Once again Joomla will be participating in the Google Summer of Code, and this year we have 8 excellent student projects that were accepted by Google on April 21, 2014. Congratulations to all the students that will be joining the Joomla Google Summer of Code project this year!

2014 Joomla project Google Summer of Code Students Accepted

www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org2/google/gsoc2014/joomla

With 39 applications submitted, it was a difficult task to narrow down the list of potential students to the final 8. Thanks to all of the Mentors and Joomla community members that helped us determine who got in. With the help of some great Joomla volunteers, we will have 2 Mentors for each student to help guide them through the process.

If you would like to keep up with the students as they progress, the Joomla Community Magazine has graciously dedicated a topic to the Google Summer of Code project again this year, and will publish blog posts of each student’s progress throughout the summer starting in May with 4 of our students.

Joomla Community Magazine Google Summer of Code Articles

http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue-apr-2014//itemlist/tag/Google%20Summer%20of%20Code

What is Google Summer of Code?

Google Summer of Code is a program designed to encourage university student participation in open source software development.

Some quick facts about the Google Summer of Code program.

• GSoC gives students an opportunity to work on real-world software development projects.
• Encourages students to get involved in Open Source projects, bringing new developers into our ecosystem.
• Students gain new skills and make new contacts in the Open Source community.
• Allows students to work with mentors that can share experience and knowledge with them.
• Students who pass their midterm and final evaluations will be paid a stipend by Google for their work in Joomla. This year, the stipend has increased to $5500 USD for students.

Joomla and the Google Summer of Code 2014

We have set up a Google Mailing List that is open to the public, as well as a new section outlining this year’s Joomla GSoC on the Joomla Documentation website. Here’s some links for you to find out more.

Joomla GSoC 2014 Information

http://docs.joomla.org/GSOC_2014

Joomla GSoC 2014 Mailing List

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/joomla-gsoc-2014

You can find out all the information you need and more on those pages. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask a question on the Mailing List and someone will be happy to help.

As a website owner, if you could invest 30 seconds, click one button and improve the performance of your website by 10% or more, would you do it?
What if that one click also greatly improved the security of your website overall, as well as the security of your users?

This all sounds pretty great, and it is. Read on and get ready to take advantage of the Joomla! 3.3 Stable release scheduled for 30 April 2014. Get ready to Do More with Joomla!

The stable release of Joomla! CMS 3.3 is only a few weeks away, so it’s time to start planning the upgrade, as there are some significant enhancements that will improve your site.

So what do I need to know?

Joomla! CMS 3.3 Stable release is scheduled for 22 April 2014

• 3.3 will be the most stable Joomla! CMS release. Ever
• Replaces MooTools based JavaScript with jQuery equivalents
• Microdata implementation
• The release is geared to help you Do More …

We currently have several students who are participating in the GSoC Mailing List discussions and deciding on which project they want to tackle this year from the Joomla 2014 GSoC Project Ideas list. But we would really like to see as many students as possible take advantage of this great opportunity.
A few short weeks ago, Joomla was accepted into the 2014 Google Summer of Code! That makes 8 years that the Joomla project has participated as a Mentor Organization and we’re excited to take part again this year.

Deadline for 2014 Google Summer of Code Student Applications March 21, 2014 19:00 UTC

http://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?p0=1440&iso=20140321T19&msg=GSoC%20Student%20Application%20Deadline

What is Google Summer of Code?

Google Summer of Code is a program designed to encourage university student participation in open source software development.

Some quick facts about the Google Summer of Code program.

• GSoC gives students an opportunity to work on real-world software development projects.
• Encourages students to get involved in Open Source projects, bringing new developers into our ecosystem.
• Students gain new skills and make new contacts in the Open Source community.
• Allows students to work with mentors that can share experience and knowledge with them.
• Students who pass their midterm and final evaluations will be paid a stipend by Google for their work in Joomla. This year, the stipend has increased to $5500 USD for students.

Joomla and the Google Summer of Code 2014

We have set up a Google Mailing List that is open to the public, as well as a new section outlining this year’s Joomla GSoC and a Project Ideas List on the Joomla Documentation website. Here’s some links for you to find out more.

