with enough advice to perform a major upgrade in your site’s security in a few, easy steps.
If you have ever been a regular of the Joomla! forums you have most certainly come across some frustrated post of a panicked user whose site has been hacked. The truth is all web applications suffer from the same phenomenon, not because they are insecure by nature, but because most people do not have the slightest clue on what they are supposed to do to protect their site. Security is not very hard, but is not very straightforward, either. It is a bit like contraception. It is necessary, but no method is bulletproof. As a result, this article is not meant to be a complete guide to Joomla! Security, but – very much like the Joomla! Security Checklist – it is just a set of guidelines you can easily follow, for that extra peace of mind.
Backup
Murphy’s Law dictates that a catastrophe will strike when you do not have the means to revert to the last known good condition. Do not get caught without a backup! Major companies have failed because they did not have a backup, or only a partial one. When talking about Joomla! sites, you need a complete backup of your files and database. The easiest way to produce a full site backup is Akeeba Backup, a popular free backup component in active development. Of course, I am a little biased – I’m its lead developer – but you can always trust the JED reviews and judge for yourself.
One important factor is how many backups you must keep and how you keep them. Keep at least a full month of daily backups, or 6 months of weekly backups. This way you can roll back to a safe known good position in time even if your site becomes compromised. Do not just keep your backups on the same server as your site! Download them to your hard drive and keep at least two copies on different removable media, e.g. CD-ROM, flash disk or external hard drive, optimally each copy being stored in a different physical location. Even better, use a cloud storage service – such as Amazon S3, DropBox, Wuala, or Ubuntu One – to securely store one copy of your backup archive. You can never be too paranoid about securing your backup files!
Upgrade, yesterday
The best time to upgrade your core Joomla! installation and extensions is yesterday, not tomorrow! Of course, you cannot move backwards in time and that is why it is of paramount importance to stay up-to-date with security releases. You must subscribe to the JSST news feed, if you have not done already, as well as keep a keen eye on the Vulnerable Extensions List. It goes without saying that you must also subscribe to the news feed of all extensions you have installed of your site. Upgrade immediately whenever a new release is out. Indolence is a deadly sin on the cruel world of the world wide web.
You may want to test the upgrades before applying them to your live site. Akeeba Backup is again your friend, as you can use your backup – you did take a backup, right? – to produce a “clone” of your site on a sub-domain, or a local server, apply the upgrades and make sure everything’s in working order.
Block user 62
You don't know what user 62 is? To cut a long story short, when you install Joomla! on your site it creates a Super Administrator account with a known user-name (admin) and a known user ID (62). This has been exploited in the past by crackers to gain access to unsuspecting sites. The best approach is to create a new Super Administrator user and block or demote the default admin user all the way down to Registered level.
Introduce multiple factor back-end authentication
All Joomla! sites have one thing in common: the back-end URL. It is always something in the like of http://example.com/administrator. You know what bothers me? This is susceptible to brute force attacks, i.e. someone trying arbitrary user names and password until they can successfully log-in as Super Administrator. The best way to mitigate this problem is to introduce more obstacles in their unholy path to cracking your site.
The genius jSecure Authentication plug-in lets you define a secret word you have to know in order to access the back-end login page. If your secret word is “foobar” you must type something like http://example.com/administrator?foobar in your browser in order to log-in to the site, otherwise you are redirected to the front-page.
The other very effective means of protection is securing the administrator directory with a password. Most, if not all, hosting control panels allow you to password protect a directory. Well, do it! Password protect your administrator directory, so that you need to enter a user name and password in order to see the back-end login page. When combined with jSecure Authentication you have a very strong back-end protection set-up.
Obscurity is sometimes a good thing
Even though I am not a proponent of security through obscurity, sometimes it’s a good way to deter script kiddies or make a semi-serious cracker’s life difficult, urging them to seek an easier target. To this end, it is a good idea to make everything not required for your site’s smooth operation inaccessible to the world. I’ve written an article about it in October, which you should read. Do note, if you choose to implement those rules, that they are purposely overprotective. You might have to add exceptions for PHP files which are called directly, for example VirtueMart’s payment gateway callback scripts, or eXtplorer’s fetchscript.php file.
