Joomla! 1.5 RC4 --- Introducing Karibu

View Source Article Here
Wednesday, 19 December 2007

Just a week and a half ago people from all over the globe gathered in various locations to do a little Bug Squashing... today the fruits of their labour can be revealed as we announce the release of Joomla! 1.5 RC4. This release is code named Karibu which is Swahili for nearby, close, close by, at hand... all terms that we feel reflect the nature of this release.

Karibu marks an important milestone in 1.5's development, as barring any major issues we believe it will be the last release candidate, with the next release being the big one... Joomla! 1.5 stable. When that happens will in part be influenced by the Joomla! community...

More so than any previous, this release really has been one of unprecedented community involvement with people from all the various Working Groups as well as others banding together to help increase momentum as we head for a stable release. There is an enormous amount of energy building up around the 1.5 release and it is inspirational being a part of the process.

How can I be a part of the stable release?

Testing

The first and most important thing you can do is test the software with us. Download a copy of RC4 and install it somewhere to test it. Go through all the different areas of the software looking for things that do not work. If you come across something that is broken then please file a bug report on our tracker. If you come across something that seems to not work but you are not sure, ask a question in our Quality and Testing forum. If you have the ability to solve the problem, let us know how you would solve it by fixing it and providing a patch.

Rule of thumb: a bug report is great, a patch is even greater.

Documentation

Almost as important as making sure the software works is making sure that people can learn how to use it. We try to make Joomla! as easy to use as possible, but even the easiest to use software requires documentation. Because Joomla! 1.5 is a complete rethink and rework of so much, the documentation for 1.0.x is no longer relevant. One of the things that we can use a lot of help with is writing documentation. At nearly every event we have gone to we have heard that people want to help but feel that they really do not have the expertise to do so... well this is your chance to help! We need volunteers to write up documentation on how to use nearly every part of Joomla! ... help screens ... development tutorials ... anything and everything you can think of to help people learn about Joomla!.

Teaser: Building on the huge success of the Bug Squashing event, in the coming weeks we will announce a Joomla! Documentation Boot Camp.... stay tuned for more.

How do I find more information on Joomla! 1.5?

Most of the resources with information on 1.5 is a work in progress, but that's where you come in. Help us make these resources better so that everyone that comes after you doesn't have the same problems finding information that you might have.

Joomla 1.0.12 or Joomla 1.5

View Source Article here

Currently people building websites with Joomla are in an odd situation.

There's no upgrade path from Joomla 1.0.12 to Joomla 1.5, so we need to make a choice. Do we recommend the current stable version or do we ask customers to be patient and wait for the new, shiny updated Joomla?

Well, if I had a dollar for every time I'd answered that question .... :)

In fact, its such a common question that I drew up a small list of the advantages and disadvantages for each option.

Current Status
1.0.12 : Currently stable. No security problems and bugs are few and far between.
1.5 : Currently it shouldn't be used for live sites. You'll need to wait for the Release Candidates in order to have a production worthy.

Future Prospects
1.0.12 : Only security upgrades will be made, which means you'll be tied to the current set of features.
1.5 : Very bright. It will take while for developers to update their products and take full advantage of 1.5's new features, but by choosing 1.5 you will have an easy upgrade path to future versions.

Components
1.0.12 : Currently all of the available components on joomla.org are compatible with 1.0.12.
1.5 : Quite a few components on joomla.org can run with Joomla 1.5 in legacy mode, but new components that take full advantage of the features on 1.5 are yet to be released.

Obviously this is not updated. A number of components are already updated and are compatible with Joomla 1.5 release candidate versions. Check out www.extensions.joomla.org

Templates
1.0.12 : All the free and commercial templates you'll find currently work with 1.0.12.
1.5 : No commercial and only a few free templates have been released to but expect a rush of designs when the first Release Candidate is issued.