Joomla GSoC 2014 Student Signup Information
http://docs.joomla.org/GSOC_2014

Joomla GSoC 2014 Project Ideas List
http://docs.joomla.org/GSOC_2014_Project_Ideas

Joomla GSoC 2014 Mailing List
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/joomla-gsoc-2014

You can find out all the information you need and more on those pages. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask a question on the Mailing List and someone will be happy to help.

Don’t Forget! Student Application deadline is: March 21, 2014 19:00 UTC

Thanks to all the great mentors for participating in this year’s Joomla GSoC project. We’re already seeing a lot of support from this group of great volunteers and looking forward to see the progress they make with their students through the summer!

Thanks to Chad Windnagle for putting this year’s project together. The man is a machine when it comes to project management and organization. I’m happy to be under his tutelage as a co-admin for this year’s project.

- Robert Vining and the Joomla GSoC Team!

This week (Monday 10th - Friday 14th 2014) Joomla will be present at CeBIT 2014, which is the world's largest and most international computer expo in Hannover, Germany. Joomla shares a booth called “CMS Garden” together with 7 other open source content management systems. Last year the shared booth was a great success and this year we hope to continue that...

So if you happen to be at CeBIT this year, come and say hello to us at the CMS Garden booth. You'll recognize us.. we are the ones with the Joomla Tshirts!

Start today & make sure you don't miss out !

Powering approximately 4% of the web, Joomla! is one of the leading content management systems today.

As a leading hosting company, positioning yourself to support Joomla can be a great value addition to your marketing strategy without any major impact on your infrastructure outlay in terms of hardware or manpower.

The minimum requirements for Joomla are pretty standard, but there are other steps you can take to ensure that your company is providing top quality support to your Joomla customer base.

The 11th Safer Internet Day will be celebrated worldwide today, February 11, 2014.

• The theme for the day is: "Let's create a better internet together"
• It is like any other Tuesday on your calendar, but should it be?
• Just how secure is YOUR website?
• Just how safe is the information you store about your customers, clients and users?

Sadly, when it comes to security, any system can ultimately be compromised. But there are numerous small steps you can take that make the pathway to your data just a bit more difficult. Each little barrier adds up, making the task of breaking into your site just inconvenient enough for a hacker to move on to the next site instead of spending more time on yours.

Greetings to my fellow Joomla Community:

Google Summer of Code is close and fast approaching! I’m proud to say that over the last two years Joomla has had a very successful GSoC program with a great success rate of projects that have become major Joomla features or essential developer tools in libraries.

I’m personally excited to be able to coordinate the program again this year. It’s a fact though, the only way that such a program is successful is because of the wonderful volunteer efforts that go into coordinating the program and mentoring the students.

There are a few key places that we could really use some volunteer help this year: Project Management, Student Mentors (Primary and Backup), and Testers.

Google requires we have two dedicated project managers, this role doesn’t necessarily require code level experience, but good communication skills and some availability in terms of time would definitely be essential!

For our mentors we like to have two mentors per project, this gives our students a few people to bounce ideas off of, and hopefully a good chance of getting someone’s advice quickly when they have questions. Mentors work closely with the students and have a lot of influence on the project’s direction, timeline, goals, and overall success.

New this year is an idea to have some community members available for testing. One thing that is always needed are some people interested in testing our student’s project code. I’m planning to have a project schedule so testing can be done on a planned basis. This position will require very little time from a volunteer, but has a huge positive impact for quality projects and code, as well as getting input on the project from a larger community of people.

We would greatly appreciate any help that this wonderful Joomla community can offer us. Please take a moment to use the form below to send us your contact info! And, if you have any questions about the program please feel free to ask by sending me an email at: gsoc@opensourcematters.org

Visit this Link to Volunteer as a Project Manager, Mentor, or Tester

-Chad

The Marketing Working Group (MWG) is pleased to announce the addition of new team members.

The primary focus of the Marketing Working Group (MWG) is to raise awareness of the Joomla Content Management System (CMS) and Framework within the international Joomla community, as well as the general open source community.

In December we announced that we were seeking nominations from the community for new members to join the Marketing Working Group. The original article can be accessed here: http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1786-call-for-marketing-working-group-members.html

We are pleased to announce that Jess Dunbar will be leading the Marketing Working Group, which is formed of the following members:

The Joomla Events Team held a meeting on December 15, 2013. At this meeting the team discussed the goals for 2014 and also identified several areas that could be improved and potential solutions.