ACL for the back-end
Trust me when I tell you that the default Joomla! back-end roles are not as secure as you might think. Especially the Administrator role, which is inherently very permissive, does not provide adequate isolation from potential breach from the inside. I can’t further comment on that without opening a can of worms, but I have positively managed to escalate Administrator’s permissions to the Super Administrator role. I suggest you to use a third party ACL solution to limit back-end users’ access to specific core and third part components only, depending on the user’s role in the site's management work flow. Thanks to the efforts of the core developers, Joomla! 1.6 will make it possible to define such ACLs using no third party extensions.
File and directory permissions
We’re touching a sore spot with this one, especially considering the widespread use of substandard hosts for hosting Joomla! powered websites. If your host doesn’t make use of suPHP – which effectively takes cares of permissions – it is worth employing a strong set of permissions for your files and folders. If you have no idea what permissions, ownership, users, etc are all about, you might want to read my concise Introduction to web server administration first.
First, make sure that each and every file on your site has been uploaded through FTP, effectively making your account’s user the owner of the file. Then, make sure that all directories have 0755 permissions and all regular files 0644 permissions. Finally, turn on the FTP layer in Joomla!'s Global Configuration. This ensures that most known cracking scripts, which require PHP being able to modify arbitrary files on your server, will fail.
Log grepping
This is an oft-debated technique, but I find it useful. It is also essential post-mortem, i.e. if your site ever gets cracked, in order to back-trace the problem. Anyway, the whole idea is to download your site’s access log and analyse it using an appropriate tool, searching for everything that should not be there. Examples of “what shouldn’t be there” are:
- Base64 encoded data
- SQL commands
- Script tags
- Unprintable Unicode characters
There are abundant resources on the web about log grepping. Don’t get your head spinning a lot with that because, as I said, it’s just another tool to monitor your site’s health. Most of the times you can't do anything about the attacks on your site, but you can at least run them against a local copy of it to understand their impact – and detect potential breaches.
Modified files can be game over for your site
This is the final step. It's not meant to protect you, but act as an early warning system instead. Putting restrictions and controls is essential, but only if they don’t fail. As Einstein bluntly put it “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former”. An ingenious cracker, or a stupid script kiddie, might stumble upon a way to bypass your security controls and gain unauthorized access to your site. They can even hack you yesterday and exploit their back door today.
Even in this case, you need to know when you have been cracked so that you can act upon it. A very easy (conceptually!) way is to compare the state of your site to the last known good state. I have written a utility to help you with that, operating on two backup files, and an article on how to use it and interpret its results. The software is now stable; it is called Akeeba SiteDiff and is available for free from Akeeba Backup's download section.
Debriefing
Unfortunately, we have run out of space! Security is a vast topic, one that won’t even fit inside a well-sized book. All of the above are mere hints, a few good pointers to the right direction. Each one needs a bit of reading and some trial and error to implement. Remember that Rome wasn’t built overnight. Try implementing one security checkpoint at a time and work through perfecting your security policy. It takes time but it’s worth it, especially if you’re making money out of your site, either directly (e-commerce, ads) or indirectly (driving potential clients to your business). In the following issues of the Joomla! Community Magazine I will introduce even more security ideas and practical ways of enforcing them on your own site.
As a final thought, you might be wondering if you really need all of this security. The answer is, yes, you do! Do not think that only sites with a huge audience are susceptible to getting cracked. I’ve seen sites with a mere 30 visitors per month getting hacked. Why? I guess we'll never know, for the motives of the cracker can be diverse, obscure or beyond our reasoning. Your site can be a prospective cracker's shot at an adrenaline spike. Are you sure you want to be waiting for him as a sitting duck? I didn’t think so.
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Team EaSE Article: Beauty is more than skin deep!
When shopping for Joomla! templates, users very often make their choices based entirely on the look and feel the template presents for their content. A user visits the demo pages of a few template manufacturers, looks around and picks a design to represent the content of a new or existing Joomla! web site. What is often overlooked are the ways in which a template is more than skin deep. A template is much more than a web site design: it actually defines the way the web site elements such as HTML, images, Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS) and JavaScript are sent to the web browser. Have you considered the impact of the these elements to your overall user experience?
