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 picked up a small comment from Hannes Papenberg from the Joomla 1.6 development team some time ago. He was talking about the process of upgrading from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6.

Today, Joomla is upgraded by copying all the files for the upgrade into the web root of the site. This works fine, and there are also some upgrade scripts that makes this process even faster.

Upgrading to a completely new version of Joomla is another case. Joomla 1.6 will have a lot of new functions and changes. Not only the files will change but also the structure of the tables, and some files will be deleted. Those things don't happen in a regular upgrade. Thus, the upgrade process is not just about copying files. Normally, the process would be to delete all of the files for 1.5, and then migrate all data, image files and setup into Joomla 1.6 manually. This is not ideal. For this reason, Hannes from the development team has proposed that a migration script be made.

Only some ten days has passed since my last update on Joomla 1.6. Then, the latest news was that Joomla 1.6 beta 1 would be released around now.

Today, however - the Joomla Production Team released news that they would soon announce the release of Joomla 1.6 Alpha 2. Apparently, the ACL (Access Control List) functionality is what makes the project take more time than previously expected.

When Joomla 1.6 Alpha was released a few months ago, the original plan was to release the beta version six weeks after that, in August. However, the time came and no beta arrived. So what happened, and what's the status of Joomla 1.6 as of now?

Hannes Papenberg from the Joomla 1.6 Release Team has done a write-up on the current status. He explains why Joomla 1.6 beta 1 was delayed and outlines some of the features we will be seeing.

The 4th Annual Open Source CMS Awards sponsored by Packt Publishing is open for nominations Joomla is eligible for Best PHP Open Source CMS and you can also nominate project contributors such as Open Source MVPs. The nominations are open until September 11. Voting among the top five nominees will begin on September 18.

Joomla, along with Drupal, is already a nominee in the new Hall of Fame category. This category will have sub-category awards for Best Extensions and Themes. These will be nominated by the CMS's representatives. Watch the community blogs for more information.

The latest info on the release of Joomla 1.6 beta 1 says it will be available in the beginning of August this year.

In the meantime, let's have a look at the current state of affairs.

Here are 10 articles I read today. Joomla related? Well, most of them ;)

One of the sites I've set up with Joomla is a site for a Norwegian fraternal organization. They have well over a hundred local branches and a similar number of local editors. I've started giving a handful of them access to the Joomla front-end editing system, but have realized that the work flow in Joomla is far from perfect as it is now.

For that reason, I was extremely happy to see that there's a work flow extension in the works - addressing exactly the needs I have with the site mentioned.

Finally, Joomla 1.6 Alpha is ready for download. As I have previously mentioned, this is NOT software to be used on a live site.

Please download and install this on a test site only, and play around with it. The developers need your feedback and bug reports.

Joomla 1.6 Alpha is now only hours away from being released to the Community, according to Brian Teeman.

It's very important to note that this is an Alpha release - and is far from ready to be installed on a live site.