Joomla! 1.5 RC4 --- Introducing Karibu

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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

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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...