During the last few weeks, two notable Joomla personalities have been honored with awards for their achievements.

The first one was Brian Teeman, and just a few days ago Andrew Eddie was recognized for his contributions.

If you're going to get a license for the Joomla Community software Jomsocial, you'd better do it now :)

When registering in my JoomlaBlogger Community, you will get access to a 20% discount offer for JomSocial.

The guys over at TechJoomla has launched a Joomla Community effort by introducing the #how2joomla Twitter hash tag.

The idea came from the Magento Community, where they use the hash tag #how2mage. By using the #how2joomla tag, users may post questions about Joomla and, if the community takes responsibility, get help quickly.

I've made a very short video showing the new menu structure of the Joomla 1.6 (Alpha 2) administrator. This menu structure may well be changed in the beta and stable versions, but I wanted to show it anyway.

Some days ago, I published my JoomlaBlogger Community here at the blog. I have waited a few days to announce it, though, to have a soft start.

Now, however, I welcome all of you to join me and other Joomla addicts in a friendly, giving community.

The community is based upon the Joomla extension JomSocial. I have managed to secure a special deal for my members. Read on for more.

Just wanted to post a quick note about two upcoming reviews here on the blog.

I just received two Joomla books published by Pack Publishing and I'm reading through them to prepare for the reviews.

Joomla 1.5.15 was released today, three months after the 1.5.14 release.

The update contains two security fixes and a lot of bug fixes. A lot of issues with TinyMCE has been addressed.

There has also been an addition to the TinyMCE editor, i.e. the option to create templates in TinyMCE editor.

An important addition to the system is the added option to disallow users to view extension XML files. This was proposed by Brian Teeman, I believe, and will increase the security of your installation.

Great news, everyone! The second alpha version of Joomla 1.6 has been released by the project team. And this time, the ACL is in place.

Read on for more about the new features and additions, and what's in store for the beta release.

First, I want to remind you that any alpha or beta release is only meant for evaluation and testing purposes. They should never be used on a live website.

From Joomla.org today:

Joomla! is a finalist in the "Hall of Fame" and "Best Open Source PHP CMS" Awards sponsored by Packt Publishing.

With the exciting news about the implementation of Access Control Lists (ACL) in Joomla 1.6 and the incredible growth of all parts of the Joomla Project, now is a time to celebrate the great successes of this community. Over 1000 sites in the Site Showcase, 3500 extensions in the JED, 150 Resources in the JRD and almost 13 million downloads, what a great set of accomplishments by everyone in the Joomla community.

Remember that you can also vote for best extension and best template and nominate someone who you think is a Joomla MVP. There are so many great contributors who could be nominated. Think of all those people who make the JED, JRD, Showcase, Forums, JoomlaCode and Joomla itself possible.

I encourage all Joomla! fans to vote for Joomla for both awards.

I'm happy and excited to announce my very first contest here at Joomlablogger.net. If you have a Joomla website you can take part in the contest.

Jump in and participate! It's easy to enter and the price is very useful for everyone who owns or runs a Joomla website.

The contest is now closed. Check out this post for more about the winner: Winner of 'Joomla Greatest Challenge Contest' Chosen