Attendees at this meeting were: Radek Suski, Mike Carson, Dianne Henning, Sigrid Suski, and Saurabh Shah

The new goals identified for 2014 are as follows:

1. Event organizer downloadable resource area on events website
2. Provide print ready documents, images, and banners for promoting Joomla at events
3. Increase Joomla promotion at non-Joomla 3rd party events
4. Increase number of Joomla!Day events in 2014
5. Increase the financial support for JoomlaDay™ events
6. Official Joomla Developer ConferencEvents.joomla.org website improvements

One important area identified to improve is the event submission process to make it easier for JoomlaDay organisers to get their events approved. The process itself should also be more automated to relieve the work of the volunteers approving those events. We identified that the current process is not ideal and needs to be updated. Vic Drover and his team have provided some updates on a development server for testing that is being reviewed. Radek Suski has submitted an alternative solution that uses SobiPro. Mike Carson and Saurabh Shah are going to evaluate the updated version of JCal Pro, and as an alternative, SobiPro. We would also like to upgrade the current Joomla! version to 3.2 and update the template to a more responsive and mobile friendly version.

We realise that it is extremely important to document the submission and approval process. Saurabh Shah is going to document the current process so new team members can use it to learn how to correctly execute this process.

It has been decided to review and update all articles on the Events site.

• The JoomlaDay™ logo usage guideline has to be revised and more clearly explained on the site.
• We plan to create a directory of potential Joomla! evangelists to help JoomlaDay organisers get in touch with good, international speakers.
• We would like to create a resources directory which would include different materials like flyer designs, banners, marketing materials and many other helpful items.

Another goal is to increase Joomla promotion at non-Joomla 3rd party events. It would include the implementation of a form for submission of attendance/representing of non-Joomla events.

 We also discussed the possibility of increasing the financial support for JoomlaDay events. Follow up with the OSM Board for budget approval is our next step.

 An official Joomla Developer Conference is being planned for the spring of 2014 (venue and dates to be announced). The developer conference will be a hands on workshop style learning event that will focus on the areas of design/template development, Joomla extension development, and the Joomla framework. We are working with members of the Joomla Production Leadership Team to plan a very successful event that could be easily duplicated around the world in the future. More information on this event will be announced soon.

We would like to thank all present members of the team for their efforts, input, and their ideas.

The current Joomla Event Team is comprised of the following members:

• Radek Suski
• Mike Carson
• Saurabh Shah
• Victor Drover
• Dianne Henning
• TJ Baker
• Sigrid Suski

Since launching Joomla 3.2 less than two weeks ago, we've watched the most incredible community come together, and we've been inspired every moment along the way. The marketing team created, artwork, infographics and videos.

This is just the beginning. Over the next few weeks, we'll be introducing some exciting new Marketing initiatives. As always, we'll share details on updates as we release them.

A huge thank you to everybody who made this happen!

Members of the 3.2 Marketing team include:

• Christopher Nielsen
• Nick Savov (PLT member volunteer)
• Ryan Bernstein (Volunteer)
• Jonathan Neubauer
• Beat (Volunteer)
• Brook McDonald (content editing)
• Sander Potjer
• Paul Orwig
• Jacques Rentzke
• Hung / JoomlaArt (developing the graphics)
• Mark W. Bender (Joomla Community Magazine)

Special Thanks to the Presentations and tutorials videos team:

• Gary Brooks and cloudaccess.net for contributing the video design and editing
• Ryan Bernstein (cloudaccess.net): Videos coordinator, editing and publishing
• Mark Dexter : Content Versioning
• Beat (joomlapolis.com): User Interface & User Experience Enhancements, Joomla Extension Finder/Install from Web
• Nicholas Dionysopoulos (akeebaBackup.com): Two-Factor Authentication, Rapid Application Development Framework
• Javier Gomez (redcomponent.com): Multilingual Site Automatic Installer
• Sander Potjer (sanderpotjer.nl): ACL for Modules
• Hung and the JoomlaArt team for developing the graphics

Marketing 3.2 Co-Coordinators: Gary Brooks & Jess Dunbar

To discuss this post please visit this forum thread: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=828242

The newly-forming Joomla! Marketing Working Group is currently looking for new active members from the Joomla community to join our team.

