All Blog Posts Tagged 'joomla' - All Together, As A Whole

Happy 5th Birthday Joomla!

2010-08-31T23:09:55.000Z

I thought long and hard about what to write for this Birthday blog post.

I started to look back at the early days, back in September and October 2005, to see if the aims and ideas of the co-founders have come to fruition.

Then I realised that we had no grand aims of world domination just a desire to work together with a wider community to build something special.

We, the core development teams, unanimously believe:

An open source project is about people producing free and open software and contributing to something as a team for the benefit of others.
Open source projects reflect the spirit of collaboration and fun while garnering community feedback and providing good governance that allows for business to confidently invest in its development.
Open source projects are open to the participation of anybody who can contribute value and is willing to work with the community.

Those 81 words were our Declaration of Independence.

Below is a short video featuring photos from Arno Zijlstra & Jean-Marie Simonet, from the first Summit Meeting in London in October 2005 where many of us met in person for the very first time, together with screenshots from some of the amazing sites that have been built with Joomla! in 2010.

5 Years Later: The Phases of Liberating Joomla!

2010-08-19T21:30:00.000Z

Photo courtesy of Joomla! Founder Arno Zijlstra's lovely wife.

Five years ago, today, on August 19, 2005, the brave and incredibly naive core team of the Mambo CMS made a monumental and important announcement, and thus began the process of liberating Joomla!. From all over the world, people who believed in the power of people came and worked hard, thus forming the Joomla! community.

Thanks to Andrew Eddie, Emir Sakic, Andy Miller, Rey Gigataras, Mitch Pirtle, Tim Broeker, Alex Kempkens, Arno Zijlstra, Jean-Marie Simonet, Levis Bisson, Andy Stewart, Peter Russell, Brad Baker, Brian Teeman, Michelle Bisson, Trijnie Wanders, Rey Gigataras, Shayne Bartlett, Nick Annies, and Johan Janssens.

On November 5th of 2005, I joined the Joomla! forums and began my involvement. It's not always been easy. But Freedom is never easy. It's something you have to be committed to defend and willing to work for. Freedom isn't instantaneous, either, it comes in stages. The August 19th fork was merely the first step, the birth of this project.

During the first period of freedom, everyone was excited as leaders like Rey and JM and Brad and Brian worked in the public eye greeting community and helping everyone get started, sharing information, and projecting a welcoming message. It wasn't until much later that I learned behind the scenes, the core team was working very hard and extremely stressed. The drama was quite intense as the realities of forming a project under the weight of a growing International community super sized all problems.

The second major liberation of Joomla! was the adoption of the GPL for extensions.Those who lived through that era might remember me as a not very nice, fierce defender of the Castle, pushing down the townspeople as they advanced. How dare they protest such an enormous change in the clear agreement they had with this project? I continue to believe the change was good. I finally see that the way it was done was very damaging to our community.

The third period of liberating Joomla! is the community engagement period. By far, this has been the most enjoyable part of my experience with Joomla!. The friendships, the learning, the code, the innovation, the renewed passion within the community have been great. Those rewards came from the efforts of many, many, many inside and outside of the project. The Bug Squad, ATAAW, JandBeyond, People, JoomlaForward, the nooku community, the individuals who selected the OSM Board, and of course, the new OSM Board, the Joomla! Community Magazine, Twitter, and even blogs, like Brian's and Torkil's, are tools we find useful to strengthen and engage our community.

If I could make a wish and blow out Joomla!'s five-year birthday candles, I would wish that our fourth period of liberating Joomla! will be a long period of innovation, where lots of value comes from fun, cohesive, self-forming and self-directed teams each working hard to improve Joomla!. I hope it's a period of opinionated, spirited discussions, and lots of teasing and laughter and relative peace. It's time to renovate the castle into office space, open a few windows to let the fresh air in, and use our torches as lamps for late night coding sessions.

It's also time for the old timers, people like me, to learn to shut up and listen, stop *gossiping about one another*, work on changing ourselves and not anyone else, and step aside for fresh, new emerging leaders. People like Hils and Nicholas, Klas and Alice, Robert and Jen4Web, Paul and Christina, Matt and Sandra, Stian and Diane, Marco and Tess, Kyle and Andy (to name only a few), can help guide our next phase with the full support of a sincere community manager, Steve Burge, and the entire community-focused OSM board.

Ian - I appreciate your heartfelt note. I don't know the answer, either, but I do know that the first step is for each of us to admit, "I am a big part of what is fundamentally wrong with Joomla. I am willing to try to change and help bring improvements. I am proud of Joomla! and what we have accomplished.

