Just a short one.. as most of our time was spent on the forum migration in February.

JED (Joomla Extensions Directory)
Looking back to January 2008:

* 136 new extensions were published in the Extensions Directory, which 63% are released under GPL, 13% as commercial (proprietary) and 24% as other licence types.
* 20 of the new extensions were entirely written for 1.5 (native).
* 18 of the new extensions have legacy support for 1.5.
* 795 new reviews were published in the Extensions Directory.

On another note. I’m noticed an huge influx of new users to Joomla. Perhaps due to Joomla 1.5’s release. In any case, any time you can spare helping ouy new users on our forum would be much appreciated.
Thanks to all who do so much already to help.

Source: Brad

The Joomla! project has been into the Google Summer of code editions 2005, 2006 and 2007. Past week Google Geek herder extraordinaire, Leslie Hawthorn announced this years edition of the Summer Of Code. We will certainly apply to be part of this great program. Like past year we will start the (internal) preparations for this program, and we start with getting together the mentor team.

Mentors who are interested can contact me by sending a personal message in the forum, or post a message in the forum area that has been created for the 2008 edition of the Summer Of Code. What we expect from mentors is that they are able to guide students during the week (2-4 hours per week), have knowledge of the Joomla! 1.5 application and content management framework. Preferable you have some experience with guiding or training students, but this is certainly not a must. If you are interested , but have doubts also do not hesitate to use the Summer Of Code 2008 forum area to post your questions.

More information on this program will be posted as soon as possible. Google has posted a Frequently Asked Questions for everyone who is interested on reading more about this program. If you are interested in past years summer of code you can check out the Summer Of Code team blogs or read the end-term report that holds some specific information about how the program was run past year.

Source: willebil

Well, I don’t think anyone missed it, but in case you did, we have now successfully migrated the Joomla Community Forum from SMF to Phpbb3. All posts, all user accounts, everything. It’s been a huge job, and a special thanks must go out to all those who chipped in to help me. Thanks also to all of you for your patience. So, a few questions arise as a result:

Why did we move to Phpbb3?
Good question, and there is a simple answer. Whilst SMF was great for us, it is not licensed under GPL, and as a result many of our users who like to follow the choices we make were going to run in to integration issues in the future. As well as that, the team at Phpbb have been great, with many of them offering to help, especially with the conversion.
In any case, we’re not going back, and the future is Phpbb3!

What has been done to Phpbb3 to make it suitable to our use?
Not much. We have had to convert a number of the larger frequently used database tables to INNODB. A few ‘tweaks’ have been made to Apache and Mysql, as well as APC for php caching. You may have noticed issues with the built in phpbb search not having an index of all the posts, however that has now been resolved with the installation of Sphinx. Special thanks to Nils from Phpbb who essentially coded this for us, but will also allow others sites to benefit from it in the future.

What about the future?
There is still much to be done with the current setup. There are a number of modifications we’d like to make, but for now, the forum is faster, searching is brilliant and moderating is so much better in Phpbb3. (BTW you can all help the moderators by using the ‘report this post’ icon found on all posts (*see icon below) to report any posts that break the forum rules and/or are posted in the wrong place etc. We really appreciate you help with this as it lightens the moderators load.) There will be UI/template changes in the future. As you’d expect we’d like to change all the official sites to a new fresh look, including the forum.

In other things.
A few weeks ago, while in Melbourne attending the JoomlaDay, one of the presentations caught my eye as something that may be especially useful to Joomla users in the future. You can see the Video Presentation here. This Extension for Joomla is also now available on the JED here. You will want to look deeper into the integration options, but essentially an excellent open source/GPL Shopping Cart is now able to be integrated with Joomla 1.5 and 1.0 pretty seamlessly.

Also…

I have it on good authority that out official Joomla Demo Site will be back soon. We’ll be sure to let you know about that when it happens.