While design choices are influenced by subjective decisions of preference and taste, a lot of the interaction a visitor to your Joomla! web site is determined by how such elements are delivered to the browser—for instance, the loading speed of your page.
Though you may not realize it, the first experience that visitors have with any web site is… waiting! When visitors click on a link, or type in a URL, they must wait for the page to load in their browser. If they are kept waiting for too long they will either abandon the web site and look elsewhere, or will raise their expectations—and possibly be disappointed when the web site finally loads. For web builders and webmasters, it's a top priority to keep loading time minimal. But how do templates impact your web site's load speed?
How Browsers download a page
To answer this question, let's consider how web browsers understand and download a web page. When visitors arrive on a web site, the first thing their browsers download is that web site’s HTML code, which for us is generated by Joomla! itself. As this begins downloading, the browser parses it (that is, converts this code into the web page we expect to see) and looks for references to external files. When it discovers one of these, for instance a CSS or JavaScript file, it will download and parse it. In fact, as soon as it discovers one or several JavaScript files, a browser will put all the other downloads for a page on hold until it is finished downloading every JavaScript files. As the downloading progresses, the browser parses CSS files and continues to load the images that are included.
While that may sound very straightforward and simple, browsers have a limited capacity to download multiple files at the same time. By default, modern web browsers have four “download slots” per Internet domain: they will download only four files from your site concurrently. As a consequence, the more CSS and JavaScript files a web site has, the slower it will load. But when several CSS files are combined into one file, even if this does not reduce the overall file size a significant amount of download time is pared away—even as much as 100 milliseconds per file. The same is true for JavaScript files, but the gain in speed is even better because JavaScript files actually block all other downloads until they're complete.
Minify & Compress: your visitors will reward you
As you may have realized, most of the CSS, JavaScript and image file references that a browser has to parse are the those used by your Joomla! template on you website. A well-designed template will use a minimal number of distinct files, and each file will be “minified” (a fancy way to say that most spaces and line breaks are stripped out) or even compressed, which minifies both the number of files and the total file size your user’s browser must download.
Does this make any difference? Not in your search rankings: the effect of page load time in that area is negligible. But it makes all the difference to your users! If your site loads in just five seconds on an average connection and a competitor's website takes 10 seconds or more to load, visitors will prefer your site because “it feels faster”. Fast-loading pages also encourage visitors to delve more deeply into your content and spend more time on your website, learning more about what you offer in the process. Your template thus has very big impact on the visitor's experience.
The next time you choose template for your web site, make these factors part of your evaluation. You may find that a simple but fast-loading template fits your needs, while a template that is very feature-packed will result in your visitors unhappy with long page loads speeds. When selecting a template, remember: beauty is more skin deep.
Further Reading
We've barely scratched the surface with this article. If you’re interested in learning more about the differences between an underperforming web sites and a blazing fast one, a good place to start is Yahoo! Developer Network's “Best practices for speeding up your web site”.
Please speak up! Leave your thoughts about this article in the comments. Friendly debate is welcome!
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Work side by side with your competitors
Stephen Brandon and Peter van Westen were not a likely pair to be working together. In fact the authors of MetaMod Pro and Advanced Module Manager would have best been described as cordial competitors. But, when users started having difficulties using the two products together, Brandon and van Westen both responded.
"I had a few reports in my forum of people that tried to use Advanced Module Manager and MetaMod together, and encountered problems/conflicts. Stephen Brandon mailed me about his side of the story and the question whether I was interested in trying to come to a collaborative solution." van Westen said.
The two realized the problem was that both were overruling the same core Joomla file. The changes made allowed one module to work but not the other.
"The class JModuleHelper, defined in libraries/joomla/application/module/helper.php gets the list of modules assigned to a particular menu item (or ALL pages) from the database and also handles some of the work of rendering the modules. The most important role of this class that both Advanced Module Manager and MetaMod Pro need to be able to manipulate is the creation of the list of modules that will be returned for any given page," Brandon said.