Thanks for Joomla! to our founders, which includes the first 17 who chatted on IRC in the picture Arno's wife took as Andrew published the Letter to the Community, and every one of us who put our hearts and time into keeping her free and moving forward.

We can work together to move Joomla! Forward. There are no lost friendships. If we want to, we can find the good in one another. Even those where others might have said, that's never going to happen.it can. I'll take that beer, Brian. Thanks for your major contributions to Joomla!. I am proud to call you friend.

Joomla a 92% insecure cms application ?

2010-08-09T12:15:18.000Z

I saw this article in a Wordpress blog from one of the core devs there http://www.andrewnacin.com/ where he make a reference to an article from a company Qualys and their BlindElephant test about security and comparision of different open source CMS among them Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal.(92%, 4%, 70%)

Any comments on this one?

This week at Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, security company Qualys presented and released BlindElephant, a utility that scans web sites for insecure web applications. Their research identified that 70 percent of sites running Drupal are affected by critical vulnerabilities, and that the statistics only get worse for Joomla (92%), MediaWiki (95%), phpBB
(100%). ¹

I received a press release about BlindElephant earlier this week. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. It surely would have gotten my attention, however, had it included their WordPress statistic — 4 percent. (What did catch my attention was this IDG article.)

The application, the source for which Qualys released, isn’t about identifying critical vulnerabilities; it’s about identifying the versions of software that websites run. They made their
own determinations which versions had “critical vulnerabilities.” ² Check out their slides and white paper, both packed with great information and statistics.

ATAAW Movie 1 - Happy Birthday Joomla! - update

2010-08-08T12:46:32.000Z

A little update!

We are bowled over with the response from our Movie Makers... there are some very special things beginning to arrive. Forgive us for not going into precise details but surprises are nice aren't they - especially Birthday ones!

The upload deadline is 15th August. Please let us know if this is difficult for you. We have mailed all our Movie Makers from ataawmoviemakers @ gmail.com - if you haven't received any mail from us do let us know here!

As soon as the uploads are in place, our Directors, Svein and Jeremy, can get to work and our Music Department will spring into action...

All I can say is thank you - for your time, your effort, your wonderful imagination and not least for being part of our fantastic Joomla! Community.

Any questions or queries can be posted here... and/or skype contact is available

Hils

Twitter follow: ataawmovies

On the economics of Joomla! - ACTION REQUIRED

2010-08-07T16:07:43.000Z

At the J and Beyond 2010 conference in Weisbaden, DE, I had the pleasure
to meet and chat with Aarti Mahajan, a graduate student in Innovation
& Entrepreneurship Management Department at the Ghent University in
Belgium.

Aarti’s doctoral research is aimed at revealing the entrepreneurship and revenue generation opportunities within the Joomla!
ecosystem.

To obtain the appropriate data for her research, Aarti has prepared two surveys aimed at Joomla! extension developers and
service providers. Each survey will take approximately 30 minutes to
complete. The results of the research will strictly be used for academic
purposes and will be shared with the respondents.

With the help of the responses, the companies will be compared across various
dimensions and best practices leading to success of these firms will be
identified.

As an academic myself, I find this research very exciting. To my knowledge, this will be the first formal economic study
of Joomla! and I am very interested to see the results.

Since Joomla! is all about community, I strongly encourage all developers and
service providers in the Joomlasphere community to participate.

The founders of companies that develop extensions and/or templates for Joomla! are invited to participate in the survey for PRODUCT DEVELOPERS which is available at the following URL:

http://ugent.limequery.com/79385/lang-en

The founders of companies that provide services (web design, consulting,
training, SEO, etc.) for Joomla! are invited to participate in the
survey for SERVICE PROVIDERS which is available at the following URL:

http://ugent.limequery.com/55822/lang-en

More background on Aarti’s research will be posted below. Fell free to discuss any issues and ask questions in this thread.

Disclaimer: Joomla!™ is a registered trademark of Open Source Matters. The research
described above is not affiliated to Joomla!, Open Source Matters or
any of its subsidiaries.

Security competition

2010-08-04T20:33:09.000Z

As you know joomla is often accused of being insecure. Nearly always this accusation is wrong! Joomla is secure, but 3rd party components are most of the time not.
There are different reasons for this, but the most obvious in my eyes is the fact that it is super easy to create an extension. And most of the time those extensions are created from people that don't have enough experience and ....

