Pleasure, profit or pain - Giving your user what they want. | Joomla! Community Portal

It is often asked if a site should be made for the user or the designers benefit. What if you spend hours/weeks/months on your site only for people to get lost! Several sites I have worked with are doing very well with the minimum of features and fuss. Does your site really need the latest content video flashes, scrolling facebook and bouncing twitter birds? Most of the support questions I deal with are to do with paid extensions. If you have a paid for extension, the most obvious choice would be to go to the supplier first, they have your money. Unless of course you have obtained the template or extension from a dubious; unprofessional source. Once you have found a decent template, do you really need to rip it apart then rebuild it to make it look "good" when you can build one using a good template construction kit? For most new users to Joomla, and experienced ones, you can get a decent looking, easy to navigate site using free templates and tools. The community site bristolestate.org.uk shows such an example of using the milky way template with a replaced logo and an extension for the top menu module. There is also a download, gallery and video player extension. All free, all easy to use and very user friendly for the target audience (50+ years old) who do most of the updates themselves. If you look at this site. mandyhost.co.uk/ You will see it is a straight forward template, with only a couple of extensions. An image gallery and a drop down menu extension. it is visited by several hundred people a week and syndicated to around 30 different community websites. The services and news it supplies are what people are after along with a simple navigation without being just another blog. For the more complex community news site that has just been relaunched is whitehawk.uk.net which is currently running a design a logo competition. It uses a standard free template, with a free image gallery and forum. The versatile template woks well, and a few other extras such as the sobi links extension, shows how a functioning community site can be built without whistles. It does use K2 to provide a more social networking site. The target audience is 14-30 years and all migrated from a 5 page html site, with a free hosted forum and a cant be bothered site admin. Yes there are other sites that I could mention with more features and flashy templates but this article is just to show that you don't need to have all the bells and whistles, templates that look very futuristic and have every extension that you can get hold of. Remember, only one component can run at any one time, and a barrel load of modules will slow your site down. Design your site for your target audience, people will respect you more for keeping something easy and simple than overloading them with scrolling banners and zooming menus. If you want to build a facebook or youtube clone, then go ahead. Expect about 50 people to sign up at the start, your bandwidth to be hit like a steam train and don't bother renewing the domain at the end of year. My clients come to me for build straightforward sites they can handle. If I build a "personal pastime" site, then I can fill it up with what I want, but I wont pay myself for the added features I may use once because they are to complex. Think simple, think professional, think use ability. Get repeat visitors and pleasure, not repeat pain.

Pleasure, profit or pain - Giving your user what they want. | Joomla! Community Portal:

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Urgent, It dont work - fix it!

You've probably been to the forums because you're encountering a problem.

Just remember, when you post there, that we are trying to help you. Don't get angry, frustrated or rude, just tell us what's wrong and we'll help you work out the problem. You should also have at least read the beginners guide to joomla.

When asking for advice, the most important aspect to consider is asking in such a way that will allow the community to quickly know what you want and give all the information they need to help you.

In general, you want to be clear, concise, complete, and polite.

When you ask for support, please understand that depending on the number of questions the community see, other commitments, social life etc, they may not be able to answer or even acknowledge your question. Also understand that if you’re asking for free help, you need to be respectful of the time they’ve dedicated free and of the additional time you’re asking them to spend with you. Supply them with as much information as possible.

• Refrain from spamming or bumping, posting for points. If you make a post and don’t receive a reply within 5 minutes, that doesn’t mean you should post again. This will likely move you down or off the good attention list. People dont live on the forum waitng for your post.

• Unless otherwise told, do not contact/PM/Skype the forum leaders or more experienced people. This will not only make you unpopular and probably be classed as a bully. Some people actually make a comment in their signature lines stating they will ignore, delete and ban people who do. Others may also state that if you PM them, you will accept their personal support charges. They may also make a public posting in the topic you want help on stating you are a demanding, impolite user and everyone will ignore you.

• If you see an error message, copy the entire error message and include that in your initial post. These error messages help to narrow down the problem making for quicker resolution times

• Is there a forum for your language? It may be better to post in the wrong forum where someone can undertand you than post in Babel English where people will have no idea what your on about!