There ARE commercial template clubs that have released versions compatible with Joomla 1.5 RCs. Check out www.RocketTheme.com

Why should I choose this version?
1.0.12 : If time is not on your side, go with 1.0.12. Also, if you have a small site, the migration to 1.5 should be relatively painless.
1.5 : If your project is not urgent, or if you're building a large, fully-featured site, its well-worth waiting the extra time to take advantage of 1.5's increased potential.

Configuring a web calendar

I am using a popular joomla calendar extension but it doesn't coincide with what our web calendar should be, since it is actually a gig calendar. We don't really need to display band names, venue, etc. But there is one function that we really wanted, and that is the hover function for their mini calendar module. As far as I know, other open source calendars don't have it. And one more, this calendar does not have a date range function. So if you have events that happen for a number of days, you have to repeat the input of event details for that day. Very redundant and inefficient. So I decided to use ANOTHER calendar. So I can make use of the minicalendar module for the latter one, and the full calendar and list module for the previous one.

This is the minicalendar module.



I configured the minicalendar module so that Dec 2007 and Full Calendar would both link to the other full calendar module.






To change the Full Calendar link, I configured Line 204 of mod_gigcal_minical.php located under the joomla modules folder:


to:

which is simply the link to the other calendar module, instead of it's own full calendar module of Gigs.



This is the FULL Calendar module of the other calendar extension.


I have modified the CSS styles of each calendars to fit the design of our web portal.

404 Page error

I just found out that the second most popular items in our portal is the 404 page.
So i googled sites that have tips on how to create a 404 page so that it wouldn't come off as an annoying page error display, but rather a customized page informing a return to the home page or a search function, and so and so forth.

So far these were links that I found helpful:

The Perfect 404
Custom 404 Error Page
Useful "Page Not Found" error pages

So I should come up with a really reasonable 404 page. Will post it here if I'm done with it. I should really put a Site Map utility. My next on the list...

Joomla! Wins Best PHP Open Source Content Management System

Source article here
Wednesday, October 31, 2007 | News | Content Management

Joomla! is today revealed as the Award's third category winner, claiming Best Open Source PHP Content Management System. Last year's overall winner came out on top ahead of Drupal in second and e107 in third place and receives $2,000.

Joomla! is possibly one of the biggest success stories in open source of late. Its first release came in only September 2005 and since then has grown to be one of the most downloaded Content Management Systems on the web.

Joomla! Project Manager Johan Janssens said that adding this latest award to Joomla's steadily growing collection of prizes was recognition of the project as a whole.

"While I can't pretend to read judges minds, I'm sure Joomla's wealth of community and focus on creating the foundations of a next generation framework, demonstrated the true strengths of the project," he said.

In fact, the judges noted a number of factors that helped Joomla! secure the Award. Most notably its good front-end for administrators and end-users, which gives users a simple and traditional company website straight out of the box. In full agreement with Janssens, the judges commented on the size and responsiveness of the community as a massive strength, noting that it can identify potential problems and deal with them quickly.

Joomla! is also in the final five for the Overall Award, which is announced on Friday November 2.

Full details of the Award finalists and winners.

Portal using Joomla CMS

as of Nov 15, 2007

Version: Joomla 1.0.12
Template: RT_Replicant (RocketTheme Commercial Template)

Components:

1) iJoomla Magazine

License: Commercial
iJoomla Magazine is feature-rich. Use it to create a real, professional-looking magazine and give your site the competitive edge you need.

iJoomla magazine allows you to send any of your issues to your members. They'll get a glossy magazine with all the images, articles and styles you've created. Clicking on any of the articles/images will take them directly to your site.

iJoomla Magazine Component comes with 12 possible layouts for your issues' home pages. You can assign a different layout for each issue or use the same layout each time.


2) JEvents

JEvents consists of a Joomfish compatible Joomla component and a number of modules and mambots.