If you know a fellow Joomla community member who has experience in marketing and would be available and suitable for the position, please nominate him or her - you can also nominate yourself.  If you are nominating someone else, please make sure that you've asked their permission.

Please keep in mind that this is *not* a voting contest: asking all your acquaintances to nominate or vote for you doesn't give you any bonus points :-)

On November 6th the Joomla Project and Community announced the availability of version 3.2 as a stable release. With about 600 new features and bug fixes, version 3.2 is the biggest release of the CMS ever. In the infographic below 10 new features of Joomla 3.2 are highlighted, Something New for Everyone! 

Feel free to share the inforgraphic with your friends on your own blog or website! You can also download a large version of the inforgraphic.

Thank you Dinh Viet Hung and the JoomlArt team for creating this infographic.

Yesterday the Joomla project released Joomla 3.2. Joomla 3.2 is truly a Something New for Everyone release. We have some marketing materials ready for you to share the exciting new features of Joomla 3.2.

Joomla 3.2 main image

Click here to download this image.

Joomla 3.2 banners

We have created Joomla 3.2 banners in several sizes that you can use:

• Banner 160 x 600 px
• Banner 200 x 200 px
• Banner 240 x 400 px
• Banner 250 x 250 px
• Banner 300 x 250 px
• Banner 300 x 600 px
• Banner 320 x 50 px
• Banner 336 x 280 px
• Banner 468 x 60 px
• Banner 728 x 90 px
• Banner 970 x 90 px
• FaceBook cover image
• Google Plus cover image
• LinkedIn cover image
• Twitter header image

Joomla 3.2 Video Tutorials

The video tutorials below include first hand descriptions and/or illustrations of several of the most popular new features given by the developers themselves. 

• Content Versioning
• User eXperience (UX) Improvements
• Joomla Extension Finder - AKA Install from Web.
• Two Factor Authentication
• Multilingual Site Automatic Installer
• Module ACL
• Rapid Application Development (RAD) Framework

There have been a record number of new features added to Joomla! 3.2 making today’s release the most functional and easy-to-use version of Joomla ever. With over 1,000 new commits coming from more than 50 different contributors, the much anticipated 3.2 version offers everything from UI/UX enhancements, version history and improved security measures.  

Content Versioning

User Interface & User Experience Enhancements

Joomla Extension Finder

2 Step Authentication

Multilingual Site Automatic Installer

Module ACL

Rapid Application Framework

You can discuss this blog post at http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=825295

The Joomla Registered User Group team is pleased to announce that the following new members have agreed to join the team.

Max Lynam
Son Koral
Saurabh Shah
Alejandro Pascoli
Guillermo Bravo

The team will be lead by Liam Mandville and assisted by Ruth Cheasley as CLT liason.

We would like to thank all those who applied for the advertised positions within the team and hope you can wish the new members well in their training and future within the JUG team.

The JUG team would also like to announce the implementation of the new help desk system available on http://community.joomla.org/community-helpdesk/ to assist the new members in cross working with other teams eg Events and Trademark.
You can also follow new Registered JUG's on https://twitter.com/JoomlaJugs

The new members bring a wealth of experience from other teams and languages that will help improve the processing of Registered Joomla User Groups and respond to questions regarding existing ones.

Any questions can be addressed to jugs@community.joomla.org or via the ticket system.

 
 

The Joomla! feature tracker is on fire and filled with awesome new features that might well tip the scale in the open source CMS market.

In true Joomla - all together - spirit everyone has been contributing to make our CMS even better and friendlier for first-time, intermediate, advanced and expert users.

As of yesterday, the joomlacode.org project area has 70 new features marked as ‘Ready for review’ or ‘Pending’. There are some very high potential features that will surely change the way people see and use Joomla.

The new features that are in the pipeline target many different perspectives as they address user interface improvements, missing enterprise functionality and new possibilities for third party extensions.

