Joomla Community

Joomla!Day Malaysia 2011 Recap

Saturday, 25 June 2011 20:00

Some people might say my presentations are a bit "different". I just think I enjoy an "energized" presentation like everyone else, and I know when open source folks are asked to listen to a keynote at 9am on a Saturday, something more than coffee is needed to keep them awake. So I'm keen on doing my best to keep the audience happy with a bit of Californian banter and a little warm-up exercise at Joomla events. It's also a good remedy for lack of sleep.

I was a bit concerned, however, when I was preparing for Joomla!Day Malaysia 2011. Some folks told me that the Malaysian people are shy, reserved, and definitely not the kinds of people that would be interested in doing things a "differently" at a technology event.

These folks obviously haven't met the growing, energized, and excited Malaysian Joomla community that yelled "Joomla rocks!" on the 29th floor of the Petronas Towers in the heart of Kuala Lumpur on June 25, 2011.

Peeking at 1.7

Sunday, 19 June 2011 13:04

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It’s less than a month until Joomla! CMS 1.7 is scheduled for release, and developers have been busy writing, testing and committing new features, working on the platform, and fixing bugs. So what are some of those new features? There’s something for everyone, webmasters, developers, and designers. Let’s take a look at a few of them.

As soon as you start an install you’ll see one really noticeable change, which is that the installer has been totally “ajaxified” by Rouven Weßling. No page reloads! It’s even got a lovely spinner to show it’s working. Rouven told me “I love the installation as a playground. Total disregard for BC is only there possible :D.” I hear there’s more ajax to come, too. Rouven also upgraded TinyMCE to version 3.4 along with doing a lot of other work all over the CMS.

Another noticeable improvement is Michael Babker’s work on implementing batch processing in components in the administrator. This has been frequently requested and was the product of long work by Michael and others back to before 1.6 was released. These kinds of features take a long time to implement in a coherent way. And the great news is that to do it he completed building out the JHtmlBatch class and added new batch functions to JControllerForm and JModelAdmin. You can see them in action in the Articles and Weblinks managers. This is great for developers and users alike, ready to incorporate into extensions and providing a consistent user experience.

Joe LeBlanc did really helpful work for developers on JToolbar buttons. Now getting Save and New and Save to Copy are as easy as:

JToolBarHelper::save2new('article.save2new', 'JTOOLBAR_SAVE_AND_NEW')

JToolBarHelper::save2copy('article.save2copy', 'JTOOLBAR_SAVE_AS_COPY')

He even implemented it all over the CMS user interfaces.

For site administrators there are a number of nice improvements. One I’ve hoped for for a long time is Peter Kneisel’s contribution of a new parameter set that lets you limit article submission done via a menu link to a single fixed category. This is great if your users tend to forget to select the right category when submitting. So even if they are allowed to create articles in several categories, you can make a link that let’s them just “Post Blog” or “Create Homework Assignment.” In Joomla! 1.0 you could work around to do this, and it’s great to have it correctly implemented.

Another new parameter in a menu item lets you link to a saved search when making a search link. This is handy for a number of use cases, but especially if you have some common searches that users do or if you want a way to pull in topical information from a number of different components.

There are even more improvements/features just waiting for you to test them out.

With the new development strategy we’ll be seeing more of these smaller, incremental features and improvements every six months. At the same time people working on major features (like ACL, JForm and Categories in 1.6) that may take a year to complete can get them in when ready, including doing incremental work on the platform making the classes available to other developers and testers event if they are not yet implemented in the CMS.

Want to help 1.7 be as successful as possible? Do a checkout from subversion (you will need a subversion client) such as tortoise (for Windows) or subclipse for use with the Eclipse IDE or test the alpha (remembering that many fixes have been made). Report any problems you find to theCMS tracker.

Want to contribute a new feature for 1.8? The feature tracker is always open and six months is not so far away. Get coding!

Want to suggest something for someone else to code? Go to ideas.joomla.org.

Joomla! Night Chile to be broadcast LIVE!

Monday, 13 June 2011 20:00

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On Wednesday, 6 July 2011, from the Joomla Community Livestream channel, Joomla! Night Chile 2011 will be broadcast live. Joomla! Night Chile has requested the ability to provide free access world-wide to the event. Starting at 6:45 pm CST on Wednesday 6 JULY 2011 the event will be accessible anywhere in the world! Visit the channel and subscribe for alerts to this event today: http://www.livestream.com/joomlacommunity If you are an event coordinator for an upcoming Joomla! Day and would like your event broadcast as well on this channel, please use this request form.

JED Listing Redesign and Enhanced Features

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 08:00

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The JED is planning to redesign the listing details pages and offer enhanced premium features to the community. The individual listing pages haven’t really grown with the needs of the extensions which are listed and the users that are reviewing them, so we have decided to change that.

So, what’s the plan?

We are planning to completely redesign the JED listing detail pages in a way which will greatly enhance the extension developers and extension users experience; this will also provide the team with an easier management interface. The goal is to help provide a much greater understanding of an extension and it’s features. This helps extension developers provide a better product and better support and helps to ensure that the end-user has clear expectations. We believe this will also increase the number of positive ratings and reviews and help to limit the number of negative ratings and reviews.

Joomla!Day Greece 2011 Recap

Sunday, 29 May 2011 21:38

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When the opportunity presented itself for me to speak at Joomla!Day Greece on May 28-29, 2011, I hopped at the chance to be there. Having kicked-off two Joomla!Days in the US myself back in 2007, I know how much preparation and anxiety can rest on the shoulders of organizers for these inaugural events. How many people will show up? Will the projectors work? Can the wifi keep up with the demand? Will anyone be able to understand our keynote speaker's crazy warm-up exercise?

The organizing team for Joomla!Day Greece 2011, lead by Fotis Evangelou, created an awesome event, attracting more than 600 attendees whom strolled through the doors of the Danaos theatre in Athens. With comfortable seating, a terrific sound system, and massive high-definition screens, the event was off to a good start before the speakers even came to the stage.

Speakers arrived from across Europe to share knowledge about a variety of tools and practical lessons learned, from introductions on Joomla to search engine optimization. With the evening's activities keeping many of us up late at night, Fotis asked me to start of each day with a little exercise: a rendition of the "Joomla! Rocks!" cheer. If anything, at least I was wide awake for my keynote after our exercise.

Aside from the excitement to see such a huge turnout for an inaugural event, two key things impressed me about this Joomla!Day.

1) Fotis and his team showed us that with a combination of passion and energy, a Joomla!Day in a new locale can be a success even with less than two months preparation and with only a handful of people working together. This isn't to say it didn't take quite a bit of time to make bring this event together, but it can be done with just a small group of passionate folks.

2) Communities that haven't already hosted a Joomla!Day can be pleasantly surprised to discover a big turnout from their community for their first event, enabling the event to be a catalyst for community growth in the future. It was great to see at least 20 hands raised when the attendees were asked "who wants to help put together next year's event?" Even better, it seems like this event could kick-off more in-person meetings for community groups in the region.

I'd like to extend my many thanks to Fotis and his team for their kind hospitality and terrific effort, to my fellow speakers who donated their time and energy to spread Joomla knowledge, and to the Greek Joomla community that showed the world that they have strong Joomla pride.

Ευχαριστούμε Joomla!Day Greece! See you in 2012!

Photos

Lots of photos from the event can be found on Flickr using the #jd11gr hashtag. Have some photos from Joomla!Day Greece you'd like to share with the world? Just add the #jd11gr tag to your photo in Flickr!

Max and Nick chat at Joomla!Day Greece 2011