Component
* On-off Events and complex repeating patterns of events can be created and viewed in an attractive calendar and a variety of list formats.
* Events can be categorised and calendar views can be customised to show all or some of these categories

Modules
* Mini-calendar module (events_cal) which gives a quick overview of events which can be placed on any page
* Latest events modue (events_latest) which gives a highly configurable summary of upcoming events
* Events legend (events_legend) - displayed alongside the component gives you a summary of event categories and an easy way to limit the events shown to specific categories

Mambots
* A search mambot that enables the global Joomla search to return results from the events calendar
* Post event report feedback that allows event reports or photo gallery links to be shown in the event detail after a set date


3) titleLink

TitleLink is a plugin to easily create links in Joomla content to other Joomla content by Title or Alias. By inserting text into your content like {ln:Content Managment} you link directly to your content with that title. The purpose of this program is to help create easy ways to drop links to content within the material that you are writing.

4) JoomlaXplorer

joomlaXplorer is a File- and FTP - Manager. It allows you to edit files, delete, copy, rename, archive and unpack files/directories directly on your server. You can - Browse Directories & Files - Edit, Copy, Move and Delete files - Search, Upload and Downloading files - Create new files and directories - Change file permissions (chmod) and much more This script is based on QuiXplorer 2.3.1 (available at http://quixplorer.sourceforge.net/)

5) astatsPRO

astatsPRO is the integrated version for J! of the popular chCounter(www.Christoph-Bachner.net), which perfectly use the Style of your Backend Templates.

FEATURES:
* Multiple language interface GERMAN | ENGLISH | DUTCH | FRENCH | ITALIAN | HUNGARIAN | FINNISH, SWEDISCH | RUSSIAN | TURKISH
* Visitors/page views today, yesterday, total, records
* Visitors currently online/max. online
* Referrers, search keywords, search engines
* Visitor details: browsers/operating systems/robots/user agents, screen resolutions, countries/languages/host-TLDs
* Requested pages; currently online
* Detailed access statistics: daily/weekly distribution, visitors/page views of any day, month, calendar week, year
* Large Admin Control Panel: Customisation of the counter values and many different settings, optional access limitation of the statistic pages, visitors' log data, …
* Layout completely customisable via templates
* Download and hyperlink counter

6) Fireboard Forum

It is a powerful and stylish forum component for a well deserved content management system, Joomla!.

Some of the main features of Fireboard can be listed as below:

* A much more designer friendly forum system. It is close to SMF templating system having a simpler structure. With very few steps you can modify the total look of the forum.
* Unlimited subcategory system with better administration backend.
* Faster system and better coding experience for 3rd parties.
* The same
* Profilebox at the top of the forum
* Support for popular PM systems, such as ClexusPM and Uddeim
* Basic plugin system (practical rather than perfect)
* Language-defined icon system.
* Sharing image system of other templates. So, choice between templates and image series is possible
* You can add Joomla modules inside the forum template itself. Wanted to have banner inside your forum?
* Favorite threads selection and management
* Forum spotlights and highlights
* Forum announcements and its panel
* Latest messages (Tabbed)
* Statistics at bottom
* Who's online, on what page?
* Category specific image system
* Enhanced pathway
* Joomlaboard import, SMF in plan to be released pretty soon
* RSS, PDF output
* Advanced search (under development)
* Community builder and Clexus PM profile options
* Avatar management : CB and Clexus PM options

7) JCE Editor

A WYSIWYG editor for Joomla! based on Moxiecode's TinyMCE.
Includes advanced Image/Media and File handling, plugin support, and an Administration interface for editor configuration.

8) JoomlaPack (com_pack)

JoomlaPack is an open-source backup component for the Joomla! CMS, quite a bit different than its competition. Its mission is simple: create a site backup that can be restored on any Joomla!-capable server. It creates a full backup of your site in a single ZIP archive. The archive contains all the files, a database snapshot and an installer derived from the standard Joomla! installer. The backup and restore process is AJAX powered to avoid server timeouts, even with huge sites. Alternatively, you can make a backup of only your database. If you want a reliable, easy to use, open source backup solution for your Joomla! site, try it out.

Joomla 1.5 RC3 Released

I wonder if I should download and test it. But migration is too tedious!

View source article here

The march to a stable Joomla 1.5 quickened earlier this month with the release of RC3. Here's some helpful links about RC3.

