July 2008

Welcome to the Joomla! Community Magazine

5,000,000...300,000...200,000 ...15,000

Written by Louis Landry

Recently, there have been amazing numbers popping up at Joomla!. The 5,000,000th copy of Joomla! was downloaded from JoomlaCode (which launched March 14, 2007). The 300,000th Joomla! Forum thread was created. We are very close to welcoming our 200,000th forum member.

These are very encouraging signs that Joomla! is useful to people all around the world.

It goes without saying that Joomla! is only possible because of the Joomla! community. The community's willingness to help is exemplified by Robin Muilwijk, aka RobInk, who recently posted his 15,000th helpful response in the Joomla! forums.

Thank you, Robin!

Considering it hasn't been six months since Joomla! 1.5 was released, one wonders where this talented, growing, enthusiastic community of end users, Web site integrators, and developers from all over the world will lead.

International Community

Each month, the magazine will feature Joomla! communities from around the world. Akarawuth Tamrareang begins this series with his article entitled Open Source CMS in Thailand.

Joomla! 1.5 was created with our international community in mind. Localization support is built into the core code to make translations easier. Already, community translators have made Joomla! 1.5 available in many languages so that those who speak these languages can more easily build and administer Joomla! Web sites. If you are interested in translating Joomla! into your language, get involved and make a positive difference.

Joomla! 1.5 is designed in such a way that it is also easy to build multilingual support into third party extensions. The Learning section of this month's magazine contains an article entitled Localization Advancements in Joomla! 1.5 by József Tamás Herczeg which addresses these issues. We encourage third party developers to add this functionality in support our diverse community.

The cool thing about free, as in liberty, software is empowerment. If you use a Joomla! 1.5 GPL extension that does not have multilingual support, consider adding it and share your improvements with the developer. If an extension you use already has this capability but there is no support for your language, then why not create a language pack and share it with the developer for distribution? Those types of contributions matter because it makes Joomla! useful to more and more people.

Become a Joomla! contributor

5,000,000 downloads, 300,000 threads, 200,000 members, and 15,000 posts from just one contributor are cause for celebration. The Joomla! community is working hard and making a positive difference in the world. And while this growth is exciting, it is also intimidating to recognize that a growing community of this size requires the support of hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers.

Most of us will never answer 15,000 questions in the forums like Robin, or nurture a growing community, like Akarawuth, or develop deep expertise in localization issues, like József. But, each of us can make important contributions. If you would like to become more involved in the project, here are some easy ways to get started:

• Answer questions in the forums.
• Pick a task from the Documentation Cookie Jar.
• Translate
• Create and share a GPL'ed extension.
• Report bugs to the tracker, submit patches, or join the Joomla! Bug Squad.
• Start a local Joomla! Users Group.
• Participate with community events, like the recent Pizza, Bugs and Fun event.
• Organize, help with or attend a Joomla! Days event.
• Support Joomla! with a small portion of what you earn using Joomla!.
• Buy something from the Joomla! Shop.
• Vote for Joomla! when the PackT nominations begin July 14.

You don't have to be a developer to be a Joomla! contributor. Whatever your skills, time, finances, and interests are, you can give something back. In doing so, you join a long list of respected contributors, each of whom we thank for making Joomla! better.

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