JomSocial, the social networking component for Joomla! CMS, today announced the availability of the latest release, JomSocial 1.8. This version features the highly-anticipated Events management and overall improved usability.

JomSocial 1.8 is codenamed "Wazi", which is Swahili for clear, openness and clarity. JomSocial 1.8 is also the first version of this extension to be released as GPL.

As you might have read in my post about FLEXIcontent earlier today, I was hoping for front-end editing capabilities in the next version of the extension.

Now, I'm happy to announce that FLEXIcontent 1.5.3 will have front-end capabilities. The final version will be released later this week (Tuesday og Wednesday).

But, if you want to download it now, you can get the SVN release today.

When I visited "J and Beyond" in Wiesbaden earlier this month, I met Emmanuel Danan. He's a French developer and the inventor of FLEXIContent and FLEXIAccess.

In this video, Emmanuel talks about how FLEXIContent and FLEXIAccess came to be.

FLEXIContent is a content management system that ties into the content database in Joomla.

Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 24.

This week, Brian Teeman is all about 2010 Football World Cup and he links it to Joomla in a fun way.

There's also a piece on Mootools 1.2, a J and Beyond retrospective by JoomlaWorks and a look at how to deploy large-scale websites with Joomla.

Enjoy!

There are literally thousands of Joomla! extensions and templates available online. How will users find yours?

Quick Looks are a way for you as a developer to place your product in front of the Joomla! audience.

What you will get:

A one-page Quick Look listing for your product

• A brief introduction about the product
• Up to 6 screenshots (580px wide + 800px wide lightbox version)
• Captions on all images
• Up to 8 standout features for your product (bullet points)
• Up to 3 text links back to your site (dofollow!)
• Here's an example Quick Look post.

Reach thousands of Joomla! users

A Quick Look will put your product in front of thousands of Joomla! users, many of which are willing to spend their money on good quality products. The Quick Look listing will be promoted on the blog (sidebar), at least three times on Twitter during different timezones (2000+ followers) and on the JoomlaBlogger Facebook page. The Quick Look might also be mentioned in my weekly newsletter (1000+ subscribers). All in all, you will get a lot of exposure!

All this for a one-time fee of USD 100.
Payment is done via Paypal.

Terms:

• The payment is a one-time fee. Payment is done via Paypal.
• The Quick Look post will stay at the blog as long as the product is valid as described in the post. Posts about discontinued products or services may be removed by the blog owner.
• Changes to more than screenshot or two or simple text changes will be considered a new listing.

How to book a Quick Look listing

To produce your Quick Look listing, I'll need the following elements from you:

• A brief introduction about the product
• One image to be used as the main illustration (in listing pages and in the intro text).
• Up to 6 screenshots (580px wide + 800px wide lightbox version)
• One line captions for each screenshot
• Up to 8 standout features for your product (bullet points)
• Up to 3 text links back to your site (dofollow!).
• Here's an example Quick Look post.
• Provide your Paypal email address in the email.

Some notes on how to make your Quick Look more successful:

• Make sure to include screenshots that are clear and shows the inner workings of the system. Things that you would need to buy the product to see. The point of a Quick Look is to give an inside look at a product or service.
• Close-ups of front end elements are good.
• Admin panels showing key features and unique selling points also work well.

Book your Quick Look listing today by emailing me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

As you can imagine, I get a lot of requests to review and highlight Joomla! related products on this blog. As much as I want to help people, I just can't find the time to do them all. With over 4000 extensions in the Joomla Extensions Directory and a gazillion templates around, it goes without saying that it's impossible to cover it all.

That's why I've developed the concept of Quick Looks. These are paid, one-page overviews of a Joomla! template or extension. The overview will feature a short introduction, some screenshots, top features of the product and the cold facts like price etc.

Quick Looks are not reviews - but give you an insight into the workings of the product nonetheless.

Here are some interesting Joomla blog posts I found during week 23.

Brian Teeman has an interesting piece on the J&Beyond conference and community involvement.

There is also an interview with the Joomlaworks guys as well as a case study showing a big site using Joomla. Enjoy!

As expected, the third beta version of Joomla 1.6 was released yesterday. It's been two weeks since the last release, and the development team has kept it's promise of delivering time-based beta releases of Joomla 1.6 every 14 days.

Not so long ago, someone left a negative comment on this blog. The comment was more negative than others and directed towards a Joomla template developer. The commenter had experienced trouble with his Joomla website and needed to place the blame.

Criticism is OK, but negativity and the language used was not something I care for on my blog. So I didn't publish it.

Nevertheless, it got me thinking about the reason for the negative comment. Was the template developer to blame, or was it the user himself?

There has been many efforts going lately to encourage people to contribute to the Joomla! project in various ways.

From the Joomla! Forward initiative and the alltogetherasawhole.org website, to lots of blog posts both on the joomla.org site and elsewhere.

Jeremy Wilken of Gnomeoftherun.com is one person with a strong opinion in this matter. I met up with him during the J and Beyond conference to hear what he had to say about contributing to the Joomla! project.

In this video interview Jeremy shares his thoughts on how you can contribute to Joomla! for our common benefit.

If you've been following the Joomla! project for a while, you know that the releases have been sporadic and non-predictable. Especially the releases for Joomla! 1.6 (alpha / beta) have been far apart. Until now, that is.

At J! and Beyond in Wiesbaden, Chris Davenport of the Joomla! Development team told the crowd that future Joomla! releases will be date-based. This means at first that new beta versions of Joomla! 1.6 will be released every 14 days. Beta 3 is scheduled for June 14th 2010. The result being that the version will be released with the bug fixes added up until that point. This will continue until we have a release candidate and then a stable version of Joomla! 1.6.

After the release of 1.6, the plan is a release of a new major version of Joomla! every 6 months. Which means a release of 1.7 six months after 1.6 is launched etc.

Open Source Matters (OSM) has announced that the first ever Joomla! World Conference will be held in Melbourne, Australia.  OSM President, Ryan Ozimek said «the conference is a great opportunity for the global Joomla! community to meet and connect in a professionally organised event. This will bring together everyone from the lead development team to community developers, designers and end users».