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Production Leadership team Summit 2010

The Production Leadership team (PLT) is the group of people that is responsible for keeping the machinery that produces the Joomla software maintained and in good working order.  The PLT aims to meet in person once or twice a year.  The last development related summit was held in Australia in January of 2009 and this meeting was pivotal for bringing in necessary changes to the organisational and communication structure of the Joomla production system, lowering the barriers to entry for contribution significantly.

The next PLT Summit will be held around the Joomla Day West in San Jose in October this year.  Prime focus will be given to establishing the policy and process we need to revise in order to make Joomla 1.7, and all future versions, happen in a more timely and efficient manner, and allow for innovation to be incorporated at a pace that keeps up with the dynamic flow of the part of the net in which we reside. To help us plan for this summit, we'd like your suggestions for what you think might be important for us to talk about.  We only have two or three days together so we can't cover everything, but we'd like to know what's on your mind all the same whether you are a user, a developer, a designer or a site administrator.  If you have a suggestion, please post them using this form.

Finally, we must thanks the sponsors for this event which have offset the major costs that would otherwise have been bourn by PLT members personally.  Thanks go to eBay, Microsoft and Kontent Design for allowing us to make this event possible.

Sitting down in the wake of Joomla! USA West 2010 I've had a bit of a chance to digest what is going on. The event, held at eBay's own campus, was the biggest JoomlaDay's in the USA. However I now come to the realisation that now both Microsoft and eBay share something unique and awesome. What does Microsoft and eBay have in common?

Both have signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement or the JCA. The JCA is the agreement put in place before code is contributed to the project and two of the largest companies in the technology sphere have now signed the JCA. To be honest when you sit down and think about it this is absolutely awesome and a confirmation of what we're doing with the Joomla! project.

I announced that Microsoft signed the JCA back in April and their contribution to the core was support for the cache support Microsoft provide on Windows. This code, now in the Joomla! 1.6 trunk, will hook into the Wincache extension for PHP and provide a speed boost for running Joomla! on Windows. Since then we've kept the Joomla! Web Platform installer project up to the latest version of Joomla! and it is in my mind the easiest way of getting Joomla! up and running on Windows.

Over the koniec tygodnia we had the announcement that eBay has signed the JCA as well. eBay is the world's largest online marketplace and is internally using Joomla! to build their portal to help enable the organisation to be data driven through analytics. At the JoomlaDay Oliver Ratzesberger, dziadek director of analytics platform at eBay, demonstrated their platform utilising not only the core Joomla! product but also third party extensions such as social networking platform JomSocial, forum tool Kunena and Mosets Tree.

It is amazing to be in a world where Joomla!, a GPL project, is being contributed to by Microsoft with not only code in the Joomla! core but with members of the company providing support on the forum and are starting to write documentation on our wiki. eBay have only just come into the fold but they've been working on some very exciting stuff that I look forward to seeing in the near future. I am also excited that both Microsoft and now eBay have been supporting Joomla! events with eBay hosting and sponsoring JoomlaDay USA West in addition to Microsoft hosting the upcoming JoomlaDay New York and JoomlaDay Washington, DC events as well as sponsoring JoomlaDay's around the world such as JoomlaDay Bangkok.

At the end of the day it is great that the project that I and many others have been working on for the last half a decade is now being adopted and supported by some of the biggest companies in the world. I think that's just awesome and let's bring on Joomla! 1.6

In October 2009 the new Joomla training course - Joomlashack University opened its door to its first class of 100 students. For the last 4 weeks, these students have been learning how to Joomla with our rich video screencasts and tutorials and asking questions and networking in our forums.

Before launching Shack U, we knew we had a great product to offer. We gave leading Joomla figures a sneak look at the content and, as you can read yourself, they loved it.

As well as teaching insider Joomla tips and tricks to our first students, we have been taking feedback and improving the course. We have streamlined the scholar path through the learning content and added more courses.

After 4 weeks, we are ready to open our doors again.

