Joomla! Developer Site

The Joomla project is pleased to announce the immediate release of Joomla 1.6 alpha 2. This release contains many new features requested by the community; most notably, ACL. Other features are listed below as well as what you can expect in the future for Joomla 1.6.

This is an alpha release. It is intended to be a developer/hobbyist preview and is not intended to be used on a production web site.

New improvements/features since alpha 1 include:

• ACL: access management for global permissions as well as content item specific permissions, variable usergroups, users member of more than one usergroup, permissions are inherited, really fast
• Extendable user profile, profile view in frontend, extendable user parameters
• Tableless com_content layouts
• Improved com_content modules (mod_articles_archive, mod_articles_latest, mod_articles_popular)
• Article linker plugin for editors
• New frontend template (atomic)
• New backend template (bluestork)
• New uploader for media manager

Other Joomla 1.6 improvements that existed in alpha 1:

• Mootools 1.2
• Refactored backend
• JForm
• Nested Categories and category parameters
• New views in frontend: categories, category
• Lots of small code improvements, almost cut the code size in half while adding to the functionality
• PHP 5.2 required, huge performance improvements, partially eaten up by new features => 1.6 will be faster than 1.5

What's next?

After alpha 2, the Joomla community can expect a beta release. There are no intentions for a 3rd alpha release.

You can also expect to see the following future improvements:

• Commenting solution is going to be added
• Additional DB drivers
• Lots of small performance/UI/code improvements

We would like to thank all those involved...

On January 25th we reported back from the development coordinator summit. A lot of people noticed that we created three new development-related, publicly-accessible mailing lists for the Joomla development community. The most important reason for us to open up in this way is to attract more developers and enable them to help out with core development. As it is very tempting to start providing us with all kinds of patches, we wanted to explain what it takes to submit a feature patch. Before you fire any questions at us, please make sure you read the full article and also the link to the feature patch policy document.

Bug Fixes vs Feature Patches

What's the difference between a bug fix and a feature patch?

Bug-fix patches have been accepted for more than a year now via the Joomla Bug Squad and serve to fix issues with existing features and systems.  These patches can be attached to the Joomla 1.5 bug tracker when you submit a problem.  For more information see the Reporting Bugs policy.

Feature patches, on the other hand, are for adding or changing functionality to any Joomla version (note submissions for 1.0 will not be accepted due to the approaching end-of-life for that version).  Feature patches could be as significant as whole extensions (like a Comments component), or they could be as...

2008 was certainly a big year with the release of 1.5 in January. I think this has been one of our most successful and ground breaking releases (comparable to Mambo 4.5.1 which really pushed us to a new level back in the good old days). A new stability release will come out this month marking 1.5's first year of life. But what's in store for 2009? Well, just as 1.5 up'd the standard compared to 1.0, we believe 1.6 is going to do continue the trend.

Joomla will hold it's first Developer Coordinator Summit in Australia this month. Anthony, Louis, Sam, Wilco and I are going to be thrashing out the details for finalising the feature list for the final release, and if we are lucky we might even be close to cutting our first alpha after the event (providing we haven't been spending too much time playing cards or chasing kangaroos).

Notwithstanding that there is some other really cool work going on, 1.6 is about two main new features. The first is a that we've completely rebuilt the way extensions are stored in the database and this will ultimately make it easier for developers to make multi-installable packages. I'll let Sam blog about this more at another time.

The other feature is giving Joomla a fully feldged Access Control System. In November and December last year the work on this progressed a long way. A new Access Control component in the Administrator (under...

Over the past three years, Joomla! development has evolved. During the split from the Mambo project the Joomla! Core Team was fully responsible for overall development. As the project grew, the Core Team realized that additional structures where required to organize everything around the Joomla! project. Mid-2006, the Joomla! Core Team changed from a "developers only" team into a team that had coordinators for several focused areas. One of the roles was the role of "Development Coordinator." I was the first Development Coordinator within the Joomla! project and we only had general ideas on how this role should be fulfilled. The role has changed over time, and is still changing as the project evolves.

In August 2007, we drafted a plan to work on a final version of Joomla! 1.5. Being able to work on maintenance releases was key for releasing a stable version of Joomla! 1.5. After the split the development team worked on maintenance versions for Joomla! 1.0 and a full refactoring for Joomla! 1.5, but until then we never had released a new major version. The development team was simply too small, and with the focus on creating new logic we decided to create a new team with maintenance as their main responsibility. The Bug Squad has also evolved from a relative small and unstructured team, into a large group of active people that is very well organized (see the Joomla! maintenance procedures if you are interested how things...

As most of you know, a critical security vulnerability affecting all Joomla versions below (and including) 1.5.5 was discovered on Tuesday, August 12th 2008.  What most of you don't know, is what went on behind the scenes that day.  A whole mass of people came together and immediately worked on all the tasks necessary to make 1.5.6 happen.   Experiencing this first hand was quite amazing...  Publishing a release is a process that normally has two weeks (and a team of people) devoted to it (for everything from selecting which remaining artifacts will be fixed, to translations, to clicking publish and everything in-between).  This all happened in a VERY short time.