I don't want to be one of those 3rd party developers that end up blamed for security holes, that is why we've organized this small hacking competition at compojoom.com (more info here ) The idea is pretty simple - if you find a way to hack compojoomComment (the former joomlaComment) you are going to win a prize. So far it is been a great fun! Several people tried XSS attacks, few SQL injections, I have friends trying to crack the captcha with some brute force attacks. (thank god we are still holding tight :D)

I know that some really clever people are visiting the ATAAW page and I really hope that you are going to try your skills against compojoomComment!

You can experiment here: http://hackme.compojoom.com/

If you want to throw a look at our code you can always visit the repository:
frontend and backend

If you have any questions let me know!

Daniel

Komrade makes Web Design Ledger Top 40

2010-07-21T12:24:06.000Z

Congrats to Komrade for being recognized for their stunning one-page design by Web Design Ledger. That's really cool - and good for Joomla!, too, since they are the designers for Joomla! Community Magazine, as well! It really is an exceptional design, take a look, and then, let Fotis Evangelou know what you think!

Is Your Oscar Acceptance Speech Ready? [Joomla! Movie Project]

2010-07-17T18:52:17.000Z

Have you ever wanted to work with Steven Spielberg on his next movie?
Could you be the next winner of the Oscar for the best Cinematography 2010?

This is your chance now... to work with our talented Professional Directors, who have over 30 years combined TV/video/film industry experience and, most importantly, they come from right within our Joomla! Community.

From a series of shorts/adverts/videos planned for Joomla!, this is the first call - for the Happy 5th Birthday Joomla! movie. We need you and your videos! Signing up will give you all the information you need and personal access to Svein Wisnaes & Jeremy Wilken who will advise on your particular camera and how best to shoot in your chosen location.

Call for Video Makers

WHAT: This is the preliminary international call for people to sign up to take part in the 'Happy Birthday Joomla!' movie project. Please read the Production Brief

WHERE & HOW: Sign-up Form available here

WHEN: Sign ups for the main movie should be completed by midnight UTC 23rd July 2010

NOTES:
This call is to find out who is able to provide short movie clips which will be edited to make up the main 'Birthday' movie. Detailed scripts and shooting instructions will then be provided by our Directors, Svein & Jeremy.

We want to hear you, in your language, in your voices
We want to see you, in your country, showing your heritage
We want to know how you, in your country and language, use Joomla!
We ALL want to say 'Happy 5th Birthday Joomla!'

TIMELINE:

July 23 - Final day for community members to sign up to shoot video
July 26-28 - Personal consultation with production team to help finalize team goals
Aug 5 - Check-in with production team to ensure things are going well
Aug 15 - Video should be uploaded and sent to production team

Original post: Joomla! the Movie? Yes, we can!

Joomla! the Movie? Yes, we can!

2010-06-26T09:00:00.000Z

...or why should the other FOSS projects have all the good ideas!

Call for: Script Writers, Director, Production Team, Camera Operators, Actors, Composers, Musicians, Graphic Designers, Promotion Team and all associated professional skills that we know we already have within the Joomla! Community ...and some financiers/philanthropists would probably be essential too!

Why: to make a promotional, positive, professional movie/video for Joomla! with a difference

Background: Linux have the 'throw it over the wall' presentation, Java have the Java 4-Ever Trailer both of which get their desired message across with great wit and skill - can we do the same for Joomla? Make an unforgettable, subtely humorous video that might even become 'viral'?

Example: Warning - a little bit of adult content! http://jz10.java.no/java-4-ever-trailer.html

What Now: If you have the skill in any of these areas are you with us? We are not thinking about a quick YouTube here - more a professionally produced 'short' that will make the name Joomla! even more unforgettable in a great way. It wouldn't be affiliated with the Project - let's say it could be a gift from the Joomla! Community to the world!

This is ambitious but very doable! Do you want to be a part of it?

Oleg Nesterov: Joomla Extensions Kung Fu from JandBeyond

2010-06-22T16:42:39.000Z

Joomla Extensions Kung Fu

View more presentations from Oleg Nesterov.

That is exceptional. Thanks Oleg!

Open Source Matters

2010-06-20T15:00:00.000Z

Every time I turn around, it seems like more positive change is coming out of Open Source Matters.

Jacques Rentzke opened an Open Source Matters group in People as "an informal space for the community to interact with the members of the board." Prior to this, there has never been a way to do so. This is openness.

Two days ago, Ryan Ozimek posted an article OSM Board Members Take New Leadership Roles.

* Community Liaison - Steve Burge
* Trademark Team Liaison - Marko Milenovic
* Events Team Leader - Robert Deutz

More openness as to what those roles entail and more changes coming. Genuine meritocracy in action. I don't think anyone who has been observing and who knows these people would disagree that these are the right roles.

