We publish here the chat log from our last "Ask The Joomla Team" Session.

Next Session will be happen on 2nd June 2010 4 UTC with Brad Baker and Ron Severdia.

How Can You Join Ask the Joomla Team

You can meet us in the #joomla-ask-the-team chat room on irc.freenode.net

One very easy way to join is to visit this link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#joomla-ask-the-team

Chat log

[16:01] <Mark_Dexter> Is this the time for the Ask the Team?
[16:02] <alledia> I believe so
[16:03] <Little^John> Oui
[16:05] <Mark_Dexter> Well, it looks like we have a small group today.
[16:05] <Mark_Dexter> I guess we can get started.
[16:05] <alledia> I think the time was confusing on joomla.org
[16:07] <VectorX> i heard there was free coffee in here
[16:07] <Mark_Dexter> Well, maybe we should get started.
[16:07] <alledia> Any questions from those here already?
[16:08] <VectorX> where is the coffee ?
[16:09] <Mark_Dexter> http://scienceblogs.com/retrospectacle/upload/2007/08/coffee%20poster.bmp
[16:09] <Little^John> haha
[16:10] <Little^John> So, even though we are a small group it might be interesting.
[16:10] <Little^John> I havent heard much of your names before. What are your areas (of expertise and joomla)..?
[16:10] <Mark_Dexter> My name is Mark Dexter (hence the clever IRC name!)
[16:11] <Mark_Dexter> I am a Development Coordinator and one of the Bug Squad coordinators
[16:11] <alledia> I'm on the Open Source Matters board
[16:12] <alledia> You'll probably see me on a good % of blog posts on joomla.org
[16:13] <Little^John> Being a development coordinator you must know the status of 1.6..? :P
[16:13] <Mark_Dexter> Yes
[16:13] <Mark_Dexter> We are between beta1 and beta2 at this point.
[16:13] <Mark_Dexter> Beta2 will be out next Monday
[16:14] <Mark_Dexter> we will continue to release beta versions every 2 weeks until we are ready for a release candidate
[16:14] <Little^John> Okay
[16:14] <Little^John> Thats news to me. Very nice. :)
[16:14] <mlipscomb> Beta2 comes out May 31, correct?
[16:15] <Little^John> mlipscomb, next monday = may 31th
[16:15] <Mark_Dexter> yes. and then beta3 on  june 14 and so on
[16:15] <Mark_Dexter> until we have all of the important known issues fixed
[16:15] <Mark_Dexter> and then we release the release candidate 1
[16:17] <Little^John> Steve/ alledia, you are into the joomladays/expo's, right? How is business' looking towards joomla? (my thought is if more support from companies = more development power?)
[16:18] <alledia> Yes, I've been to a few lately
[16:18] <alledia> People are asking for us to put more power behind the brand.
[16:18] <alledia> For example, when they go to meet a client, they want a lot of high-profile Joomla site examples to give their bid credibility
[16:19] <Little^John> Oh
[16:20] <alledia> As far as where we stand ... this is just my opinion, but I see that we've got a lot of the mid-level businesses, whereas Wordpress has more of the one-person projects and Drupal more of the enterprise currently
[16:20] <alledia> A lot of Joomla companies want help going after more enterprise-level work
[16:21] <Little^John> Okay
[16:21] <Little^John> What do you think of them? Would those companies want to exploit joomla (for commercial purposes) only, rather than join in and develop along the way...?
[16:22] <VectorX> on the introduction to joomla page somewhere/ it says joomla is targetted from mid-level to small business sites, so has this changed now with 1.6 ?
[16:22] <alledia> Not yet :) But we hope it will start to when 1.6 is stable
[16:22] <Mark_Dexter> I haven't seen that. There are many large sites running Joomla.
[16:23] <VectorX> im trying to find where i saw it
[16:23] <Little^John> Maybe its a bit off, but what defines "small", "mid-sizes" and "large" sites/companies? :)
[16:23] <Mark_Dexter> well, of course, that is always subject to interpretation
[16:24] <alledia> True, those labels start to breakdown at some point