Here's an abridged breakdown of how 1.5.6 came to be...

15:50 EST

Bug Squad member Marijke Stuivenberg points the squad to a reported vulnerability in Joomla 1.5.5.

15:55 EST

Bug Squad members Jennifer Mariott, Elin Waring, and Marijke (along with development coordinator Wilco Jansen, OSM Vice President Rob Schley and myself) verify that the vulnerability exists and the report is valid.

15:56 EST

All available development Work Group members, Bug Squad members and Core Team members are notified of the issue.

Bug Squad confirms that 1.5's SVN is stable and is ready for immediate release pending vulnerability fix.

Forum moderators are informed of and asked to remove references of this issue until release.

16:05 EST

Patch is generated and provided to Bug Squad for testing/confirmation of fix.

16:20 EST

Patch is confirmed to fix vulnerability.

Front page announcement is drafted.

16:30 EST

Patch is committed into SVN along with all...

A List Apart is calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.

I encourage all Joomla! professionals to take the survey. The results from last year are also available.

...

Many community members have pointed out an error in 1.5.4 with duplicate titles. This issue affects both content and contact views (article layout, and contact detail layout to be specific). We are aware of the problem and are working on a clean, simple way to rectify it. The plan is to fix this issue and release 1.5.5 in the coming weeks. Until then, you can use a layout override in the template to bypass the issue.

The reason for the issue

Since the days of Joomla! 1.5 RC 3, Joomla! has dealt with page titles inconsistently. Some components dealt with it one way, while others did another. At times the parameters were ignored completely. This created several issues, some of which impact SEO, all of which were frustrating. In 1.5.4, we changed all the page titles to behave in a smooth, consistent manner across the entire system. This is a huge step forward, as it really starts to unify the behavior and make Joomla! much more consistent and predictable to administrate.

Our testing process had multiple people testing these patches to make sure it wouldn't break anything. But, we missed the duplicate title issue when testing. The squad has already started talking about how to ensure this doesn't happen again. We recognize this duplicate page title problem and are working on rectifying it, as soon as possible.

Using layout overrides to fix it

A member of the community (Tibor Tóth) actually found an excellent...

So close to the holiday season, and so many people helped out during the second Pizza Bug and Fun event. Let me start by thanking all contributers that helped out during both weekends, we solved numerous issues and also some documentation was written. Best of  all is that Airton Torres, Arno Zijlstra, Ben Cessa, Esban Bahnsen, James Anastasios, Jeetu Kataria, Omar Ramos, Robin Muilwijk, and Witchakorn Kamolpornwijit joined the Bug Squad and that is simply mind blowing!

During this PBF event we saw more people joining in remotely this time. There where also venues reserved by people. Italy (Ravanna), United Stated (New York, Atlanta and New Orleans), Netherlands (Wijhe), Canada (Vancouver) and Australia (Sydney) where some of the locations that joined in. As with the previous PBF event collaborating with so many people remotely still amazes me. This cannot be done without proper preparations, and for that I want to thank the Pizza Couriers for the very good work on the preparations.

All of this has lead to another stable release. The newest Joomla! version 1.5 will be named Naiki (version 1.5.4) and could not be released that fast without the help of all volunteers of the second PBF event! Keep an close eye on the announcements on the website, this version is around the corner :-D ...

We're very close to the second Pizza, Bugs and Fun (PBF) event. As you might have noticed, we have extended the PBF event for a second weekend and now have participants from almost every continent. If you are able to join us at one of these venues, we would love to have you. If you can't come to a venue but you still want to help, you can just sign in from your location.

1. Sign on to the IRC channel (#joomlapbf on freenode) and introduce yourself to the others. Never used IRC? Learn more here and here.
2. Join in the discussion and get to know everyone. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! At any point, if you have questions, this is where to ask!
3. If you plan to help with testing bugs or creating patches, register on JoomlaCode so that you can add comments to the artifacts.
4. You also...

Some will think "Why should I participate in the Pizza, Bugs and Fun event? Why not just let others fix bugs and write documentation for Joomla!?" After all, you likely have too many responsibilities in life, as it is. Perhaps you don't see yourself as someone who has the kind of talent needed to help the Joomla! project. Maybe you really would like to help, but you have no idea how to get started. If you are thinking this way, you are not alone. In fact, those are typical reasons people do not participate.

Have you considered how contributing to the Joomla! project could be good for your business? Have you given any thought to the benefit that comes from networking with others who are talented Joomla! developers, site builders, and designers? The benefits from participation are very valuable, most especially for those using Joomla! commercially.

Over the next two weekends, on June 20th and 21st, and June 27th and 28th, people from all over the world will get together in homes, coffee shops, and offices. Some groups will be as small as two or three people. Others will work independently, joining this group of contributors online. Together, these people will fix bugs and work on other tasks important to the Joomla! project. Those who help finalize Joomla! 1.5.4 will directly influence that release. You can be certain that those who participate will have in mind fixes they need available for their customer base.

In an open source community, participants share that which...