Joomla

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

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

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

Comience ahora mismo:

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

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

• JWeb
• JImage
• JWebClient
• JGrid

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

The artcile New Features in 2.5 showcases several new features in Joomla 2.5. In addition to supporting MS SQL Databases covering SQLServer 2008 and SQLAZure, Joomla 2.5 supports Azure Storage CDN and Azure deployment. Windows Azure is the Cloud platform from Microsoft. To learn more, please visit Windows Azure. Sign up here for a Windows Azure Free Trial account. This article covers a use case to deploy new Joomla site on Windows Azure. I will follow up with another use case where we will cover migration of Joomla 2.5 site (Windows Server and SQLServer Database) to Windows Azure. Migration will require customizations to Joomla Scaffolder framework.

Joomla 2.5, due out in January 2012, will have a host of new features including new search functionality, multi-database support, and update notification. The following article describes these features. Many people in the community have contributed to making these features possible, some of whom are listed here. Moving from 1.7 to 2.5 can be done with the one-click upgrade within Joomla and most extensions that run on 1.7 should also run on 2.5.

El Villarreal CF, equipo de fútbol de la Primera División de la Liga española que ha disputado la UEFA Champions League este año, acaba de inaugurar su nuevo portal oficial, completamente realizado con Joomla!.

El portal http://www.villarrealcf.es ha sido desarrollado usando Joomla! 1.5 junto con extensiones como K2 y Joom!Fish. Aún le queda algo de desarrollo por delante, pero según parece el club quería tenerla antes de Navidad.

El fútbol está considerado como el deporte más popular del mundo. Nacido en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, actualmente es jugado por más de 250 millones de personas en más de 200 países, siendo el deporte con mayor audiencia televisiva a nivel mundial.

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Villareal CF, a First Division spanish football (soccer) team which has played the UEFA Champions LEague this season, has just launched its new official website, completely done using Joomla!.

The website http://www.villarrealcf.es has been built using Joomla! 1.5 along side with extensions like K2 and Joom!Fish. There's some development pending yet (like the english translation), but probably the club wanted to have it live before Christmas.

Football is considered as the most popular sport in the world. Born during the second half of the 19th century, it's currently played regularly by over 250 million people from over 200 countries, having the highest global television audience in sport.

Ahora que Joomla.org también habla español y está más cerca de todos los hispanoparlantes, debemos comenzar a colaborar de manera real y efectiva.

La comunidad Joomla! quiere integrar a todas las personas de habla hispana, que de alguna forma estén involucrados con el software Joomla!, para que podamos compartir el conocimiento y crecer como familia. Notarás que de esta forma, Joomla! está con nosotros y cada día más cercana, cumpliendo todas nuestras necesidades y de la forma más eficiente posible, porque la unión hace la fuera y compartir el conocimiento es crecer personal y profesionalmente.

Thanks to everyone who participanted in the Joomla! Pizza, Bugs and Fun this past weekend. Over 60 people worldwide tested, coded/fixed and documented new features and issues in Joomla! 2.5, helping to get it ready for release. Some of the countries represented were the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Denmark, The Netherlands, Israel, the United States, Canada, Brazil, Chile, Argentina,  Australia, Malaysia, South Africa, Algeria and India. Over half of the people participating were not in the Joomla Bug Squad so we had a lot of new volunteers. It was great to see so many people come out to help.

Statistics over the Weekend

These are the statistics from the Joomla CMS Issue Tracker and Joomla CMS Feature Tracker for the period. Thanks must also go out to the people not on these charts including those who did documentation, those who tested but didn't have a login to the trackers and those giving support.

The charts are in two groups. The Issue tracker is for fixing or improving existing features while the Feature tracker is for creating new features for 2.5.

Joomla! también habla español!

Esta ha sido una semana intensa para la comunidad hispanohablante. Se formó un grupo en español vía Skype y de inmediato nos propusimos un objetivo en común: Lograr, que a través de los canales sociales de Joomla!, se publicara contenido en nuestro idioma.

Ese objetivo dió el paso inicial para que se comenzara a publicar contenido en español en la Joomla! Community Magazine, el que luego sería informado a través de los canales sociales de Joomla! a toda la comunidad.

There was some big news this week in Joomla! CMS development with the merging of massive rewriting of queries. Why? And why rewrite? Because this makes it possible to run the Joomla! CMS on many different databases, not just MySQL and MySQLi as in the past.

As people who follow these things know, for many years there has been a goal to make Joomla! “database agnostic” which is to say to allow Joomla to run on any database. For a while the Platform has had drivers for Microsoft databases SQLSrv and SQLAzure . There are also pull requests (that is, requests to merge code into the platform)  on Postgresql, Oracle, SQLite and PDO drivers. Great work by Gabriele Pongelli (Postgres), Sudhi Seshachala and the team at Hoodooku (Microsoft databases)  and Omar Ramos (Oracle, SQLite and PDO). If you want to work on a driver for another database (db2 anyone? Drizzle?) you can just fork the platform and go for it!

Version 11.3 of the Platform has just been merged into the CMS and we are down to the last few weeks before 2.5!
We plan to release Version 2.5 beta on or before December 20th.