Read the official news
Get Joomla 1.5 RC3
Instructions for upgrading from RC2 to RC3
Discuss Joomla 1.5 on our forum
Joomla 1.5 installation guide

If you're curious when Joomla 1.5 is going to "released" and "finished," better check out this perspective piece by one of Joomla's core team members and developers. Needless to say, RC3 is not the last of the RCs, as Joomla's developers believe in the "release early, release often" philosophy of open source development.

One thing's for sure- Joomla 1.5 will only improve if you use it, break it, report your problems, and offer your input. Download it today and try out Weblogic, our 1.5 native template!

Joomla! 1.5 RC3 — Codename Takriban

I haven't used and tested any 1.5 RCs yet but this looks promising. I'd like to use it when it's in the stable version. But who knows, if I will use it now, maybe I could contribute some useful ideas and suggestions to the developers community. And if I really participate in this, maybe I could learn how to make templates and creat a 1.5 compatible version complete with a fresh new design for everyone to use. Hey, if I don't sleep for the rest of my life then maybe I could really do these things...

View source article here
Saturday, 06 October 2007

Joomla! 1.5 RC3 [codename: Takriban] is now available for download. We've had the 'Red Barchetta' release candidate, then Endelo RC (meaning development, progress ... improvement). Takriban means 'almost, nearly'. Well folks we're almost, nearly there. Stable is getting very close.

It's roughly 10 weeks since RC1 and five weeks since RC2 and thanks to valuable community feedback, there have been improvements and bug fixes. The uptake of Joomla! 1.5 has been incredible, with many people diving in to the new API and finding ways to make it sing. The current Joomla! 1.5 template competition has further fuelled interest, as has the number of 1.5 native extensions finding their way onto the Joomla! Extensions Directory . Joomla! 1.5 is really gaining momentum.

Now for some technical stuff

Important, you need to upgrade! In the first release candidate (RC1) we found three security issues, one SQL injection, one XSS, and a few full path disclosure vulnerabilities. Those security issues were solved in RC2 and no further security issues have since arisen.

Packages

For the 1.5 Takriban RC3 Release, only full packages are available for download. As usual, the packages are provided in three compression formats (zip, tar, bzip2). The download link for this release:

Download here

Upgrade instructions

Upgrading from any version of Joomla! 1.5 to 1.5.RC3 simply involves overwriting your current sites files, with the files in the proper Patch Package that applies to your site. Note; during Beta and RC development, some files could be removed from the Core Code. Using the above method for upgrading might leave some deprecated files in place. This could be solved by performing a fresh install once the Stable release is available and exporting/importing your database. Between Beta and the RC3 some small database changes have been made. Check the /installation/sql/mysql folder for the diff.sql file. Run that with any database tool such as phpMyAdmin to get your database updated.

This can be done by either uncompressing the Patch Package and then using an FTP client to transfer these files to your server and overwriting existing file. If you find errors after the process, ensure that all files were properly transferred. There have been verified reports of some FTP clients not properly transferring files across to a server - without notifying the user of such a problem. One possible cause is that under certain circumstances the webserver locks the files it is using, and the ftp-server can't update those files. One possibility is to take the site offline momentarily during the FTP transfer.


If your Web Provider gives you access to your site via some sort of Web Admin panel like CPanel or Plesk, you can use the systems file manager to upload the Patch Package file to your server and then extracting the package file and overwriting all the files on your server.

More information can be found on the Forums and if at any stage you are unsure, then search the forums for posts on the subject. Most will be found in the Upgrading forum .

Conversion / Migration

With the new 1.5 version it is not that easy anymore to convert for example a Mambo site to Joomla!, especially to 1.5. You will need to perform a migration which is described here: Click here

Backing up

Before undertaking an Upgrade or Conversion, it is extremely important that you backup your site's Database and if possible, also your site's files. While we try to ensure that an Upgrade or Conversion process is relatively straightforward, we cannot guarantee that this will always be the case for every user. So it is imperative that users take protective measures in case they face problems after the Upgrade or Conversion. We hope you enjoy Takriban and as always, we look forward to your feedback.

