Introducing Joopal

Written by Sam Moffatt

Today I'd like to announce a new project by the Joomla! team called 'Joopal'. Joopal is a new CMS featuring the power of objects offered to you by Joomla! with the immense hook system delivered to you by Drupal. Joopal is based on Joomla! 1.5 and features Drupal 6 the way PHP5 meant it to be done: with objects instead of globals and incredibly long function names. Joopal is compatible with the Drupal 6 functions and maintains all of those globals for backwards compatibility whilst providing a new object orientated approach to the functions you know and love.

The power of Joomla! with Drupal configurability

Joopal permits you to use your traditional Drupal blocks anywhere a Joomla! module can do and also allows you to integrate Drupal's modules as if they were a normal Joomla! component. This permits your Joomla! site to pick and choose the features and functionality you need against two of the world's most popular content management systems!

Development Evolved

Joopal provides developers with the power of the Joomla! Web Application Framework as well as Drupal 6's many interfaces. Joopal allows Joomla! developers to leverage features found in Drupal and allows Drupal developers to discover the joys of objects. For Drupal developers, objects are a recently added to PHP in version 3 that permit encapsulation of your data and providing tools to permit the removal of globals from your code.

But it doesn't stop there! In addition to creating object orientated versions of the Drupal Core in addition to the function/global system, you can seemlessly use Joomla!'s Framework complete with on demand autoloading objects.  With two popular frameworks behind you, there is no way you can go wrong!

Getting Involved

Like Joomla!, Joopal is a community driven project and we need you to help us out! Joopal needs Drupal testers to help port their components and reveal issues with the system. Joopal also welcomes any developers wanting to fix issues and improve Joopal by submitting patches or even working in a more dedicated role. With Joopal and your involvement, anything is possible! So what are you waiting for, sign up the the Joomla! Development General mailing list and start working on Joopal today!

Follow Sam Moffatt on Twitter.

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Registering your Joomla! User Group

Written by Michelle Bisson

Registering your Joomla! User Group gives your JUG some special privileges such as:

• Using the "Joomla" name in your JUG
• Being listed on our Registered Joomla! User Groups page on the Joomla Community site.
• Announcing your meetings on our Joomla! User Groups Calendar.
• Networking with other Registered JUG Contacts on our JUG Contact mailing list

If you are interested in registering your Joomla! User Group, here are a few items that you can do to prepare yourself as it will help us with processing your JUG once you apply.

1. Read our FAQ as it answers the common questions about registering your JUG.

2. Register your domain name with OSM if it has the name "joomla" in it.

3. Verify if all the Joomla! logos that you currently have published on your site are compliant with our Trademarks. Please read our Logo Usage and Brand Guide

4.  Verify that your JUG follows the standard naming policy. Please take note of, "Is there a special naming structure for Joomla! User Groups?".

Please welcome with me all the new Joomla! User Groups that been registered the last few months.  You can find a link to their web Site and contact information on our Registered Joomla! User Group Listing page.

Joomla! User Association Deutschland
Joomla! User Association Finland
Joomla! User Association Norway (Foreningen Joomla! i Norge)
Joomla! User Group Albuquerque, NM
Joomla! User Group Austin
Joomla! User Group Bay Area
Joomla! User Group Central Coast
Joomla! User Group East Africa
Joomla! User Group Greater Los Angeles
Joomla! User Group Greater Seattle
Joomla! User Group Humboldt
Joomla! User Group Indonesia
Joomla! User Group Italy
Joomla! User Group LA Westside-Santa Monica
Joomla! User Group Lithuania
Joomla! User Group London
Joomla! User Group Milwaukee II
Joomla! User Group Mongolia
Joomla! User Group MPPRE Venezuela
Joomla! User Group New York City
Joomla! User Group Nicaragua
Joomla! User Group Norwich
Joomla! User Group Puerto Rico
Joomla! User Group Pune
Joomla! User Group Senegal
Joomla! User Group Southeastern Michigan
Joomla! User Group South Florida
Joomla! User Group Sri Lanka
Joomla! User Group Upper Midwest


 

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Joomla! at the PHP Quebec Conference 2009

Written by Michelle Bisson

Get Further with PHP
March 4-6, 2009 / Montreal, Canada

This is an invitation to meet me, Michelle Bisson, at the PHP Quebec 2009 Conference as I will be a guest speaker.
I will be speaking at 11:00 Wednesday, March 4th, 2009.

Come and network with others who are are interested in learning about Joomla.

Conference Topic:

Joomla! Web Site Development in a Few Easy Clicks

Joomla! is used and loved by millions to build web sites from simple web sites to corporate web sites. Learn the basics of using Joomla! with this step by step walk through demonstration of creating your first Joomla web site.