To make this schedule, we have until December 12th to propose and test new features.

1. Please test the present state of the CMS with your favorite extensions and report any bug on the Tracker.
TEST: The CMS can be downloaded from https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/downloads (Not for production sites!)
REPORT ISSUES: Please post on the tracker http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=8103

2. Please test the New Features (and propose some with code attached if you want):
TEST: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=8549
Specially look at those with Status "Pending" when testing

One does not need to be a geek or PHP guru to test the proposed patches. And your efforts will really help in getting your favorite CMS in good shape for 2.5!

As many of you know, version 2.5 is the long-term-support release that ends the 1.6/1.7/2.5 series.
As such, the update to 2.5 will be seamless and will be handled exactly the same as the update from 1.6 to 1.7 or 1.7.2 to 1.7.3.
It is expected that all extensions should work without changes for version 2.5. However, extension developers should test their programs to make sure.

We hope to get some great new features into version 2.5, but we need the community to help with the process. Thanks!

Mexico City is, by some counts, the second largest city in the world. Over 18 million people live in the Distrito Federal (Federal District) that forms the city.

How has government of Mexico City decided to keep in touch with those millions of citizens? Joomla. http://www.df.gob.mx now runs on Joomla 1.7 (the name D.F. is short for Distrito Federal and is how Mexicans normally refer to the city).

In addition to Mexico City, many other Mexican government websites run on Joomla including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Palacio Nacional.

These Mexican sites are part of a trend. Joomla has a good claim to be the most popular way that governments build websites. You can find nearly 3000 more examples at http://joomlagov.info.

The fourth Joomla!Day Italy took place on October 22nd in Florence

Organized by AlexRed, Ste and Gegè, the admins of joomla.it , and hosted at the prestigious hall of the Palace of Congresses of Florence’s expo, the conference was followed by more than 1200 people, from all Italy's regions, throughout the day.

Many followed the live streaming feed of the conference, with peaks of 350 concurrent users and a total of 9000 unique hits over the whole day.

Photos and the videos of the event are available on the Joomladay.it site (http://www.joomladay.it ).

 

We are announcing a Joomla! Pizza Bugs and Fun 2011 event scheduled for Saturday, December 10, 2011. The event is global for virtual participants with local venues where ever they are organized. The official start time is 9am in each time zone. Help us prepare Joomla! 2.5 for release early in January 2012!

1.7.3 is introducing quite a few improvements concerning multilanguage and languages in general.

A. Multilanguage

1. In 1.7.1 was introduced the new Multilanguage Status Module: http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1501-171-new-multilanguage-status-module.html
In 1.7.3, a necessary improvement is implemented: checking the status of the Contacts linked to an Author, as it is necessary to create a unique contact per author and tagged to 'All' languages OR one contact per published Content Language.
If an error occurs, a message is added in the modal with the user name concerned (Thanks Marc Studer and Christophe Demko):

2. It is now possible to customize the Site Name depending on the Content Language displayed.
A new parameter has been created in Extensions=>Language Manager=>Content tab=>Edit a Content Language:

3. By enabling a parameter when editing the Language filter plugin, users will at last get a new feature that has been expected for long:
the Content Language prefix will not be used anymore in the url for the Site default language when SEF is on!
(Thanks to all who participated in trying to patch this —See: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemEdit&tracker_item_id=25037 — and to Christophe Demko who solved it.)
Extensions=>Plugin Manager=>Filter by System=>Edit System - Language Filter

Front-end result:

4. The batch processing in various Managers in back-end now includes a Language field.
It is now possible to batch-change language for ticked items, as well as batch-copy including Language change to another Menu (in Menu Manager) or another Category (Thanks Michael Babker). We hope to also include Menu Associations in this process for 2.5 .
 

B. General Languages improvements

1. Global Configuration now includes a default Offline Message per Language pack.
If this option is chosen, the offline message will be customized depending on the site language displayed.
It is always possible to override this value by using an xx-XX.override.ini ( See http://docs.joomla.org/International_Enhancements_for_Version_1.6#Language_String_Overrides )

2. The Administrator Help menu may now propose different forums to link to, depending on Language.
A registered language pack may propose a link to the Official Language sub-forum on forum.joomla.org. Custom distributions may propose links to their own external Community Forum by adding in their customized sample data the said link.
Users may decide of their preferred help forum.
Module Manager=>Filter by Administrator=>Edit Admin Menu

3. A new column has been added in the Installed Languages Managers to display the Language tag (en-GB, fr-FR, it-IT, etc.)

Thanks again to all who participated in implementing these improvements and do not forget to upgrade to 1.7.3 !
http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5392-joomla-173-released.html

And last but not least, we do now have an official multilanguage demo site (now updated to 1.7.3) where users can log in back-end to make sure they structure their site correctly:
See: http://multilingual-joomla-demo.cloudaccess.net/

During the last year we've shared some hard numbers behind Joomla's growth. We saw that Joomla.org has grown 50% in 2 years and also that there were now 1/2 million forum users, 25 million Joomlacode downloads of Joomla and over 8000 extensions on the JED.