Multilingual site

I was considering that the site should be multilingual since a large portion of the Philippines are using Bisaya and other similar dialects. Especially if we hace clients that are farmers, they would rather read an online resource that is using their own language. That way they'd be much more adaptive to our ICT services.

That's an example of a multilingual site (as seen above)

www.multiculturalhivhepc.net.au

They even have a Tagalog translation.

MULTICULTURAL WEBSITES (National)

The Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia
www.fecca.org.au
FECCA is the peak, national body representing Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. FECCA's role is to advocate, lobby and promote issues on behalf of its constituency to government, business and the broader community. The site has information on a range of cultural diversity issues and links to health/community services.

Health Translations Directory
http://www.healthtranslations.vic.gov.au
The Health Translations Online Directory enables health practitioners, and those working with culturally and linguistically diverse communities to easily find reliable translated health information.

The Directory provides web links to online multilingual resources across the health sector including government departments, peak health bodies, hospitals, community health centres and welfare agencies.

Multicultural Mental Health Australia
http://www.mmha.org.au
Multicultural Mental Health Australia (MMHA) provides national leadership in mental health and suicide prevention for Australians from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. MMHA links a wide range of state and territory mental health specialists and services, advocacy groups and tertiary institutions to promote the mental health and well being of Australia's diverse communities.

NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service
www.mhcs.health.nsw.gov.au
NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service (Multicultural Communication) provides information and services to assist health professionals to communicate with culturally diverse communities throughout New South Wales. There are over 400 publications on health in a wide range of languages and a new publication is produced each month. Some multilingual resources produced by other services are also listed on this website and there are links to related websites.

The Forum of Australian Services for Survivors of Torture and Trauma
www.fasstt.org.au
FASSTT is a coalition of agencies that respond to the needs of survivors of torture and trauma who have come to Australia from overseas. FASSTT and its related organisations seek to combat the impact of torture on the individual, the family and the community. There is a torture and trauma service in each state and territory of Australia.

Video Introduction to Joomla 1.5

Source: joomlashack.com

If you are curious about the new version of Joomla (1.5), then you should nip over to itidiots.com ( http://www.itidiots.com/ ) and check out the training video ( http://www.itidiots.com /content/view/138/1 ) they have just published. It walks you through some basic steps in getting a site up and running. It's informative and even a little funny.

Joomla 1.5 goes to Release Candidate 2

Source: joomlashack.com

The Joomla Project celebrated its second birthday this month with Release Candidate 2, the second of three release candidates for Joomla 1.5. Check it out!

Read the official news

Get Joomla 1.5 RC2

Instructions for upgrading from RC1 to RC2

Discuss Joomla 1.5 on our forum

Vote for the Joomlashack Templates you want to see converted for 1.5!
http://www.joomlashack.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=215&Itemid=4

While still not ready for production sites, the Joomla folks are feeling that a final stable release is coming sometime before the end of 2007. Stay tuned to Joomlashack for updates.

Mambots installed

1) TitleLink Mambot is one of the Top Rated Extensions in Joomla.org. This mambot is useful for our site to easily create links to our content items/pages.

2)

Managing group access for a Joomla multisite

Again, this is a manual configuration of a seemingly multisite feature using OpenSEF. This means that I only have one Joomla installation but many subsite pages which is done by changing the SEF URLs of the site. This also means that you have one Joomla installation consisting of multiple sections for each of your subsite. So when you enable OpenSEF, you can just set Section/Content-Title.htm for the URL. that way it looks as if the subsite is a separate CMS from the main site. Egad, different templates, and main menus. So the problem is:

How do you set up this whole system where users and content providers from these subsites can only add/edit/publish content on their respective subsite sections??? Is there a feature to add a group access on certain content pages?

So I'm now looking into JUGA Joomla User Group Access.

You can download it here but NOTE that you have to register to their site first.

I'va already looked at it. The problem is that I can only create group access on components, contents, and modules, but not categories or sections. I would have to assign e every page created, to a certain group.

