Most popular Joomla sites debated

Written by Tom Elliott
Wednesday, 19 August 2009 13:49

What Joomla-powered sites have the highest Google PageRank? (Hint: Joomlashack's PageRank is 9. Think we made the top tier?)

How many Joomla-powered websites in the world are there? And how many of them are highly trafficked, really successful sites?

A group of Joomlaheads led by Alex Red has set out to answers these any many other questions about the size, depth, and characteristics of the Joomlaverse. Their site is www.joomla.me

Joomla.me is a directory of Joomla-powered websites. The team analyzes and makes some interesting claims using data from the directory, including:

Summer of Code students improve Joomla 1.6

Written by Tom Elliott
Tuesday, 18 August 2009 22:14

The 17 Joomla "summer of code" projects sponsored by Google officially concluded today. So what did the Joomlaverse gain?

By all accounts, a ton of useful code and exciting features that will further improve of beloved Joomla!

For the past five summers, Google has sponsored "a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects." The Joomla Project has benefited from the program since 2007.

This summer, 17 projects from six continents provided valuable code and experimental ideas to Joomla.

Here are some highlights from two projects of special interest to Joomlashack.

Free Joomla Webinar by Barrie North

Written by Tom Elliott
Thursday, 06 August 2009 13:37

Have 60 minutes to learn more about Joomla from Barrie North, author of Joomla! 1.5- A User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website?

Then sign up today for the upcoming webinar "5 Tips for Building a Successful Website!"

The first 10 people to register for the webcast will receive a free autographed copy of Joomla! 1.5 - A User's Guide: Building a Successful Joomla! Powered Website, 2nd Edition. You must "attend" the webinar in order to win.

During this 60-minute webcast you will learn the tips, tricks and problem-solving solutions covering:

• How to build Joomla! sites from scratch and customize them
• Create dynamic pages and effective navigation
• Optimize your Joomla! site for search engines
• Identify the most valuable Joomla! extensions and add-ons

Not picked up your copy of the book? Buy it today from Amazon for just $29! And see you on August 19th!

Tell us what you want

Written by Barrie North
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 11:53

What you really... really want!

Last week we launched our new promise of our 100% satisfaction guarantee.

This week we take another step in improving ourselves to better meet our customers needs.

We have launched our Uservoice feedback forum for the Joomlashack community. We want you to tell us what you'd like to see from Joomlashack, and we'll do our best to make it happen.

For general feedback, please post in our core forum: joomlashack.uservoice.com

Join the Joomlashack Email Test

Written by Barrie North
Tuesday, 04 August 2009 10:58

There are lots of email marketing services: iContact, Mailchimp, Aweber etc etc.

But I don't think there has been a scientific test and review of how well they deliver, all of them give their deliverability rates, but how can we compare them?

I need your help to do this very test and compare these services, here's how...

Joomla 1.0 2005-2009 RIP

Written by Tom Elliott
Tuesday, 04 August 2009 10:22

RIP, Joomla 1.0. As announced last October by the Joomla Project, the original version of Joomla is now officially "unsupported" and will no longer receive any security updates or bug fixes.

The day that Joomla 1.0 officially retired was July 22nd, but we were reminded of the news by a blog post on the Joomla Project's "Leadership Blog" late last week written by Sam Moffatt.

Some interesting numbers about Joomla 1.0:

• First released on Friday, September 16, 2005 as "Baby Joomla"


• At least 1.6 million downloads (and probably a lot more)


• Last update released in February 2008- 17 months without any security improvements


• At one point believed to be more popular than Britney Spears, but that was proven wrong. (Interestingly, Joomla does appear to have caught up with Britney recently.)

If your site is still on Joomla 1.0 and you don't have a team of developers laying about to keep it secure and healthy, you'd best get on Joomla 1.5 asap. Need help? Migration resources are here.

Simplweb updates 1,000 Joomla sites in 20 minutes

Written by Tom Elliott
Wednesday, 22 July 2009 20:10

Imagine yourself updating over 1,000 websites with the latest version of Joomla 1.5.

A nightmarish struggle against the clock that would take so long that 1.5.13 would be out before you had half of the sites updated, right?

Not for Simplweb.com, the hosted "Joomla on Demand" service from our sister company.Total time to update? Under 20 minutes!

Joomla 1.6 means change for templates

Written by Tom Elliott
Friday, 17 July 2009 23:05

Who knew there was so much interest in Joomla 1.6 already? Last week Joomlashack re-posted a video by Joomla 1.6 Project Lead Andrew Eddie that has taken on a life of its own, both in our own blog comments, the Twittersphere, and on Eddie's own blog, theartofjoomla.com.

Joomla 1.5 turns 12

Written by Tom Elliott
Thursday, 09 July 2009 18:05

Last week the Joomla Project team released Joomla 1.5.12, codename "Wojmamni Ama Woi." No explanation for the Swahili meaning was given, but this version's various security and bug fixes are easily explained by checking out the project's 1.5.12 release.

The notes on Joomla.org points out that the version of the WYSIWYG editor TinyMCE received an important upgrade in this release, which reminded us to remind you that if you aren't using WYSIWYGPro, you're mising out on the best editor available for Joomla 1.5.

Nonetheless, be sure to do your updates early and often, as there are likely bad people out there trying to hack your Joomla site. You can also check out SecureJoomla, which will add another layer of protection on top of the great work by the Joomla Project guys.

Joomla 1.6 beta coming soon

Written by Tom Elliott
Thursday, 09 July 2009 17:40

Attention Joomlaheads: Change ahead with Joomla 1.6 coming on quickly. (A beta release is expected in early August.)

Joomla 1.6 Project Lead Andrew Eddie spent some time this week at the Brisbane Joomla User Group talking about Joomla 1.6. His presentation about Joomla's future is a "must watch" for those of us who make our living with Joomla products and services.

Below you'll find a 52 minute video of Eddie's presentation, titled "Joomla 1.6- Lifting the Lid." Great thanks to Andrew Smith for filming, editing, and posting this insightful bit of footage!