The decision to work together for the good of the users was an easy one.
"The solution eventually was pretty simple: make a file that works for both. Then it doesn't matter if one extension overrides the file of the other. We essentially just added triggers to different stages in the module(list) rendering process," van Westen said.
The new file allowed the use of both Advanced Module Manager and MetMod Pro in the same Joomla installation.
"I've adjusted the way that I include the new module helper class to match the way that Peter does it. It has the advantage that it's less susceptible to problems that can happen due to the ordering of plug-ins in the plug-in manager. Both Peter and I include our jointly-agreed module helper class inside our respective extensions. One or the other of our 2 classes will be loaded depending on which is first in the list of system plugins, but it doesn't matter which one, as they are both the same" Brandon said.
While the two products do have some duplication of features there are several highly praised elements of each that are not found in the other. The collaborative effort did not force users to choose between the two, making the marketplace friendlier to both.
"My sense of this being "competition" was broken down when I came across an interesting video in late 2009 by internet marketing entrepreneur Frank Kern ("State of the Internet Address 2009"). One of the things he said was: Work side by side with your competitors to ensure the advancement and overall happiness of our collective customers. Grow your collective market, and together strive to give great value," Brandon said. "It also helps that Peter's a really nice guy with a great sense of humor, and works at a technical level that I can relate to."
Both developers and their users have been pleased with the results and would consider working together again if future versions of either product have an effect on the file they both use.
Collaborations are becoming more popular among developers who realize it can benefit the entire industry.
Van Westen has worked with Kyle Ledbetter (JoomlaPraise/AdminPraise) to allow his extensions work with Ledbetter's admin templates. Van Westen often consults other developers like Emmanuel Danan (FlexiContent)and Daniel Chapman (NinjaForge) on code issues and new ideas.
"I notice that a lot of developers are very willing to help each other." he said.
Brandon is also working to ensure his products work well with others.
"I'm constantly getting requests from people who want to use MetaMod or MetaTemplate to target particular modules or templates onto particular pages in other Joomla extensions. This means I often have to install other extensions and learn about them in order to provide recipes for users. The creators of these other extensions are always very supportive and helpful if I ask for help - it benefits their customers and mine," he said.
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If you want to build a ship...
Welcome to the new Joomla! Community Magazine! All of us on the JCM team want you to know how delighted we are that you are here. There’s quite a variety of content here and you will find lots of great stories to hold your interest. When you read something that makes an impression, please be sure to leave a comment.
We are here to tell stories about websites and stories about software, but most of all we are here to tell stories about people. People who create and innovate with Joomla!. People who use Joomla! to share with others, help others, and connect with others. People who extend it and design for it. And people who volunteer their time to build it, improve it, test it, support it, document it, administer it, secure it, answer questions about it, translate for it, and lead it.
But in addition to all of that, we also want to tell your story. We have put a lot of effort into building a team of friendly and helpful editors who want to help you with your Joomla! story. So as you read these stories, reflect a bit about what you would like to share with the rest of this amazing global community. And then when you’re ready, we invite you to register to become a JCM author, submit an article, and add your Joomla! story to the others here.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Amy Stephen for inviting me in October 2009 to join some preliminary discussions about what would eventually become the JCM, and for her unwavering devotion to this project. I want to thank Fotis Evangelou along with his partner Chris Marinou for donating their time and the services of their Komrade development company which has created a dynamic K2 based JCM design that is perfectly suited to our multi-author magazine format website.
I want to thank Brad Baker and Ole Bang Ottosen from the Community Leadership Team who were both instrumental in shepherding this project, and Ron Severdia who has been a steadfast supporter on the Production Leadership Team. From OSM, I want to thank Elin Waring for her guidance and support, Ryan Ozimek for his encouragement, and Steve Burge for his proactive help to get the word out about the JCM in his role as OSM Community Liason. I would also like to thank Production Leadership Team members Andrew Eddie for his time and attention in conducting a thorough security audit of K2, and Louis Landry for his work on a forthcoming custom extension which will enhance our Author License Agreement acceptance process.