We know just as well as anyone else that everyone makes mistakes. If the problem was caused by something you accidentally did, we may be able to help. We don't expect you to be an expert at using our Joomla.
Even Microsoft states
"When posting questions to a professional forum or newsgroup it is vital to format the question and it's content in a proper way in order to greatly increase the possibility for quickly receiving a good answer, and thus saving you time and frustration. "

Urgent, It dont work - fix it!

Last Steps to Joomla 2.5!

Last Steps to Joomla 2.5!

Version 11.3 of the Platform has just been merged into the CMS and we are down to the last few weeks before 2.5! We plan to release Version 2.5 beta on or before December 20th. To make this schedule, we have until December 12th to propose and test new features. 1. Please test the present state of the CMS with your favorite extensions and report any bug on the Tracker. TEST: The CMS can be downloaded from https://github.com/joomla/joomla-cms/downloads (Not for production sites!) REPORT ISSUES: Please post on the tracker http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=8103 2. Please test the New Features (and propose some with code attached if you want): TEST: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemBrowse&tracker_id=8549 Specially look at those with Status "Pending" when testing One does not need to be a geek or PHP guru to test the proposed patches. And your efforts will really help in getting your favorite CMS in good shape for 2.5! As many of you know, version 2.5 is the long-term-support release that ends the 1.6/1.7/2.5 series. As such, the update to 2.5 will be seamless and will be handled exactly the same as the update from 1.6 to 1.7 or 1.7.2 to 1.7.3. It is expected that all extensions should work without changes for version 2.5. However, extension developers should test their programs to make sure. We hope to get some great new features into version 2.5, but we need the community to help with the process. Thanks!

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Joomla 2.5 Beta to be released December 20th 2011 | Internet Wisdom

On November 30^th, 2011, Jean Marie Simonet wrote on the Joomla community blog:

“We plan to release Version 2.5 beta on or before December 20th.”

The upcoming non-beta release is scheduled to be released in January of 2012, but it looks like Joomla addicts will be able to get a taste of the new 2.5 version of the popular CMS.

The new features have not been announced, but Jean writes:

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

Does this mean the developers are keeping a lid on the new enhancements (other than improved search) because they are not ready? Or are they not exactly sure what addition will be made? Either way, hopefully the Joomla developer team can meet their deadline so all of us Joomla enthusiasts can see for ourselves what all the fuss is about.

Think you’re ready for Joomla 2.5? Make sure you’re prepared!

Joomla 2.5 Beta to be released December 20th 2011 | Internet Wisdom:

AllVideos (plugin): True all-in-one media management solution for Joomla! | JoomlaWorks

AllVideos (by JoomlaWorks) is truely THE all-in-one media management solution for Joomla!. You can use the plugin to easily embed videos hosted on popular services like YouTube, Metacafe, Vimeo (and many more) inside your Joomla! articles (content items). Additionally, it allows you to playback almost any video/audio filetype directly from your server or a remote server, giving you the competitive edge when it comes to rich media content. WHY ALLVIDEOS? - You don't have to copy/paste huge blocks of HTML code, just to get a video from YouTube to playback on your Joomla! website! Your WYSIWYG editor loves it and so will you and your clients! - You use simple and descriptive plugin tags like {youtube}heu37ej3qs{/youtube}, {flv}batman_darknight{/flv} or {mp3}pixies_bonemachine{/mp3}. HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF ALLVIDEOS AllVideos is basically smart, cheap and now flexible content streaming for anyone: - You can use, for example, YouTube to upload your videos and then embed them inside your site without consuming your server's bandwidth or having to spend money on expensive video conversion software! - You can upload nearly any type of video or audio content and display them on your website, coming either directly from your server or from a remote server! FEATURES 1. Dozens of video providers supported, including localized versions of YouTube and Google Video (e.g. es.youtube.com), Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe, MySpace, Flickr Video, Yahoo Videos and more. 2. Stream your own media content, using the 20 web compatible video and audio formats like flv, swf, mov, mp4, wmv, wma, mp3, 3gp, webm, ogv, ogg, divx and more. 3. Easily embed your media content either directly from your server or a remote server! 4. Simple controls inside the plugin's parameters page provide layout consistency on all the videos shown in your Joomla! website. Set your preferences in seconds, publish the plugin and you're ready to start streaming content! 5. Easy, descriptive syntax for media embedding - {format/provider}filename{/format/provider}. You can also use syntax like {format/provider}filename|width|height|autoplay{/format/provider} (e.g. an "autoplaying" {youtube}he73js822|600|450|1{/youtube}) to display videos at different dimensions! 6. Skinnable! AllVideos uses MVC templating. Just copy the /tmpl folder included in the plugin, move it to your template's /html folder and rename it to "jw_allvideos", then style the output as you wish. The good thing about MVC templating is you don't have to worry about future updates breaking your styling. 7. Mobile-friendly: if you use MP4 for uploaded videos or services like YouTube, Vimeo and Dailymotion, your videos are mobile ready.