[16:25] <Mark_Dexter> Little John, what is your connection to Joomla?
[16:26] <Little^John> Tried out J1.5 in jan/feb as we are going to use it at work for medium site. Became contributor to Kunena after a short while and developing needed modules/components at this point
[16:27] <Little^John> Shared business/private entusiasm
[16:27] <Mark_Dexter> Thanks. How do you see Joomla! in the marketplace at this point?
[16:27] <Little^John> Uhm... gotta think about that first
[16:27] <Mark_Dexter> lol
[16:28] <Mark_Dexter> not trying to put you on the spot
[16:28] <benhu> hola
[16:28] <Little^John> Thats allright. Interesting question. Just havent really thought about that :)
[16:30] <Little^John> Mark_Dexter, I think its maturing. From what I can read about the past of Joomla, it has lacked new core features (releases) which I think is important for companies as it gives a sense of "awareness"
[16:31] <Mark_Dexter> Yes. This is why we are very excited about the new release cycle strategy.
[16:31] <Mark_Dexter> Our plan is to have new releases twice a year.
[16:32] <Mark_Dexter> So, for example, version 1.7 is planned to release approximately 6 months after the 1.6 production release.
[16:32] <Mark_Dexter> and 1.8 six months after that.
[16:32] <Little^John> Yeah (forgive me for forgetting the name, but a guy last wednesday spoke about new release style) :P
[16:32] <Mark_Dexter> probably Louis
[16:32] <Little^John> Yes!
[16:32] <Mark_Dexter> Louis Landry
[16:33] <Little^John> Heh, all these names ... ;)
[16:34] <Little^John> About releases.. I really wouldnt want to overdo releases. See redhat with their Fedora linux. Its good for the desktop as it comes often (with new features), but in the long run business' wont afford that. They want something that lasts
[16:35] <Little^John> I think thats why debian stable and rhel is more used in companies
[16:36] <alledia> From dealing with a lot of inexperienced users as a trainer, updates can be really intimidating
[16:36] <Mark_Dexter> yes, we have to strike a balance
[16:36] <alledia> I guess each project needs to find that balance between keeping the novices and the developers happy
[16:36] <Mark_Dexter> We will try to make it very easy to migrate from 1.6 to 1.7, for example.
[16:36] <Little^John> Exactly. If Joomla can cope with 2 yearly releases and a good support in the long run, I think its very perfect for larger business'.
[16:37] <Little^John> But thats of course just my personal view :)
[16:37] <Mark_Dexter> Well, we will of course be learning as we go along.
[16:37] <Little^John> alledia, yeah.
[16:37] <Mark_Dexter> And if 2 per year is too often, we can adjust
[16:38] <Mark_Dexter> But I think we all agree that 3 years is just a bit too long ....
[16:38] <Little^John> Yeah! Waaaaay too long ;)
[16:38] <Mark_Dexter> But Steve is exactly right.
[16:38] <Mark_Dexter> We have to make developers feel like their code is going to get released
[16:40] <Little^John> Have you considered the possiblity of making the core even smaller? Like a very very basic application, handing out more stuff as components? (longer lifetime for the core than for the surrounding extensions)
[16:40] <Mark_Dexter> Yes.
[16:41] <Mark_Dexter> We have also considered releasing just a framework
[16:42] <Little^John> Sounds interesting
[16:42] <Little^John> How would/could that work?
[16:43] <Mark_Dexter> well, the framework would be similar to other frameworks. it would just be the libraries without the cms.
[16:43] <Little^John> Steve, do you have much work in OSM?
[16:44] <alledia> Quite a lot of communications at the moment
[16:44] <alledia> We're really ramping up our blogging about major sites using Joomla ... look for dozens more examples in the next few weeks
[16:45] <alledia> Beside that OSM is really making sure the legal and financial stuff is taken care of so Mark and the developers don't have to worry
[16:46] <Mark_Dexter> Yes, and many thanks for that.
