Open Source Matters and the Community Leadership Team are pleased to announce that CloudAccess.net has been selected to manage the Joomla! Demo Site.

We were particularly impressed with Cloud Access’ embrace of the goal to “Provide users who are considering the Joomla!® content management system with a simple and reliable way to try out its major features.” Their team has excellent knowledge of  Joomla! and will ensure that new users have sites that are set up optimally in terms of file ownership and other issues.

Their cloud-based solution will let new users have a thirty day account that they can manage completely and use to build a working Joomla! site. Users will be able to easily move their sites to their own hosts or, if they wish, can sign up with Cloud Access as a host. This approach will eliminate some of the issues created with a multiuser demonstration site (such as content being scrubbed every hour and the inability to control changes by other people).

Although of secondary importance, financially, the Joomla! Project will benefit from royalties on any users who sign up for professional hosting at Cloud Access.

Gary Brooks of Cloud Access is active in the Joomla! community, including serving as an member of the Joomla! Resources Directory team. Gary said “We love working with Joomla! for our customers, and we think it will only become more powerful and popular with 1.6 and beyond. This is a great opportunity for our company to help Joomla! grow even further.”

We thank all of those companies that responded to the request for proposals for their efforts. It is great to have such a large number of  hosts that are enthusiastic about working with the Joomla! project.