Steve has acted as a community liaison since the moment he became a board member. He has been openly answering questions, helping people get information and support they need, listening and responding appropriately, educating people on their responsibilities. In terms of communication, one of the first things Steve did in his role on the board was to ask community for input on communication needs, and then summarized the results with a small panel of respected community members. Steve provides information on community on a regular basis and is very responsive on Twitter.

Marko is BSD in the Joomla! forums. He has been very involved in the community since the beginning of Joomla! having served as a forum moderator, a member of the Joomla! Serbia Translation Team, and organizer behind local Joomla Day events. Marko is also a member of the Free Software Foundation Europe core team. Since July 2007, Mark has worked on the Freedom Task Force for the FSF on various GPL violations and legal issues. Seems very suitable as our Trademark Team Liason. This has been a very difficult area for the community and I hope that this change might make it possible for the community to discuss the Trademark in more open and positive ways.

Who can argue with Robert as our Events Team Leader? That selection in and of itself is a sign of respect for the community members who came together at JandBeyond. It is obvious that Robert understands the importance of engaging community in planning these events. He knows the importance of the event, itself, serving the community by providing great learning material provided by peers, building the community through networking and strengthened connections, and enthusing the community into action. I am confident he can work with our friends in Australia to get the international Joomla! event on the right track so that the community enthusiasm we heard coming out of Germany will sound even louder in our next international event in Australia. Robert's positivity is something we all need to hold on to as we work together.

Earlier, it was announced that Jacques Rentzke agreed to serve as the Board's Secretary. Again, as more evidence of the commitment to openness from this board, look at the Board Meeting Minutes now available for March 18th and April 19th.

Finally, I want to acknowledge Ryan Ozimek as a professional and positive leader. He has always been a great evangelist for Joomla! and I am encouraged to see Ryan presenting at Open Camp, along with community leaders Chris Justice, Jeremy Wilken, Cory Webb, Joe LeBlanc, and Kyle Ledbetter. Ryan is someone who inspires the community into action and his inclusive and positive nature builds commitment and loyalty. I encourage you to watch his JandBeyond video that I found to be a good talk for that moment in Joomla!'s community evolution to help pull community together and urge service.

Leadership is so important for change, but leadership cannot bring change, people do. In a free software community, people bring change by contributing to what we produce and that is software. There are lots of ways to get involved in helping make Joomla! better. Follow the #jfwd tag (and tweet using it!) to see what's going on. Today is a Bug Squash Sunday, a great way to join the fun of making Joomla! 1.6 possible.

Time for us to help. Let's do our part, too!

Elin Waring: Joomla! 1.6 Creating a Profile Plugin

2010-06-18T18:30:00.000Z

Elin Waring documented how to clone the existing Joomla! 1.6 User Profile plugin and modify it as needed for your Web site. The plugin automatically adds fields to the registration and/or profile forms in the frontend and on the Administrator. So, it's a very important addition to Joomla! 1.6.

Thanks, Elin, for your work on documenting what people need to do in order to use Joomla! the way they need it!

OPTIONAL Mootools 1.2 Upgrade with Helper scheduled for Mid-July

2010-06-16T03:53:21.000Z

Thanks to Ian MacLennan and Louis Landry for their work and what appears to be a very well considered change management plan to help folks move from the very, very dead MT 1.1 to MT 1.2 in Joomla! 1.5. Check out Ian's post and ask him questions you might have.

Thanks Ian and Louis -- and thanks to the Mootools team for this Upgrade Helper that should ease the transition for us. The other day I was looking at the Mootools forge and looking forward to actually being able to use some of the new plugins.

Joomla! Ubuntu Super Hero Needed for Joomla! 1.6 Installation

2010-06-14T05:49:48.000Z

Hey you Ubuntu desktop Joomla! users! I noticed tonight that one of my favorate technology writers, Bruce Byfield published a recent article in the Linux Magazine entitled Installing Joomla! as a local server. He was helping a buddy get a J! Web site up and running and he ran into the problem of too much documentation, most of which is now outdated.

We need a Joomla! Ubuntu geek to help out! Would you please read Bruce's article and document what it takes to build a localhost environment and install Joomla! on the platform? You could do this by using the Joomla! Documentation Wiki, or by creating a video, and then publishing it within the Joomla! Bug Squad.

When you are done, I would also ask that you respond to Bruce's article and ask him for his feedback on your work. Make certain to thank him for the comments he made -- and especially for helping his friend get started with Joomla!. (Plus, let us know, as well!)