AllVideos (plugin): True all-in-one media management solution for Joomla! | JoomlaWorks:

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"Creating templates from scratch doesn't need to be hard

Dr Dobbs - Joomla Templates:

Alexander (Sasha) Sirotkin works on the LTE (Long Term Evolution) Project at Comsys Mobile. Alexander can be reached via e-mail at sasha.sirotkin@gmail.com.

Joomla is an open source content management system (CMS) that has all the functionality that you would expect -- banners, contacts, RSS feeds, polls, and much more. Because it was designed to be extensible, there are hundreds if not thousands of modules and components written for Joomla. It is mostly written in PHP, uses MySQL database as a back end, and released under GPL.

Joomla has a flexible and powerful template system which has a huge number of both free and commercial templates available for it. Unfortunately Joomla templates tend to be too colorful with a bit non-professional and childish look, which is generally not what you would want for a commercial website. I came across this problem while working on one of my projects. After checking literally hundreds of templates I had to consider ordering a custom template from one of the companies specializing in this area or creating one myself. While the former is probably the option that most commercial companies would chose, I decided to go with the latter mainly because all I needed was a plain and simple Google-style template and I figured out that it might be fun to learn something new in the process of writing it. For both of the above reasons I did not want to modify an existing template but rather preferred to write a new one entirely from scratch. As it turned out, it is indeed surprisingly simple and fun.

With this in mind, in this article I show how to write a minimal, yet functional Joomla template from scratch, starting with Joomla 1.0.x then 1.0.x templates to Joomla 1.5x which has a very different API."

Dr Dobbs - Joomla Templates

Nine Questions When Preparing Clients for Joomla 2.5

On August 9, the name for the January 2012 Joomla release changed from Joomla 1.8 to 2.5. Joomla's release schedule has been described in itsdevelopment strategy, and much analysis has been put forth as to whether one should upgrade websites or not to the next version of software.

This article has been translated to Russian, courtesy of Eugene Sivokon. Thank you!

The conventional wisdom, since the release of Joomla 1.7, has been as follows:

• If your website is running in Joomla 1.5, and it's working well, keep it running in 1.5 for now. Move the site to Joomla 2.5 next year.
• If you're building a new website, build it in 1.7 if possible, so you'll have an easy migration to 2.5 next year.

The reason Joomla 2.5 is so important is because it's a long-term release. By moving your website to this version of Joomla, you can keep Joomla's version constant for 18 months, without moving to new versions every 6 months or so. This long-term stability is important for most client businesses, who don't want to undergo a major upgrade and testing every 6 months. Since Joomla 1.5 will reach its end of life in April 2012, and since Joomla 2.5 is released in January 2012, it makes sense to move Joomla 1.5 sites directly to Joomla 2.5.

But what about moving those websites to Joomla 2.5? Have you stopped to consider a process for doing this, outside of the technical issues?

My company, 4Web, Inc., has roughly 80 sites we maintain which are currently running in Joomla 1.5. Most of these sites are quite complex, defined by several characteristics including third party extensions, custom templates, hundreds or thousands of pages, and custom extension development. We've recently discussed how we will manage moving these sites to Joomla 2.5 next year, and we've started to think about how the process might happen from a business perspective. Here are some of the questions we've been considering.

Nine Questions When Preparing Clients for Joomla 2.5:

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