[16:46] <alledia> OSM's job is basically to carry the load of what the developers don't want to do, so that they can just code
[16:46] <Little^John> haha, sounds like a boring job..? ;)
[16:47] <Mark_Dexter> Well, it is extremely important
[16:47] <alledia> boring volunteer work ;)
[16:47] <Mark_Dexter> and we are very fortunate to have people who are willing to do it and who do such a great job.
[16:47] <Little^John> Very true Mark
[16:47] <Mark_Dexter> There are many unsung heroes in the world of Joomla!
[16:49] <VectorX> i develop extensions, so the change from 1.5 to 1.6 is rather annoying to me though it is for the best, what is the framwork impact between the major releases to come
[16:49] <Mark_Dexter> Well, we are changing the development strategy going forward.
[16:50] <Mark_Dexter> So, for example, there should be much less to change between 1.6 and 1.7 than between 1.5 and 1.6.
[16:50] <VectorX> but change will still be needed ?
[16:50] <Mark_Dexter> Version 1.7 will be an incremental change, not a major huge change.
[16:50] <Mark_Dexter> It is quite possible that no extension changes will be needed for 1.7.
[16:51] <Mark_Dexter> We obviously don't know for sure at this point.
[16:51] <VectorX> ok, coz if you are going to keep changing the framwork between 1.x releases that would be very annoying
[16:51] <VectorX> specially since its every 6 months
[16:51] <Mark_Dexter> I agree 100%.
[16:51] <Mark_Dexter> it wouldn't make any sense
[16:52] <Mark_Dexter> part of what happens when the release cycle is too long is that there are a lot of major changes that hit all at one time
[16:52] <Mark_Dexter> with a shorter release cycle, each release is a smaller change
[16:53] <VectorX> true, but the current change is more like 1.5 -> 2.0
[16:53] <Mark_Dexter> yes
[16:53] <VectorX> from a point where i have to change more than 50% of a component for it to work with 1.6
[16:53] <Mark_Dexter> not as bad, but it is a big change
[16:54] <VectorX> with ofcourse stuff like acl taken into account
[16:54] <Mark_Dexter> yes, the acl and nested categories are big changes
[16:55] <VectorX> so from a external developer point of view i think its a important question of the impact of each of the releases you have mentioned so far / which you just answered
[16:56] <Little^John> alledia, what are your oppinion on the Joomla project from a non developers view (strength / weakness / etc)?
[16:57] <alledia> To me, even Wordpress, which is meant to be the "easiest" option, is still confusing for many non-developers
[16:57] <alledia> I'd love the next version of Joomla to have a huge focus on usability and simplicity
[16:59] <Mark_Dexter> We have a usability project going for the Joomla! Student Outreach Program this summer.
[16:59] <Mark_Dexter> It will be very interesting to see what they come up with.
[17:00] <Little^John> Cool
[17:01] <alledia> I suspect we'll see a lot of interesting admin templates coming out for 1.6
[17:02] <VectorX> yeah definitely better training would help probably in the forms of quick videos
[17:03] <VectorX> like what do you want to do, here is how to do it, here is the result
[17:03] <VectorX> like 1 or 2 min clips
[17:03] <Little^John> One last question .. Will templates be part of joomla.org at some point?
[17:03] <alledia> A template directory like the extensions directory?
[17:04] <Little^John> Perhaps
[17:06] <Little^John> That would certainly be a nice thing. 'Official templates'
[17:07] <Little^John> The time is 11pm here. I guess that was it for this time?
[17:08] <alledia> It's definitely been considered. If template devs pushed, I'm sure it might well get done
[17:10] <alledia> Yes, we ran over a little in time
[17:12] <Little^John> Thanks a lot Mark & Steve. Im sure many more people will enjoy the log later on even though we werent many here today :)
[17:12] <VectorX> and thanks for the coffee
[17:13] <Mark_Dexter> Thanks everyone.
[17:13] <AmyStephen> thanks mark and steve!
[17:14] <alledia> Thanks all!