Thanks to the Joomla! Ubuntu super hero who steps up to this challenge! Thanks for helping to move Joomla! Forward!

Forest Linden Joomla 1.6 In-depth Tour - Part 1

2010-06-10T21:00:00.000Z

Joomla 1.6 In-depth Tour - Part 1 from Forest Linden on Vimeo.

JoomlaBlogger: Jeremy Wilken talking about Joomla community involvement

2010-06-08T21:30:00.000Z

Thanks Kristoffer Sandven, aka JoomlaBlogger, for continuing to get that strong community message in the air and on the page and heard. We are all starting to realize we have an amazing community that has great potential. Jeremy Wilken has provided a consistent message on community. Today, he talks about the need for involvement. I love his message, and in particular, this line:

Use the skills you have, and your interests, and we'll make Joomla! the best system out there.

Thanks to both Kristoffer and Jeremy, two leaders in the Joomla! community. Thanks for contributing your gifts.

Go see Video: Joomla! community involvement - what can you do to contribute?

Mark Dexter Announces Selenium IDE Webinar for Joomla! Bug Squad

2010-06-08T18:00:00.000Z

Mark Dexter announced a Webinar to explain how to run system tests for Joomla! 1.6 using the Selenium IDE program. Only 25 people will be able to attend (because of Webinar license Joomla! has) the event to be held: http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=6&day=10&year=2010&hour=19&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 To join the webinar, just browse to joomla.webex.com about 5 minutes before the meeting starts. You will see the meeting listed. Just select Join Meeting. The password for the meeting is BugSquad123.

J! and beyond distribution licensing

2010-06-06T16:00:59.000Z

Do you remember having a laugh when Marcos posted "How to prevent community"? Point 6 of the keynote of Josh Berkus at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit was about legalese, and for me it was a bit too close for comfort. I have noticed that many people in the software industry are a little bit afraid of legal aspects, in the same way that many people who are not in IT are a bit scared of computers. Most people here would agree that there is no need to be fearful of IT, and in the same way I do not see any reason for developers to fear law.

Meanwhile, I had offered to do a presentation at J! and Beyond, since the idea was that everybody would pitch in. The original plan was to do an outline overview of all legal aspects of Joomla, but when I saw Josh Berkus' keynote I changed my plan.

So, at JAB I did a presentation in response to that #6, and I called it "Joomla! beyond distribution licensing: legal tools for a collaborative community".

Using three examples, I explained that legal aspects do not always need to be a hindrance for collaborative open source software communities, and in fact can be seen as one of the tools in the community manager's toolbox. The three examples I used are contribution agreements, trademark licensing and rules of conduct. Of course I used Joomla in these three examples, but the same thinking can be applied to the communities around Joomla extensions or to other open source projects.

Doing a presentation like this at an event focused on software was obviously a bit of an experiment, but it was a nice surprise to see that the room was well filled and that nobody started fretting or yawning in the time it took to present my slides. Unfortunately the presentation was not covered by a camera, and since I made it on Prezi it seems impossible to upload it to the JAB slide share collection. So I thought I'd share it with you here.

Joomla! beyond distribution licensing: legal tools for a collaborative open source community on Prezi

Joomla! Day New England Bug Squashing

2010-06-06T15:47:13.000Z

Bug Squashing event at Joomla! Day New England, as shared by @sueter.

There is no I in Joomla!

2010-06-04T21:40:00.000Z

Over the last 10 years I have attended countless Mambo, Joomla, Linux and other open source events and I'm convinced that this was the best of the lot.

It's hard to say exactly what it was that made this event the best.

But I've given it a go....

JoomlaBlogger: Impressions from J and Beyond

2010-06-04T10:30:00.000Z

J! and Beyond 2010 impressions from Kristoffer Sandven on Vimeo.

From Kristoffer Sandven, JoomlaBlogger -- so many wonderful people and fabulous voices that belong to our amazing Joomla! community!

Paul Delbar of Delius shows how to use one|content to Build Complex Sites with Joomla!

2010-06-04T00:15:24.000Z

Building complex sites with Joomla

View more presentations from Paul Delbar.

Paul Delbar, owner of Delius, uses a very structured, data centered approach to building stunning and complex Web sites with Joomla! and one|content, an application framework he has devised over the years in his work with Joomla!. Of all the various CCK approaches I have seen, including the original Drupal CCK, I am most intrigued with the Delius methodology.