Why not assign a group access to a category instead??

Manual redo of our Joomla Portal site

Since I can't get our Joomla Portal to work on OpenSEF, then I just created a fresh installment of Joomla on a new folder. There aren't a lot of content done on it so I might as well redo the whole thing. I also used it as a testing site for all the components that I experimented on. So I want a clean installment.

These are the steps:

1) "Launch" Joomla (1.0.12) with a certain template
I started with installing a new template from RocketTheme Template Club. It has a RocketLauncher package that includes Joomla 1.0.12 with customized sample data used for the template we selected. I actually copied the template folder from our old joomla portal so I can "inherit" the CSS styles and the background and images that I use for our site.

2) Modified the Rokflow banner
To display the logos that we need for our subsites. For our different regional partners.

3) Enable and test SEO URL capability
I just want to make sure that this is working, for me to be able to use OpenSEF later on. So I will create an .htaccess file and see if it works. It's working! Yeah!

4) Install OpenSEF component
I installed com_opensef_2.0.0-RC5_SP2.zip and then go to it's configuration panel to enable it. OpenSEF Enabled? YES. It didn't work. Because I forgot to modify the .htaccess file to uncomment the lines on using third party extensions. Geez! I only uncommented these lines:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} (/|\.htm|\.php|\.html|/[^.]*)$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule (.*) index.php

and commented the core SEO lines, and also the Options +FollowSymLinks line.
It's working! Yeah!

5) Work in the mainmenu
What I did is that I moved all the existing menu items on another menu called the template Guide. There I wouldn't really need to delete it, so I can moved back to it once I need something on the Typography or certain module hilites and such. I only retained the Home menu item for the mainmenu.

6) Create static content pages for the menu items
I am about to add menu items News, About Us, Banner Programs, Our Partners, Publications, and Today's Weather. And then their submenus. But before I do that I will create static content pages first. Then I Link to Menu them.

7) I'm kinda caught in the CSS Typhography crap, still. Have to get friendly with CSS and dealing with images. They're a bit shy and hard to get to know at first. I'm sure they'll come around...

Improvements on Joomla 1.5 (in detail)

There was nothing that was explicitly mentioned in joomla.org about the features
presented in Joomla 1.5, only the main goals which was a bit too vague for me. So I googled on the web and came up with this page (which actually is selling a book about Joomla). I wasn't interested in buying anything so I'll just post what I is said on subject matter.

(View Source Link)

In Detail

Improvements include:

Internationalization: UTF-8 coding throughout, support of right-to-left text flow, and optional language files for all static text facilitate I18n of public front end and administrative back end alike.

User Plug-ins: Allow alternative login mechanisms etc.

Databases: An abstraction interface supports MySQL 4.x or 5.x and future use of other databases.

FTP: A new FTP interface avoids PHP safe mode access problems.

XML-RPC: Support for web service integration of external applications.

Joomla! Framework: Fundamental overhaul of the core functionality provides a better framework for component and extension developers.

Accessibility: Separation of front-end programming logic and presentation aids compliance with accessibility standards and future barrier-free websites.

SEF: Improved support for search-engine friendly URLs with extensions.
These changes mean that you cannot upgrade an existing Joomla! 1.0.x site to 1.5 by simply overwriting the files. Instead you must migrate the site, using a migrator component to dump the old site and an import facility in the Joomla! 1.5 installation, or manually. Since Joomla! 1.5 is on beta release, it should not yet be used in a production environment or if you have important data.

Joomla 1.5 is an improved version of the Joomla Content Management System, which is one of the leading Open-source CMSes. While still in its Beta 1 version, Joomla! 1.5 is still as easy to use as its earlier stable version, but with substantial improvements. Joomla! 1.5 implements the core requirements of a full-featured CMS. It has a powerful and extensible templating system with the ability to upload and manage many different data types. User access control, content approval, rich administrative control, and content display scheduling are all built-in. New features and extensions are constantly added to the core system, with many more being available and supported by the community.