Most of all, I want to thank all of the members of the JCM team who have volunteered so much of their time and intelligence and skill and attention and energy and passion in order to make the JCM something special which will strengthen the Joomla! project and the community. I am so proud to be a member of this team, and so thankful to have the privelege to work with and get to know so many great people through this project.
Antione de Saint-Exupery once said: “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the sea.” That thought sums up very well the level of dedication and passion which the members of the JCM team have for the Joomla! project and the community. The only part of that thought which doesn't apply to the members of the JCM team is that none of them had to be taught to "long for the sea". That is what is so special about this team-they each already had that spirit when they joined this project.
In this issue
Feature stories:
Extensions and Services Evaluations:
Website case studies:
Leadership connections:
Joomla! events/Joomla! User Groups:
Joomla! in the press/media:
Designer’s studio:
Developer’s workbench:
Administrator’s toolkit:
Did you know...?:
Learn more about these topics
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Joomla! New England JUG
There are Joomla! User Groups all over the world. I am excited about this opportunity to help showcase the various Joomla! User Groups.
Even many great relationships are formed on line, there is still nothing that can replace meeting in real life. As great as tutorials, videos and books are being able to ask questions just sometimes is the fastest way to gain knowledge and solve problems.
Joomla! New England is one of many successful user groups. Founded by Jen Kramer, Joomla! New England has grown to over 300 members from all over the US.
Joomla! New England was founded in March 2008. Building on experience from being involved in an Adobe users groups, Jen Kramer has helped grow Joomla! New England - in Brattleboro, VT (population 10,000). Initially being setup as a support group for a Joomla! at Marlborogh College Graduate School, the JUG has grown from 10 members to now over 300 from all over the US.
One benefit Jen finds in the JUG is, many people work on their own and being able to attend a JUG provides a place to take issues and problems and get them solved and share their experice of build client websites.
It's all about relationships.
There is a saying "it's not what you know, but who you know" - being active in your local Joomla! community will get you into the "know". Not only is a JUG a great resource for knowledge, Joomla! New England have become a hub for Website production where the Joomla! New England members have more work so they have to outsource.
As the Joomla! New England groups has grown more and more people have gotten actively involved, and the group is now planning a local Joomla! Day June 5th 2010.
Based on her experience Jen has written two blog posts with great input for any JUG, How to start your own Joomla! user group -part 1 and How to start your own Joomla! user group - part 2
Having a feast on healthy - and unhealthy snacks - the group meets on the third Wednesday of the month the groups agenda always include introductions, happy Joomla! stories, sad Joomla! stories. Happy Joomla! stories are websites that have been launched, problems people have figured out, interesting extensions people have found. Sad Joomla! stories are places where people have gotten stuck in Joomla! But there is really no sad Joomla! story as the group will collaborate to find a solution and make happy Joomla! stories.
How much effort does it take to set up a JUG?
There are many avenues to 'recruit' new members, one great way is to work with a local college or university. It all comes down to marketing.
Another issues that many JUGs face is find a space. Jen suggests in addition to talking to local schools and colleges talk to computer training centers.
Make your meeting happen at a regular, predictable date and time - like the third Wednesday of the month. Don't deviate from your meeting day. But of course talk to your people who show to determine what is most convenient for the members.
As Joomla! New England has grow, it has also ventured into setting up social events and had it's first Joomski during the winter of 2010. Joomski matured as a two day event with one day of Joomla! beginners, intermediate and custom extensions classes and one day of skiing. The event sold out and users had great fun hanging out in the cold, building websites and skiing.
One thing that is unique about Joomla! New England is there are more women attending the meetings than men. Attending the last meeting were nine women and three men.
The members of Joomla! New England have become close friends and hang out as much as friends as colleagues.
JUG website: www.joomlanewengland.org
About Jen Kramer
Webdeveloper, Author, Lynda.com trainer and Joomla! evangelist
Contact Jen:
Twitter.com/jen4web
www.joomla4web.com
{mp3}JCM_JUG_Jen_Kramer_Interview{/mp3}
If you wish to have your JUG featured here or have any comments, ideas or concerns please email the Editor at bo.astrup@community.joomla.org
You can find a list of current JUGs on forum.joomla.org
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