Yesterday, Paul announced a bootcamp in September in Belgium. Strongly recommend for those who can make the trip. Glad to see him releasing some of this code and engaging the community in helping define directions.

JandBeyond Bug Squashing

2010-06-03T23:53:52.000Z

Picture from Klas.

Truly awesome to see Joomla! devs at JandBeyond cranking on bugs. Thanks for joining the Bug Squad, too, and helping us become a community working towards better and better code.

J! & Beyond 2010 has been a HUGE ROCKING amazing success !

2010-06-02T13:30:00.000Z

I'm just back and still energized and inspired by this AMAZING event. I wanted to comment to another blog post, but this finally looked more like a blog post of its own... So let's make it such:

Robert ROCKS

Alex ROCKS
Brian ROCKS
Ryan ROCKS
YOU ROCK
All J&B attendees ROCK
Joomla! ROCKS
Whole Joomla Community ROCKS and is PASSIONATE and ENERGIZED
Those who missed this first international Community event have missed not only the free beers and happily paying beers to your neighbors during amazing BEER sessions (not videotaped), but making History in Joomla!

I'd like to share my intrinsic feeling that came out of this event:
A big page has turned in the history of Joomla ! :

While it's a profound feeling, I'll try to find and explain the reasons leading me to that feeling:

Joomla's Community has taken initiative and is now where the action is !
Joomla's OSM president (Ryan) has joined into the Community, listened, and understood the Community concerns and ideas
Joomla OSM has already integrated into its presentation of goals, literally OVERNIGHT ! THANK YOU Ryan for a great midnight discussion, and having already integrated the thoughts about it into your 9am keynote, redone during the night ! talk about fast !

At the end of his keynote, Ryan was fearing eggs, tomatoes and other throwable items. But, instead, for his listening and hearing and most importantly acting into the right direction, i.e. transparency and verified accountability, and his whole speech, Ryan got a standing ovation from the whole audience.

Thank you Robert, Alex, Brian and J&B Team for organizing the most ROCKING conference ever.

Thanks AllTogetherAsAWhole to have facilitated the organization of this event !
Thank you all who managed to also attend. Most of you were already virtual friends. The event made you real friends!

Plus I was very pleasantly surprised by meeting so many nice people: online written language and photos can't reflect passion well enough, and 3-D encountering of people.

If I can try to share what happened over and over there:

Community is about Peers Relations,
Relation is about Trust,
Trust is about knowing each other,
Knowing about each other is about getting together,
Getting together is about listening and expressing yourself,
Expressing yourself and getting listened to helps spreading great news and also resolving issues,
Resolving issues helps getting energized and positive,
Getting energized and positive strengthens Community ! (go back to point #1 during 72 hours!)

That is exactly what just happened in Wiesbaden over and over and over:

The event has incredibly strengthened relations, and thus the Community, and thus the Joomla project.

Thank you all who made this event a HUGE success.

The facility and location was perfect and superb. The partial lack of Internet was great too!!!

Where can I register now for an Internet-free J&B 2011 ?

I'm now looking forward to all this energy and friendships, and great decisions turning into lots of positive actions :-)

Guys and Girls,

Like Ryan made us cry out on his memorable morning wake-up OSM keynote, and Alex and Robert made us unanymously vigourously say All Together As A Whole:

Joomla! ROCKS!

and most importantly:

Joomla Community ROCKS!

I'm not mentioning amazing peoples, ideas, presentations, exchanges, the deeply human, open and sharing experience this was. I came back with my bags full of feedbacks and friendships from peer members of this solid, vibrant, rocking Joomla Community.

Did you also get that feeling ?

What are your thoughts ?

Beat

JandBeyond Dreamer and OSM Board Member: Robert Deutz

2010-06-01T14:00:00.000Z

Lessons Robert learned in several years trying to make this conference happen

Couldn't embed the video - please go watch it. http://jandbeyond.org/video.html

Stay positive.
Be friendly.
Focus on your goal.
Nothing can stop you from doing good things.
(And, most importantly) have fun!

Note: Video from JandBeyond was provided by Jeremy Wilken. Thanks, Jeremy, for making it possible for everyone to attend this important event.

Robert Deutz Respect. That is leadership!

Shishir asks "What we can do as part of Joomla community to make it number one?"

2010-05-30T14:00:00.000Z

This is my response to a discussion started by Shisihir entitled Why Joomla still not the number one open source CMS?, and specifically, to repeat a very good question Shishir raises when he asked, "In short, I want to know what we can do as part of Joomla community to make it number one."