This weekend marks another important milestone: 2011 will be the busiest year ever for Joomla!Days.

The community have a done a great job listing all over the Joomla!Days that have taken place: http://docs.joomla.org/Joomla!Days. The previous high was 23 events in 2009. This year there have been 21 events already and four more are planned for this week alone:

• Joomla!Day Australia - November 5-6, 2011 - Sydney, Australia
• Joomla!Day Finland - November 5, 2011 - Helsinki, Finland
• Joomla!Day Spain - November 9-10, 2011 - Zaragoza, Spain
• Joomla!Day Midwest - November 12, 2011 - Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Thank You

It's worth taking a moment to thank all of the organizers who have made all of the previous 100+ events possible.

The Dutch community deserves a mention: every year they've run a Joomla!Day once and sometimes even twice.

Also, welcome to the newcomers in 2011: Chile, Algeria, Malaysia, Greece, Chicago, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milwaukee, Israel.

We hope to see all of you at a Joomla!Day in 2012. If you think you can help us hold even more events next year, the Joomla community has a great guide on how to get started.

Thanks to the platinum sponsor Seblod, creator of a new CCK for Joomla!, we were able to host a dinner party on Friday night for 50 of our sponsors, speakers, volunteers, and international guests. The wonderful staff at House of Brews made our event quite memorable. It was exciting to have so much Joomla! talent in one room - core team, OSM board members, major component developers, hosting companies, and grateful end users mingled as the excitement level grew for the coming weekend events.

  On Saturday, our generous benefactor Microsoft helped us invite all conference attendees to a party at the House of Brews. Seventy participants discussed the events of the day over beer, wings, and sliders.   After the planning and craziness is over, I can happily say that JoomlaDay2011 was a tremendous success.   Friday, the leadership team along with about 30 other attendees met to discuss where Joomla! should go in 2013. Unfortunately, I was unable to participate as I would have liked because I was setting up for the weekend. Regardless, I heard lots of great discussions occurred.  It is exciting to see where Joomla! will be going to in just a few years!   Friday night we invited the sponsors, speakers, and volunteers to another party at the House of Brews. They really put on a great event!  We had beer towers, appetizers, a great dinner, and, of course, dessert.  They even presented a chance for me to mingle and meet with many of our international guests.  What a way to start the weekend!  The conversations ranged from politics, to Joomla!, and to current world events.  I am proud to say we had guests from various countries including Western Australia, Israel, Columbia, Germany, France, Canada, and more.   Saturday morning started very early with a couple of headaches.  Unfortunately, the coffee was not brewing as it should have been, but that did not slow down the presenters or workshops.  Although, I must admit, people seemed a little fuzzy before they finally got their cup of Joe.  With plenty of bagels, muffins, juice, and other accoutrement, the keynote began at 8:45.  A special thanks to Ryan for creating a video for us that we were able to watch all together.    Each session on Saturday lasted for over an hour.  We had sessions based on extensions and 3rd party developers, sessions based on what can be done with Joomla! from a developer perspective, and other sessions focused on the 'business end' of Joomla!.  Each session was well attended, and there were definitely a variety of sessions to choose from.  In fact, the number one complaint that I have received so far was that attendees had too many quality sessions to choose from.  Well, we have a solution for that, too!  We have posted the videos on the www.JoomladayNYC.com website for attendees to check out sessions they were unable to attend.   Saturday ended again with another trip to the House of Brews.  Thanks to a generous donation from Microsoft we were able to provide appetizers and beer for the attendees.  I think everyone enjoyed another night out with the Joomla! folks!  Some did ask why we were at the House of Brews again.  To be honest, we could not find another bar/restaurant that would host our event because we had no idea how many would attend on Saturday night.  It could have been anywhere from 10 to 70.  So, instead of picking a place where we would have to wait in line, we decided to be better safe than sorry.  A special shout out goes to Marian Konop of Gotham Informatics who planned all of these parties.   Sunday morning began with another near coffee catastrophe, but we persevered by having the coffee ready for our guests by 8:30.  Thank goodness.  With the amount of work to be done Sunday, we really needed the caffeine!  Elin gave a great keynote about Joomla! and how to get involved, which is something we all need to do.  We even added a 'bug squashing' session that day.  Rob Schley gave the entire group a view into the Unified Content Model that he started creating at Ebay.  We are looking forward to seeing what gets integrated and how all of this will work out.  The sessions Sunday were developer-focused; we adjusted some tracks as needed to try to make as many participants as comfortable as possible.   We closed the day on Sunday with a stump-the-speaker one more time, and the questions and answers were as various as any JoomlaDay conference should be.   All in all, we, the organizers from this year are exhausted yet energized.  I know personally that I am looking forward to attending other JoomlaDay to have the experience from a  'guest' perspective and 'learn a little more'.   Thanks again to the sponsors, speakers, and volunteers for following through with a great event!   Check out our facebook page with pictures at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joomla-Day-New-York-City/133644853352910   Signed, Laura Gordon www.RytechSites.com   Marian Konop www.GothamInformatics.com