Ok, that’s it until the S&I monthly report in a few days. Again, thanks to all users for their patience while we migrated the forum and ironed out the issues.

Source: Joomla.org

As mentioned in the security announcement of Joomla! 1.5.0 (Khepri) the creation of Joomla! 1.5.1 (Seenu) came sooner then planned. Within the Bug Squad and the Development team we try to create a release cycle that takes 4-6 weeks, just to prevent our users to go through a regular update process. There are of course people who use the nightly build or the version that is held in our Subversion Repository on Joomla!code but these people most of the time exactly know what they do, and what the risks are using these versions.

Some people have asked me what it takes to create a release and why it takes several days (or weeks) to build a release package and announce it. I certainly want to share a bit more because this time the 1.5.1 packages seemed to be released earlier then the announcement was out, and this caused some confusion.
The reason the 1.5.1 packages seemed to be visible earlier is due to a problem we have with the file section on GForge. Not only did hidden packages pop up, the packages for 1.0.13 (full release) disappeared from the list. This is a problem that we try to solve with GForge, but the initial packages where already visible days before the release. We noticed this when we saw they where already downloaded around 2.000 times

We follow a basic series of steps during a release cycle. A code freeze most of the times marks the start of the release cycle, we have documented the process in the release procedure and checklist on the documentation wiki. A code freeze marks the start, but it does not say anything about the time needed to actually release a package. When you take a look at the initial freeze of Joomla! 1.5.0 it took us a full two weeks before we could release, with 1.5.1 it took us 4 days in total. The amount of time needed depends mainly on the tests results that we do in between when we package, the rest of the time is needed on logistics (download section, announcement, checking with other work-groups etc).

Issues in Seenu

Within Joomla! 1.5.1 there are two minor issues found. The first problem is when you update from Joomla! 1.5.0 to 1.5.1. When you upgrade, there is no $live_site in configuration.php. When you have error reporting enabled (set to max) on the server or in global configuration and then go into global configuration after updating, PHP throws a notice as the value of $live_site. When then saving the configuration, instead of the live_site you save the error message. So either first switch off error reporting and then upgrade, go to global config and click save, or edit configuration.php by hand later. This problem already is solved in the code-base, but when you encounter this problem you need to manually change the variable in the configuration file to solve this issue.

People will surely want to know why we have added this new variable to the global configuration. The purpose of this variable, is to rectify SEF issues for servers having the base URI problem. You can put a full URL in the $live_site variable, and it will override Joomla’s default behavior of detecting the base URL for the site. Anthony Ferrera (development team member and Joomla! 1.5 team lead of the Bug Squad) has written a
forum post that explains this in more detail.

The second problem is a real small issue. The version rendered in the back-end (cpanel) still shows 1.5.0 despite the fact that the version file has the proper versioninformation. This problem is also fixed in the code, but is not part of the 1.5.1 package. If you think that you have found other problems you can always use the forum to discuss the circumstances under which the problem occurs, or post a an artifacts into our tracker. For those who might want to know how we work, a brief description of the way we work is documented in the Joomla! maintenance procedure description of our documentation wiki.

What is the plan for Joomla! 1.0.14 and 1.5.2?

Some will have noticed that we have frozen the code-base for Joomla! 1.0. This means we are looking at the final things that need to be solved before we can release this version. Beside the cross-site script problem we fixed, numerous small issues have been fixed. More details will be shared in the release announcement.
Within the 1.5.2 maintenance version we will focus on mainly two topics; open-id and all language related issues will be our main focus. Of course we will solve other issues as well. For 1.5.3 we will set some new goals, depending on what is reported in the forums and the tracker.