The following is just a randomly ordered short list of what may be considered as major potential new features that may be included - if you help the process - in the next Joomla 3.2 release:

• Content versioning for Joomla articles and article categories addresses a very important and popular feature request as it lets you store and retrieve different versions of your Joomla articles.
  Relevant tracker item: 30944
  Relevant content: video preview
  
  
  
  
• JUX team improvement features strive to provide a better user-experience for beginners and advanced users in the administration area thanks to a simpler, cleaner and more focused layout, which highlights important settings and controls and removes clutter.
  Relevant tracker items: 31858, 31859, 31860, 31863, 31864
  Relevant content: JUX site, video preview
  
  
  
  
• Joomla! "app store" - help us find a better name - that allows users to search for and install extensions directly from the administrator interface.
  Relevant content: Joomla Apps Architecture and UX Design (Google doc), App Store Study Group, video preview
  
  
  
  
• Improved template manager (GSoC 2013) with built-in file manager and editor lets administrators manage, clone and modify their Joomla themes from the administration panel.
  Relevant tracker item: 31266
  Relevant content: video preview
  
  
  
  
• Rapid Application Framework (Joomla! RAD) is a development layer that makes Joomla extension development easier and faster.
  Relevant tracker item: 31844
  Relevant content: Joomla! RAD Requirements (Google doc)
  
  
• Two factor authentication for Joomla
  Relevant tracker item: 31704
  Relevant content: Two factor authentication testing instructions (pdf file)
  
  
• Ajax interface for Joomla
  Relevant tracker item: 31800
  Relevant content: Joomla Ajax Interface (Google group discussion)

This is only a small subset of new features earmarked for inclusion in Joomla 3.2. You can see all features on the Joomla Features Tracker and make your own short list!

Are you excited? How can I help, you ask?

Join the Joomla! Bug Squad (JBS) and help the testing process. There is a great new tool to help you test new pull requests. To test a feature, just download the patchtester component and test immediately any feature directly from the latest corresponding github version for the corresponding pull-request !

Once done testing, simply reply to the tracker item (registration on joomlacode.code required) and reply with your tests in details, preceeded by a @test success or failed line! Each feature request needs at least 2 successful tests (the more the better) to be included. So you can make a big difference now for 3.2 with only a small time investment.

If you are a Joomla user and rely on Joomla for your websites, then help yourself now by testing today features and code that you will be using tomorrow. The more we test, the more new quality features will get into Joomla 3.2.

Please discuss this blog here: http://forum.joomla.org/posting.php?mode=post&f=704

The numbering of the CMS version 3 releases that are coming in the next day or so is going to be a bit surprising. Maybe not as strange as going from 1.7 to 2.5, but let’s take a closer look so everyone understands what is going on.

As previously posted, the plan was for a release of 3.1.2 early this week.  However some people automatically updated prior to the release due to receiving premature notification of the release while final testing of the release packages by the Joomla! Bug Squad was beginning.

When they updated they found that, in fact, there was a problem with the packages.  That problem caused their updates to fail, breaking their sites.  After several intense days of investigation, it was determined that the failure was due to changes to a key file (restore.php) in the update component itself.  This caused the updates to fail before completing.

Once the cause of the problem was identified, a solution was sought.  Although it seems as though a limited number of sites were impacted by this change, it is important to provide them with a way to update successfully using the automatic updater, which the corrupted file would prevent.

After a lot of head scratching, experimentation and testing a workable plan was developed.  That is where the strange release schedule and numbers come in.

3.1.2, the release that was never released, will not have a formal release.

3.1.3 will be a release that will only replace the corrupted file.  Only users who installed 3.1.2 will install 3.1.3. Everyone else will skip 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 and go straight to 3.1.4.

• Users currently on 3.1.1 will go directly to 3.1.4.
• Users who accidentally went to 3.1.2 will go to 3.1.3 and then 3.1.4.

All of this will work seamlessly in the Joomla update component.

Thanks as always to the people who test the pre-release CMS packages and to those who accidentally updated and quickly reported problems.  This participation means that no broken version of the CMS was released and is what makes Joomla! not just such a powerful application but also a great development and user community to be a part of.

Though 3.141592 has been suggested as the next release, most likely we’ll have a 3.1.5 in August just  before the beta of 3.2.

Update: Added missing paragraph and missing dots in title.

Joomla! User Groups (JUGs) beat at the heart of the Joomla! project, providing a regular opportunity for members of the community to come together, share their knowledge, learn, and meet others from their local area.

There are Joomla! User Groups around the world, all of which are run by volunteers.  A team of volunteers also makes up the Joomla! User Group Team, who are responsible for approving JUG applications, supporting new User Groups during the application process, in the early days when the JUG is getting started and dealing with any issues which may arise in relation to Joomla! User Groups.