• Page Creation (simple layout and blog layout)
• Menu Navigation system
• Working with modules

http://conf.phpquebec.com/en

Conference Location:
Hilton Montreal Hotel
900 Gauchetiere West St.
Montreal, Canada

Google Map >>

Joomla! Booth:

As well, PHP Quebec 2009 was kind enough to allow us to present Joomla! at their Job Fair even though Joomla is not hiring.  Do stop by at our booth to ask me a few questions about Joomla! 

Starting at 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 5th, 2009

As well, do look for me between sessions.  I look forward to meeting you.

- Michelle Bisson, Joomla! Core Team Member

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Learn together on Joomla events

Written by Alex Kempkens

The year 2009 just began and it is really great to see how many people pick-up the idea to organize a Joomla!Day in their region or support a regional conference. With that they contribute to the project and helping others to learn more about the project or the services related to it. As the Joomla 1.0 series will come to an end mid 2009 we will support all Joomla!Days to offer sessions about the migration towards 1.5. The Joomla User Groups are talking about the topics in their regular meetings and during the conferences people are available for 1 to 1 talks. It is great to see the events and JUG calendars are filling up.

Some of you come to us and ask about how to start an event in a region or if it is ok that you present Joomla on a regional conference. Actually both is great and quite easy to start with. The first step should be that you get in touch with the events team and sign up to become what we call an "event organizers". The events mentoring team will guide you through the process and within all the organizers you can find new ideas and help if needed. More detailed information can be found on our wiki page as well as in the events forum.

Joomla! @ Expos and Conferences

The Thailand Internet Expo 2009 was the first conference in 2009 Joomla attended. On the last weekend members of the Thail community answered questions and presented the latest information about the project to the attendees of the conference. Akarawuth Tamrareang (aka JoomlaCorner) presented Joomla in a seminar that was pretty crowdy. Check out the pictures to see what was going on.

The upcoming weekend Joomla will have a stand at the FOSDEM 2009. The conference is one of the most important Open Source Conferences in Europe and it always gets alot of geeks and interested people together. On the stand may people from the European Community will be available to answer your questions about the project and of course we will make sure that we can also present some of the upcoming features in the Joomla version 1.6.

A small outlook what the various communities around the world will support in the next few month. Most of those events will have either speakers or a stand on which you can meet with Joomla community and team members. For example you can visit the PHP Quebec Conference in March to listen to a speach from Michelle Bisson, or join in at the SXSW in Austin, Texas and talk with Arno Zijlstra about a very interesting project he is going to present during this event. In Europe Joomla will be presented on the Linux Tage Chemnitz. The team on site is looking for volonteers still and if you have a chance to be around it would be great to support them.

Joomla!Days

The season for Joomla!Days started as well. Next weekend you can meet with development coordinators and team members in Melbourne. The latest news about the project development as well as presentations around the migration to 1.5 will give you a great inside of what is going on in the Joomla-sphere.

In March the European community meets in the United Kingdom at the Joomla!Day UK 2009. The first J!Day in Europe for 2009 will be pretty interesting as the development of Joomla 1.6 will move on and the first results of the opening of the development mailing lists can be seen. Also the migration of Joomla 1.0 websites will become more and more important as the EOL will get closer. Many sessions with high profile speakers are already in preparation for this event.

The registration is already open and the agenda for the Joomla!Day Las Vegas is already forming. Many speakers from the development and community teams are offering various presentations and talks about Joomla. Based on the conference concept it is up to you what will be presented and which information you get. So make sure you register to the event and take part on the process to give an initial idea what you like tohear during these days in Las Vegas.

After Europe and USA Joomla comes back to Asia and the first Joomla!Day in India end of April 2009. The regional community is forming their team and event at the moment. If you have suggestions or contributions please join in the discussions and support the event there. The same goes for the Joomla!Day New England that is planed for end of May 2009. Please support your regional organizers with suggestions, feedback and help with the organization. Many more Joomla!Days are already in preparations for 2009 and we are going to keep you informed about their progress here on the site.

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JED gets more power.

Written by Brad Baker

In an effort to mitigate the recent JED downtime (over the last few days) we've just completed a migration of this site to a new server. The new server has faster hard drives, as well as a higher performance processor (Quad Core).

We realize how important the JED is to the community, and have worked as hard and as fast as we could to identify and take action addressing the causes. In addition to the hardware upgrade, we also discovered what appeared to be a DDOS attack that was also contributing to the issues. Many of the IP's identified and blocked were most likely ordinary computers, their owners unaware they were being used to this end.

In any case, thanks for your patience, and for now we hope things will return back to normal. Special thanks to Ben and Chris from Rochen who have both worked around the clock, staying up late to sort some of these things out.

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