Source: willebil

Here’s some feedback from the recent Melbourne, Australia JoomlaDay:

Ranging from beginners and enthusiasts through to experts and global developers, 135 people attended the sold out Melbourne JoomlaDay 08 at the University of Melbourne on Saturday February 2nd. The capacity crowd saw presentations on a range of areas to do with Joomla, including some exclusive demonstrations of Joomla! 1.5 features by Brad Baker and Sam Moffat from the Joomla Core Team. Norm Douglas walked through the basics of setting up Joomla! 1.0. Dinah Randall highlighted some of the issues that users will face in converting 1.0 templates into the new format for Joomla! 1.5.

Damian Hickey from Freeway Ecommerce (www.openfreeway.org) outlined issues being faced in regards to ecommerce in the coming months, and explained the path ZacWare were taking currently to integrate Freeway with Joomla.

Leslie Hawthorn from Google Highly Open Participation contest got the group thinking about mentoring students in the GHOP, where there’s currently over 100 projects being run in conjunction with Joomla.

Videos from the day will be posted to www.joomladay.org.au shortly, and all those who attended are encouraged to register and log into www.joomladay.org.au where there will be follow up discussions in the forum there.

Thanks once more to the sponsors of Joomladay - Techspace.com.au, Nerds on Site and Rochen hosting - for making the day possible. Feedback shows the event was extremely successful and the organizers are already looking forward to running an even bigger Melbourne event in 2009.

Further, there was also some feedback given on one of the biggest Australian IT sites here: www.itwire.com/content/view/16488/53/

It was one of the most well arranged and informative JoomlaDays I have personally attended. The venue was perfect, making presenting as well as listening easy. We even managed to get our own local wi-fi network setup in a few mins. (Thanks John for letting us use your MBP as an access point.)

Thanks once again to the organizers and all who attended. I’m looking forward to the next Australian JoomlaDay, which will be in Sydney.

Source: Brad

Security announcement

After releasing Joomla! 1.5 stable we have discovered a high priority security issue. The vulnerability has been discovered in XML-RPC in combination with the blogger API. There is a security problem in this code that makes it possible to alter the articles on your site (including removal). This problems has been fixed currently by members of the development team and the Joomla! bug squad, solution is now available from Subversion. So what do you need to do until we release Joomla! 1.5.1?

All Joomla! users who have enabled the XML-RPC Blogger API plugin should disable it!

If you have never enabled this plugin you do not need to do anything.

Progress toward 1.5.1

Beside this security fix we have been working on fixing other issues that where found after we released Joomla! 1.5. Let’s share the 1.5.1 highlights thus far:

1. Fixed XML-RPC/Blogger security issue.
2. Fix to sef issues including creation of optional livesite parameter if
   needed which will also allow reverse proxy.
3. Change to mass mail so that blind carbon is used, protecting email addresses
   of your users.
4. Fix to date function that was causing an error in the end publication date
   for some systems.
5. Fixed UTF 8 database detection
6. Addressed a number of internationalization issues.
7. Fixes to a number of minor issues

More help?

Thanks to all who have contributed issue reports, comments, suggestions and patches and for those who have tested proposed patches. You can help by following the tracker. In particular, you can help by:

• confirming or disconfirming open issues,
• proposing solutions (preferably with a patch file) for confirmed issues
• testing patches associated with pendng issues. 

And of course you can join the Joomla! bug squad if you want to help out on a regular basis

Source: willebil

So if you’ve used the migrator or checked out 1.5 you might have seen this strange “backlink” concept floating around the place. I was asked the question today what it was and if it is important to migrating your site. The quick answer is that its not critical though its probably something that you’re going to want to have, because its cool and it attempts to keep your old menu URL’s around so that you can still get to stuff with the old links. Did I mention it was also cool?

So the basic idea of backlink migration is that in 1.5 somebody went and rewrote SEF so it actually looks nice. We also have a completely new way of routing a whole heap of core components as well just to throw a lot of things off. We’ll add to the fun that a lot of people out there have deployed third party SEF as well because 1.0 SEF didn’t quite get the friendly part as good as what it is now in 1.5, which also adds to pain.