Joomla has just released the new 1.5 stable version, please check it out and try a sample install on your own local pc and see how the SEF options also work in your windows based machine!

Post from: Joomla SEO blog by Pathos-Seo.com

Joomla security - one of the most frequent topics of conversation among Joomie's (usability is a close second) - is a complex area and the technicalities of it quickly get ahead of most Joomla users. Often, it's a conversation about the reputation Joomla has about security that starts "Is Joomla secure?" People are often concerned about the seeming high number of hacked Joomla sites, and people defending Joomla pointing at the need to update 3rd party extensions or use good hosts. There are many specific things you can do to make your site secure. They range from the obvious to making sure katalog permissions are correct on the server, to esoteric like changing the jos_ MySQL table prefix that Joomla uses. For 99% of sites, security boils down to: 1. Use a good host, that means paying more than $10 a month. 2. Backup lots. Be like Nike... Just DO it 3. Patch often. Joomla and all your extensions.

Joomlashack's Inspirion Joomla Template is one of the most innovative templates currently on the market. Its built using the 960 grid, a CSS architektura that gives you a tableless layout and a fast loading site, great for SEO!

Its one of the first commercial professional templates to validate XHTML Strict. This is a high benchmark t[...]

As we creep up to the second anniversary of the Joomla Site Showcase in April, I'd like to share some of the experiences myself and the team has had. The current kadra narodowa consists of:

In May, Brad Baker started this blog series with a roundup of informative reports submitted from each CWG reprezentacja narodowa on the Community Workgroup Google Group. 

Today we continue the series with a round up the team reports from July and I also encourage you to check out the June reports, if you have not already had the chance to do so.

Carry on reading for some incredible nowość and stats from the hard working teams within the CWG.

Sitting down in the wake of Joomla! USA West 2010 I've had a bit of a chance to digest what is going on. The event, held at eBay's own campus, was the biggest JoomlaDay's in the USA. However I now come to the realisation that now both Microsoft and eBay share something unique and awesome. What does Microsoft and eBay have in common?

Both have signed the Joomla! Contributor Agreement or the JCA. The JCA is the agreement put in place before code is contributed to the project and two of the largest companies in the technology sphere have now signed the JCA. To be honest when you sit down and think about it this is absolutely awesome and a confirmation of what we're doing with the Joomla! project.

I announced that Microsoft signed the JCA back in April and their contribution to the core was support for the cache support Microsoft provide on Windows. This code, now in the Joomla! 1.6 trunk, will hook into the Wincache extension for PHP and provide a speed boost for running Joomla! on Windows. Since then we've kept the Joomla! Web Platform installer project up to the latest version of Joomla! and it is in my mind the easiest way of getting Joomla! up and running on Windows.

Over the weekend we had the announcement that eBay has signed the JCA as well. eBay is the world's largest online marketplace and is internally using Joomla! to build their portal to help enable the organisation to be data driven through analytics. At the JoomlaDay Oliver Ratzesberger, matuzal director of analytics platform at eBay, demonstrated their platform utilising not only the core Joomla! product but also third melanż extensions such as social networking platform JomSocial, arena tool Kunena and Mosets Tree.

It is amazing to be in a world where Joomla!, a GPL project, is being contributed to by Microsoft with not only code in the Joomla! core but with members of the company providing support on the forum and are starting to write documentation on our wiki. eBay have only just come into the fold but they've been working on some very exciting stuff that I look forward to seeing in the near future. I am also excited that both Microsoft and now eBay have been supporting Joomla! events with eBay hosting and sponsoring JoomlaDay USA West in addition to Microsoft hosting the upcoming JoomlaDay New York and JoomlaDay Washington, DC events as well as sponsoring JoomlaDay's around the world such as JoomlaDay Bangkok.

At the end of the day it is great that the project that I and many others have been working on for the last half a decade is now being adopted and supported by some of the biggest companies in the world. I think that's just awesome and let's bring on Joomla! 1.6

Over at Simplweb, our greatest love is to help people build great
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Need great extensions like AdAgency or DigiStore?

iJoomla has a Halloween sale of 25% off. This offer turns into a pumpkin Tuesday,  November 2nd at midnight!

