Hi everybody,

We're almost at the end of GSOC 09.And its been the most wonderful experience.Its had its highs and lows for me.But has been the best.

Althogut I feel that I did underestimate the size of the project at the beginning of the program, I was able to push it and somehow achieve a component of some good value.

Today I present to you Joomla! Groups.As of now it is a working basic grouping component with basic features.But i'm sure that I can extend it in the future.

Let me brief you the list of features

Creating groups with different access level.

Group pages/articles.

And a group forum.

To be more specific,

A group consists of an owner who created the group itself.He sets the group to be either a public group or a private one.Also the group description , a group category which will serve for future development purposes.A published or unpublished option which would act as way of disabling groups to the administrator.

We also have the Group Template and Group Language.As such they are specific to the All of Group's pages,including the Forum and Articles.As for the languages,It has yet to be extended to all the pages, but for now works for the Group Home Page.Of course the Language and the Template are limited to the ones installed by the Admin .But they could be extended sometime.

Each group has a Home Page,which gives the group decription as well as it displays the Group Pages, i.e depending upon if the group is Public or Private.

If a user is trying to view a private group,he will be denied the permission to do so unless he is a member.

When a person visits a Group which he is not a member,he will be greeted with a "Join Group" button.

For a public group,the person is made a member of the group.

For a private group a request is submitted to the owner,which will be either Accepted or Denied and a corresponding mail will  be sent out.

Next the group pages,

A group member can Create new page and save it.It is similar to a Joomla! article,but property of that group.

He is accordingly provided the option to Delete/Edit his pages,when in the Pages List.

Forum,

As such each group has its own forum.Which is pretty mcuh self explanatory.

Also present is a User Page,which lists his groups and Operation such as Unjoin.

A group configuration/edit page for the owner.

Approve users to a private group.

Issues/Bugs:

Major:

User is getting logged out when he visits a Group Home page.

Fix:Yet to resolved.

Temporary Fix:Use "Remember Me" option.

Minor:

A large number of views in the frontend,which tends to confuse while creating a New Menu.

Basically three views are of importance while creating a menu.

1)View Groups---->Groups>>Default

2)Create Group--->Groups>>Form

3)User Group Page(lists user's groups)--->User>>Default

Other than that,I haven't run into any.Maybe the community will when they do try it :)

However,I do feel the need of more features and will soon add to it.GSOC maybe over,but this is something I gave my heart to.

I will continue to make it better with each day.

Please do let me know your thoughts.