So if 1.5 is so different how do we handle this? There are a few options available to a stock Joomla! site: Legacy routing from the Legacy plugin and Legacy SEF from the Backlink Migration plugin. This will enable a lot of backwards compatibility for most links, especially if you’re using the Core SEF (about 90% of links appear to get things right). Also to use Legacy SEF you will need to have regular SEF enabled as well and used the .htaccess file as well. However not everyone is using Core SEF, so enter the other parts of the backlink migration plugin.

So what the backlink migrator does is export your old Itemid, a name, the original URL, an SEF url (generated by the 1.0 sef system from the original URL) and a new URL so that you can pipe things manually if need be. It pulls this information from your menu table, so it will attempt to find any item in your menu and migrate it using the 1.0 SEF to try and generate an SEF url. When the backlink migration plugin is active it uses all of this information to then try to match up the old information with the new information from the database. We’re basically trying to do our best to provide the ability to maintain backlinks where possible, but we can’t do it for everything.

So if you were wondering about backlink migration, then that is basically it. Its pretty simple but I’m hoping it will allow more people to migrate without the pain. The basic aim is to make sure links still go somewhere, not into a 404 black hole, and that search engines will gradually update with the new links (since that is what will be handed out). Eventually your old links will go away and you can switch of all of these plugins and be happy with nice shiny SEF urls

Source: pasamio

The biggest news this month was the release of Joomla! 1.5. This has been a very busy time for all involved in the S&I Workgroup.

On a personal note:
I’d like to invite you all to join with me in giving a special thanks to the more than 100 moderators who help out on our forum. Also, the Global Moderators deserve a special thanks from me personally. I can tell you all now, that without the help of all these people, who tirelessly devote hours and hours to Joomla!, we would not be in the shape we are in. Next time you see one of these people around, be sure to thank them.

There are exciting things on the horizon, with plenty of room for more people to become involved. There are initiatives going on the behind the scenes. You never know where we might be able to use you, if you would like to volunteer to help us out. “Joomla! is not for coders only!”
Be sure to get in touch if you would like to help out.

I’ve just enjoyed the Melbourne JoomlaDay where we met so many of you (more than 130). Thanks again to all that attended. It means a lot to us to know that our (the entire Joomla! Community) efforts are used so widely and valued so much.

So, until next month, remember the slogan: “Joomla! is not for coders only!”

Source: Brad

The biggest news this month was the release of Joomla! 1.5. This has been a very busy time for all involved in the S&I Workgroup.

On a personal note:
I’d like to invite you all to join with me in giving a special thanks to the more than 100 moderators who help out on our forum. Also, the Global Moderators deserve a special thanks from me personally. I can tell you all now, that without the help of all these people, who tirelessly devote hours and hours to Joomla!, we would not be in the shape we are in. Next time you see one of these people around, be sure to thank them.

There are exciting things on the horizon, with plenty of room for more people to become involved. There are initiatives going on the behind the scenes. You never know where we might be able to use you, if you would like to volunteer to help us out. “Joomla! is not for coders only!”
Be sure to get in touch if you would like to help out.

I’ve just enjoyed the Melbourne JoomlaDay where we met so many of you (more than 130). Thanks again to all that attended. It means a lot to us to know that our (the entire Joomla! Community) efforts are used so widely and valued so much.

So, until next month, remember the slogan: “Joomla! is not for coders only!”

Source: Brad

Hi all,

For the first time the Joomla! team will visit the SCALE expo and present the brand new Joomla! 1.5. Core team members Rob Schley and Louis Landry will present you the latest information and code around this brand new release.

The Joomla! team has a stand in the open source area and we will be there to present current developments, help you with your questions and may be see some of your solutions with Joomla! 1.5. If you like you also can join us on the booth and enjoy the time while talking about ideas, new projects and many other stuff with other Joomla! folks.

More information about SCALE: http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/

And please send us a small note if you will be able to visit the team in Los Angeles here in the forum.

Source: Akede