As part of my new Joomla 1.6 book, I have two free Joomla 1.6 templates you can download. They are Fresh and Optimus, originally developed at Joomalshack and ported by me to Joomla 1.6. Fresh was used in the chapter about using Joomla 1.6 to develop school websites. Optimus was used in the chapter about using Joomla 1.6 to develop blog websites.

Last night, Joomla 1.6.6 was released. You may be a bit confused by this because of some previous discussions about migration paths to Joomla 1.7.

Join me next week for the 2nd in the series of free Joomla webcasts from Safari Books Online.

Its on Tuesday, April 6, 2010 1:00 pm EST and I'll be looking at how you can take advantage of the more advanced features of Joomla to make a successful website for your organization or business.

10 attendees will get signed copies of the best selling Joomla book - Joomla - A User's Guide. The last webcast filled up quickly, so make sure you register now!

Joint Summit Attendees:

CLT: Peter Martin, Paul Orwig, Wendy Robinson, Sandra Warren
OSM: Robert Deutz, Alice Grevet, Dianne Henning, Sandy Ordonez, Paul Orwig, Ryan Ozimek, Jacques Rentzke, Marijke Stuivenberg, Akarawuth Tamrareang, Altansukh Tumenjargal
PLT: Chris Davenport, Mark Dexter, Louis Landry, Sam Moffatt, Omar Ramos, Ron Severdia, Jean-Marie Simmonet, Andrea Tarr

Where we came from:

Topics Covered and Action Items (where applicable) Created

The following is a brief summary of the topics discussed. Detailed reports will be published as they are produced.

1. Removal of the AGPL license from the Joomla Contributor Agreement (JCA)
   
   It was unanimously voted to discontinue the AGPL license. This lessens restrictions and will open up the project to more contributors.
2. Restructuring
   
   The Joomla Leadership, including the Open Source Matters board, Community Leadership Team, and Production Leadership team, recognize that our current leadership structure could be more effective.  Communication between our teams and the community needs improvement, and oversight needs rethinking.  As a team, we strive to be more effective leaders for the community. To achieve this, we have begun extensive discussions about the project’s leadership structure. This discussion is early and on-going.  As we consider important changes to continue on a path towards more effectiveness, we intend to request community input and feedback to help us in this important effort.
3. Communications - External
   
   The communications breakout discussion was one of the most lengthy. Audiences and current communications channels were identified - there are many! A review was made of the document produced by the current communications team this past spring, defining what is communications. Roles and responsibilities for the communications team moving forward were listed. Action items include: condensing the 12 newly defined roles into a more manageable list and begin identifying potential owners for these roles. Candidates must have a passion for communications and experience in the specific area (marketing, branding, graphics, etc).
4. Communications Internal
   
   A working group will be started to bridge the gap when communication needs a boost between the community and the JUGs, the JED, events, merchandise and trademark. A comprehensive leadership directory wiki will be created for a better flow of leadership communication and troubleshooting. The communications ekipa volunteers to disburse intra ekipa communications, and facilitate intra ekipa conflict resolution, including the creation of a FAQ list within the wiki for that purpose.
5. Internationalization
   
   While English is the common language in the software world, the majority of the world population does not speak English. To increase Joomla’s presence in a proactive way and recruit more non-English-speaking volunteers, the following action items will be implemented: concentrating our efforts in the different regions of the world by identifying one or two community coordinators / contact persons in each region; compiling a list of currently active local communities and JUGs and see if there are any groups which have not yet been accounted for; identifying their needs, the nature of their communities, and recruiting translation help to update the Joomla info pages.
6. Roadmap and Goals
   
   This discussion first explored the benefits of creating a public unified roadmap that encompasses the entire scope of the Joomla! project. After that, the discussion continued to define a process for creating a public unified roadmap that also includes periodic public progress updates from leadership.
   