To begin, I want to gently correct the misconception that Joomla! has never won the Packt Award. Such is not the case. In fact, Joomla! was the first first ever award recipient in 2006. And trust me, we were dancing in the forums with great pride when that announcement was made!

In 2007, 2008, and 2009 , we have, indeed, played second fiddle, to Drupal. Those who know me know know I am a big, big, big fan of the Drupal community and have celebrated right along with them as they worked together to advance that CMS and accomplish great things. Their success comes from real commitment to stay true to their community mission and values which call for collaborative teamwork, openness and sharing of information and code, and a flexible, extensible collection of software.

This year's PackT Winner, WordPress has completely dominated the blogger space during the era of blogging, and now, with v 3, intend to position themselves squarely as a flexible CMS. It is certainly correct to acknowledge that past year's PackT contest excluded former winners, but, given the strength of their installed base, blowing off WordPress as just a little blogger would be seriously missing the very powerful point that knowing how to keep it simple while consistently meeting the needs of users is not only a strength of that community, but it's all that really matters. Mark my words, that community will continue to do great things as they expand into broader markets.

All of which brings us back home to the dust collecting on our Joomla! award mantle. What happened to Joomla!? We stood at the top of the Pack(t) in 2006. And since that time, Joomla! 1.5 was released thus replacing old Mambo spaghetti code with brilliant, extensible code built on design patterns taught in higher education today, the kind of stuff developers long for! And yet, always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

Certainly, it is encouraging that we have consistently stayed in the top three in most media articles and claims. Doing so is not an easy feat considering the mass adoption of open source and with it, the flood of new OSCMS offerings on the market.

It's also worth considering that both of the other two top CMS's have benefited from single leaders whose companies have been fueled by massive influx of finances and thus provided an ability to better support operations of the community project. Conversely, Joomla! is 100% community powered and overseen by the dedication, expertise, and what must be a ridiculous number of volunteer hours of effort by those who accepted the call to serve as OSM board members.

While the project's ability to stay competitive says very good things about Joomla!'s accomplishments, it's equally important to stop and acknowledge that in Joomla!, we simply have not distinguished ourselves in ways that make it clear to others the solid truth that Joomla! is flexible, extensible, and powerful software and that our community is working towards the future.

So, what happened? To me, it is no coincidence that in June 2007, less than one year after our big PackT win, the Joomla! core team issued the Open Source Does Matter announcement. Bear in mind that this announcement came after several months of hand to hand combat in the Joomla! forums which culminated in the near destruction of the Joomla! community.

In that announcement, the Joomla! project team said that this change will mean "it's a long, slow road"' and their prediction was right on the money. As someone who stayed involved, it is my observation that it has only been since the completion of the four steps laid out in the announcement last year that this community started to rebuild a solid foundation completely based upon a free software ecosystem.

When it comes right down to it, it matters very little whether we individually support these changes announced in 2007, like I did and still do, or we only see the obvious enormous cost that this community has paid for opting to take the long slow road to implement this change. We all know that the truth is, this deal is done and our future lays ahead of us, not behind.

And so, after nearly three years since this announcement, it has only been in these past several months that I have had moments of great hope as I observed what appears to be the budding regrowth of a strong, unruly, passionate, opinionated, geeky community producing great Joomla! software.

In fact, today, my pride in our community has never been greater as JandBeyond, our first ever International Joomla! community event, 100% community powered, is holding sessions in Germany for nearly 200 of our people who have traveled from over 25 countries to learn from one another and listen to over 60 of the world's foremost Joomla! experts talk about our powering Joomla! forward.

And so, a response to Shishir's question that he asks each of us, "I want to know what we can do as part of Joomla community to make it number one", I would say, have faith in this community and in community approaches, find a job you can do to shift Joomla! forward and do that work tp the best of your ability, looking for ways to collaborate with others.

Kudo's to the Joomla! Community Working Group for providing our community with People.j.org. Thank you for recognizing it's important to allow community to gather, to self organize without the project's permission, and to speak freely with one another. With the backing of a project that views it's role as a coach and it's job as one that must inspire community engagement and participation and get out of the way of community as they lead, fully empowered, driving in directions we need to go.

Through our community efforts, it will become indisputable how valuable our own personal involvement is to our own professional and business standing. And, some time after that, the awards will reappear as others realize the software built and used by the Joomla! Community is, indeed, second to none.

JandBeyond Streaming and Video

2010-05-30T09:30:00.000Z

It's hard to believe, but the planning for JandBeyond, the selection of the name, and the selection of the logo, have all passed, and today is the day of the event. Live streaming and archived video of over 60 speakers and 200 attendees of the world's most involved and experienced Joomla! developers and site builders begins at 10:30 (+1 GMT) on Sunday May 30, and 9:00 (+1 GMT) on Monday May 31 GMT+1.

