In the event you've actually been following along, this is the final installment (here's part one and part two) of the blow-by-blow process of how the new Joomla.org redesign came about. Well, I wouldn't say that it's really a blow-by-blow because that level of detail would be so eternally boring you never would have gotten this far (and this would be an epic collection of episodes). So congrats on keeping your attention span on my dreary narrative until this point.

Once there was a consensus on design, we began implementation. I started working with htmlBlender to slice up the PSD into a basic XHTML/CSS template (as fans of Joomla, they graciously donated their services). Then we converted it to a Joomla template, using placeholders for functionality which hadn't been built yet. We built a sandbox to start testing on which had been migrated to Joomla 1.5.

Once a functioning prototype was built, we performed a round of usability testing. At the risk of sounding didactic, the Task Analysis Protocol is a script of activities for users to perform. For example, an item on the list was "Starting from the home page, find the technical requirements for Joomla" or "What's the best place to find help?" Running through those questions while observing users gives great initial feedback on nomenclature and the ability to intuitively perform a variety of tasks. 

Information from usability tests is compiled into concept groupings to show how users overall are interacting with the site. From those groupings, we can develop a "Mental Model" to answer a multitude of other questions, like how different types of users solve the same problem. This can obviously go very deep into the world of user experience—far deeper than what is appropriate for Joomla. But all this information has an influence, large or small, on the visual and interaction design.

Once all the refinements were complete, we created a launch plan for the site. The first priority was the main Joomla site and then a rollout to the other "family" of Joomla sites, as outlined in the launch announcement. The final work on getting the site ready for the launch was done in about a week by a small internal team. Once the rollout is complete, we will go back and conduct another round of usability testing, evaluating if each section is accomplishing what it was set out to do, and then refine based on our new findings.

Some have inquired about the extensions used on the various sections. You'll be pleased to know that most of what you see can be done with Joomla straight out of the box. Here's a list of the extensions used:

Joomla Main at www.joomla.org - Standard installation, with a custom feed module to pull feeds from other sections, custom redirect component to handle legacy URLs

Joomla Shop at shop.joomla.org - Standard installation

Joomla Demo at demo.joomla.org - Special installation for demo purposes, resets content and accounts on a regular basis.

Joomla Community Portal at community.joomla.org - Standard installation with JX Comments, JX Magazine, gCalendar (JoomlaConnect uses a custom component that aggregates feeds)

Joomla Developer Network at developer.joomla.org - Standard installation with JX Comments

Joomla Extensions Directory at extensions.joomla.org - Standard installation with Mosets Tree

Joomla Discussion Forums at forum.joomla.org - Standard installation of phpBB3 (no bridge)

Joomla Documentation Wiki at docs.joomla.org - Standard installation of MediaWiki

That's about it for the walkthrough. There's a lot more work to be done in getting the other sites converted to the new look. Please feel free to leave your comments here or ask questions in our Sites & Infrastucture forum.