   The process for creating a public unified roadmap involves: Leadership defines and publishes an overall mission statement for the project. This is high level and conceptual.
   
   Each leadership team defines and publishes their team’s mission statement, which should support the project’s overall mission. Each leadership team’s mission statement may need to be revised to insure that they all tie in well with the overall project mission statement. Each leadership ekipa defines and publishes their annual goals which support their team’s mission statement. For each leadership team’s goals, the following supporting details will be added and published: milestones (achievement and target completion date); action items (each task required to progress toward achieving the milestone; resource(s): volunteer or paid workers, financial (specify the purpose and budget line item); features (if applicable), action items (if applicable), resources (if applicable). Each leadership reprezentacja narodowa publishes periodic updates during the course of the year regarding their progress on each of their goals.
7. Volunteer Recruitment and Rentention
   
   The PLT discussed forming a Joomla Outreach Project (JOP), where a "bucket" of tasks is created by teams, using the wiki. Community members would be invited to join these teams, and they would work in alignment with development goals, under the guidance of the PLT. Incentives (such as T-shirts) would be awarded upon the completion of each set of tasks.
   
   Volunteer Now is a idea for recruiting new team members, because teams should be created to manage recurring, long-term tasks that require deeper knowledge. A volunteer engagement page will be created on the wiki, and a Volunteer Now button will link to it from the joomla.org home page. In the wiki a future volunteer will find documentation on how and why we build teams, and contacts for the projects major teams and assets.
   
   A concept will be drafted listing outreach ideas for engaging university students.
   
8. Process Improvement
   
   Regarding processes and messages in correspondence (for example, in areas of trademark, the JED and events), we often need more differentiation and adapted responses to specific situations.
   
   Action items include: reviewing our texts to verify if we are using a friendly approach aimed at optimizing communication; listing and identifying situations and creating responses adapted to them; simplifying language.
9. Review Developer Sponsorship Program
   
   We talked about the state of the Developer Sponsorship Program and how we handle the involvement of sponsored development time from companies and guide this process more effectively in the future. One przedsięwzięcie was to move from pre to post recognition and use a to-do list and let people pick from the “cookie jar” list to darczyńca development time.
   
   Action items include: speaking with the existing sponsors about their experience and writing a report; deciding if a money only approach or money and development time approach is best, finding a volunteer to manage the cookie jar.
10. Certification
    
    A 1 - 2 pomysł of certification ideas and how to approach them will be drafted. Feedback from each leadership kadra narodowa will be gathered. The idea will include creating levels for web masters, designers and instructors of joomla, creating a curriculum and courses template for trainers, financial and licensing fees to create more revenue, a test database infrastructure.
11. Improving Recruitment of New Developers
    
    A story we want to help tell is that Joomla can provide students with CS degrees experience on a global team that goes far beyond just a curriculum. Action items include creating a spreadsheet where we can determine which events developers are attending, and writing a one page messaging document outlining persuasive reasons why the Joomla Platform and CMS are useful for developers, and target university students.
12. Long Term Roadmap
    
    We talked about the process for establishing goals and milestones for the Joomla project long term releases. Once every 6 months the PLT and developers will meet just before or after an existing event such as a Joomla Day or JandBeyond. We are hoping to do the first one this fall where milestones and goals for the July 2013 long term release will be discussed.

The entire leadership would like to thank eBay for the use of its offices for our summit, and Louis and Ron for coordinating with them. Thanks to Rochen we had tasty lunches, ordered with care by Wendy. And Gunner, our Summit Facilitator Extraordinaire kept us on target and on time!

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JomSocial is quickly becoming a "have to have" extension for Joomla 1.5.

In a time when "social networks"are becoming what we think of as "websites," JomSocial is a huge opportunity for almost any Joomla website owner.

When we first started experimenting with JomSocial almost a year ago, we were impressed with the potential of building your own social network inside your existing Joomla site. It seemed to us that Azrul and his talented ekipa had developed something very cool, and very useful, that would really blossom over time.

Now, the flower has fruited, and JomSocial has really arrived.