Special congratulations to Robert Deutz, the man who has wanted this to happen for the Joomla! community for many years and someone who worked with everyone interested to make it a reality, thus proving what a good choice he is for OSM Board member. Have fun everyone and thanks for making it possible for us to watch the first of hopefully many JandBeyond's to come.

Akeeba Backup v 3.0 RC1 is 100% Joomla! 1.6 Ready

2010-05-20T17:05:38.000Z

Ladies and Gentleman, start your engines! Time to get those extensions ready for Joomla! 1.6. Here is a discussion on 1.6 changes and an invitation by Andrew Eddie to get those questions asked!

Congratulations to Nicholas Dionysopoulos for leading the pack and to all of you Akeeba Backup users who now know that, regardless of what happens, you can recover because you will have a good backup and restore strategy and process in place!

First Joomla! Bug Squad Meeting Scheduled

2010-05-20T12:25:09.000Z

Mark Dexter has announced the first bugsquad meeting for all Joomla Bug Squad Members. It will include all 3 JBS Coordinators and be a great opportunity to get information and ask questions.

Here's a link to the announcement and discussion in the JBS Group

http://groups.google.com/group/joomlabugsquad/browse_thread/thread/5b888b8a1527193a#

It will be held in the JBS IRC Chat

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#joomla-bug-squad

Time is fixed on Friday, May 21, 2010 at 02:00:00 UTC Time

http://timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?year=2010&month=5&day=21&hour=2&min=0&sec=0

This is Thursday Night at 9:00 PM Central in the US. Check your time at the link above.

There is also talk of a second meeting next Tuesday the 25th of May for those that can't make this one. Check the JBS Group discussion above for more details.

Step 1: Officially Join the Joomla! Bug Squad

2010-05-18T12:30:00.000Z

Thanks to each of you who volunteered to help with the finalization of Joomla! 1.6.

As of this moment, there are 45 volunteers! It is encouraging to see the community step forward in this way. This morning, Nicholas Dionysopoulos and I were talking about how best to assist the group to get the tools, knowledge and support needed to be a successful member of the Joomla! Bug Squad.

We want to make certain that everyone who wants to participate is assisted and successful. Later this week, we will announce times for orientation sessions. We are using a Google spreadsheet to track everyone's progress through this orientation process and ask for your assistance to update your own information.

Today, we will focus on the steps needed to get started.

1. Jump into our Orientation Skype Group Chat where folks are gathering. If you are not already a member, you can add me (AmyStephen) or Robert Vining (robert_vining) on Skype and we will add you to the group. This Skype chat is a temporary group established for the purpose of helping you get acquainted with others who are also participating and have support learning what you need to know to help with the squad.

2. Set up an ID on Joomlacode.

- Point your browser to http://joomlacode.org/
- Click the Register new account in the Upper Right Corner.
- Fill out the form and press Submit.
- Respond to the email verification.
- Update the spreadsheet with your Joomlacode ID

3. Send an email request to Mark Dexter ( dextercowley AT gmail DOT com ) requesting membership in the Joomla! Bug Squad and provide him your Joomlacode ID.

4. Check out the Joomla! Bug Squad Mailing List. Mark will add you to the list so that you can participate in discussions.

5. Jump into the Joomla! Bug Squad IRC. Feel free to introduce yourself and let others know you are joining the Bug Squad. This is the location people work together, ask questions about bugs and find out what direction to head. (And here is a log for the IRC.)

6. Check out the Joomla! 1.6 Issue Tracker. This is where the Bug Squad works. People (including you) report problems by creating new issue reports. Squad members work the issue reports using the Status listbox to identify what is needed. Later, we will share dates and times of orientation sessions designed to teach you to use this tool in your own fight against bugs.

7. Check out the Joomla! 1.6 Beta and use the document provided by Andrew Eddie to walk through the application and understand changes made.

8. Read Louis Landry's article entitled Joomla! 1.6 Development Shifting Gears so that you are aware of the process underway and are better able to support the development team.

9. Update the spreadsheet adding your Joomlacode ID (username), status update regarding sending Mark Dexter a request to join the Bug Squad, and response from Mark as to whether or not your username has been activated for Bug Squad duty.

10. Watch for an announcement of our orientation sessions to be scheduled yet this week.

Thanks very much for your willingness to contribute to Joomla!. Feel free to ask questions in the comments or via Skype.