The Joomla! Community Portal ™

Did you know that every month, Joomla! has a "Member of the Month"?? This month, it is Anthony Ferrara. We do not know yet who it will be next month. That is where you come in. You decide! So, let out and vote!

Click Here to vote for who you think the Joomla! Member of the Month should be for July.

Contest Rules and Hall of Fame <-- and how to nominate members for next month!

If you've been visiting the Joomla Extensions Directory for a while, you may have noticed that the eight Editors' Picks haven't been updated often. The only recent addition has been Joomla Tools Suite by Russ Winter.

Today we're happy to say that a ninth extension has been added: sh404SEF by Yannick Gaultier.

What does sh404SEF do?

1. Rewrites Joomla's URLs so that site administrators have complete control. This is important for search engines but also for people moving to Joomla who don't want to break their old URLs.
2. Solves several accessibility problems to help users with disabilties read a Joomla site.
3. Provides a valid 404 page for people who access your site using a broken URL.
4. Adds a security layer to prevent certain hacking attempts.
5. Can control a site's metadata, allowing people to add page titles, language tags, indexing instructions and more.

Why was sh404SEF chosen?

1. It meets all the basic criteria we look for when recommending extensions to JED users ... its free to download, well-supported, works on both 1.0 and 1.5 and almost all types of server, including IIS.
2. Since its launch in May 2007, the developer has consistently worked to improve the code and add new features.
3. Its compatible with a very wide range of other extensions, including VirtueMart, Joomfish, Fireboard, Community Builder, mosetsTree, HotProperty, Sobi2, Docman, myBlog, Remository and more.

Do you have any suggestions for the next Editor's Pick?

If so, we'd love to hear from you in the comments:

We do translate Joomla! resources from English to our Native local language. The only difference is, it is translating on your own or in a team.
When you translate alone, you don't have problems with resources synchronization, if you work with two people on translations, you could need tools for synchronizing resources and also versioning this resource.
Many of us of course use Subversion(SVN) or CVS. In the last years SVN is more popular. It is a good and helpful tool in many cases, but it's not SVN I would like to show you.

Due to the continued increase in traffic and resources that JED is consuming, we're going to be moving the entire site to a newer, faster server.

This should take place at this time, and should be completed in under 30mins. However, things happen, and we will do our best to minimize the downtime and impact to the community.

Thanks for your patience and continued support of the project.

I was just doing my regular daily 'ban a few spammers who the moderators have reported to the Global Moderators' and it struck me that it might be a good idea just to share a small incite into the huge job that is done by all, users and moderators to keep the forum clean. We often forget this, I know I do at times.

How does it all work?

• It all starts when a spam thread is reported to the moderators. 
• A local moderator usually cleans up (removes the spam).
• A Global Moderator bans/blocks the user, and checks to see that no posts are left visible.

Seems simple enough. However, we're talking about blatant spam here. Spam posted by users real humans from valid email addresses, who sign up just for this purpose, to spam you. I know we are not unique, but due to our size and activity, we get targeted a fair bit.

How much spam are we talking about?

It's hard to say, but I estimate from 10-15 users are banned each day for this kind of spam. Perhaps, each of these posts 3-5 posts that need to be cleaned up. Do the sums, and appreciate for a moment the amazing job that goes on 24/7 behind the scenes helping to keep the community clean. Hours and hours of work, just in this one area of the project.

So, next time, before blasting a moderator (as a user did to me today via PM) stop and think of the hard work that they do behind the scenes to keep the forum clean. Speaking for myself, at times I may come accross blunt and to the poitn when moderating, but keep in mind that some of us moderators/global moderators spend hours and hours EACH DAY keeping things clean.

How can we all help?

• If you see any spam, please report it to the moderators. It will take you less than 10 seconds.
• If you are able to, take the time to answer a few questions, or direct users to the relevant documentation. It's not a moderators 'job' (or anyone's for that matter) to answer people questions, but we often feel compelled due to the amount of time and activity we spend on the forum.
• Don't conclude if your threads/posts (not spam) are moderated that we are out to get you. I assure you this is not the case. Most of us are normal reasonable people (despite what you may think) just doing our best.
• Please read the rules and especially with regard to your forum signatures, check these are in line with the rules. This again saves moderating time on smaller issues such as this.

We're here to help you, help us help you, and if you are interested in helping out in a more direct way, there are plenty of opportunities. Get involved, leave your comments, help out, participate, make this your community as well.

Finally, don't forget to bookmark/subscribe this (and other) blog(s). This blog feed is: http://feeds.joomla.org/JoomlaForumModeratorBlog

If you have any relevant questions, please ask. Have a good weekend!