 I am pleased to announce a maintenance release for the SubmitMailer plugin. The update fixed two known problems:
- Fixed email problem when using SMTP mailer
- Fixed server error when "Send to custom address" is enabled but not email is defined
[ Download SubmitMailer 1.6 ] |
 Goggles is inspired by the applications for the world's most popular search engine. For our members that use AdminPraise, Goggles uses styles that perfectly complement the corresponding admin theme. Upgrade your ProjectFork installation to use this slick, soothing new style. Goggles also uses ProjectFork's override system and totally changed the layout of the calendar to that of a traditional calendar layout!
Goggles is available only at our new cms marketplace, CMS Market. CMS Market is a avenue for those who use any cms and have a product to sell (or distribute), and either have no website or want to market their product elsewhere. CMS Market's author program is current in a closed beta, but you can request an invite here! You may have noticed that we've recently added a "Buy now at CMS Market" to all of our member templates and extensions, this allows new customers to choose whether they'd like to purchase a membership for $75 (which is still an awesome deal), or just purchase one item.
Here's some shots:
   
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 After two years of development I am happy and proud to announce the first stable release in the history of Projectfork! What has started out as a little tool to keep my own projects a bit more organized has now become one of the biggest components available for Joomla!
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 David Towers, a friend (and member) of JoomlaPraise is working with the Body Health Debate, and has had a RSS syndicator component and module created for Joomla 1.5 to help promote breast cancer awareness within the Joomla community.
The Breast Cancer Awareness RSS Syndicator Component allows users to create any number of feeds including or excluding any sections or categories. Images and HTML can be inserted in the RSS feed. Full articles can be inserted, just the article introduction or a limited number of words. So this component basically gives users full control of their RSS feeds.
In keeping with the goal of raising the awareness of breast cancer in the Joomla community, the extension will be officially launched this Friday which is a breast cancer awareness day. The extension will be 100% free and open the source code open! The plugin will be available to download here on friday.
You might also recognize David from his web marketing blog, GoodWebPractices.com . |
 A bit later than announced, but here it is now. The changes on the access system kept me busy longer than I expected. Instead of importing Joomla users to Projectfork, all users are now automatically available in Projectfork. Each user, depending on his Joomla group (visitor/registered/super administrator etc..) is automatically a member of a global group with a default set of permissions and access level. Permissions and access level can then be overwritten for each project. I think this is a huge step forward in simplifying the whole system. Furthermore, I've added a ton of tooltips and hints that will help you understand and troubleshoot the access settings and to make them more transparent. Here is a list of new features that have been missing in the beta:
- Added ability to move folders, files and notes in the filemanager
- Added ability to subscribe to topics in the board
- Added button tooltips
- Added global groups
- Added global access levels
[Demo]
[Download] |
The first reactions on the beta release were just like I expected: A lot of bugs and confused users. Always the questions that start with "How do I...", "Why can't I ..." etc.. Most of these questions were directly/indirectly related to the access system. This made me think about it again. While it is very powerful, it's a) not working properly at the moment, and b) not user-friendly and transparent enough. So I took a short break over the weekend to look at everything from a distance and as an actual user.
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 Phew! The beta is out now, finally! And I can't tell you how excited I am about the fact that ProjectFork will soon be ready for production. In fact, Kyle and I planned on releasing the stable version in exactly two weeks from now (11/01). Until then, we still have things to do and a lot of bugs to fix. But let's talk about the current release first:
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 We've just released the latest version of our Joomla Administrator Template, AdminPraise. This release includes 2 major feature additions along with several smaller updated and bugfixes. The 2 new features are:
1. Component Quicklaunch - Inspired by the App Launch in Mac OSX, the top navigation now has a link to will open a launcher with icon links to all the components you have installed.
[Video Preview]
2. Custom Quick Icon Integration - CQI, which has just been released for Joomla 1.5, is an Administrator Component/Module that allows you to upload custom icons and add then to your cpanel quick icons. When installed, CQI will automatically become the 1st Accordion Dropdown in the AdminPraise cpanel and mini-cpanel. Why is this so great? You can now fully customize your AdminPraise quick icons on all pages of your admin site to quickly link to all your favorite pages.
[Video Preview]
You can now also completely turn off the left/right columns so they don't even load, rather than just collapsing them. This results in quicker load times.
[Video Preview]
Members, if you haven't tested AdminPraise yet, now's the time. We're now using it on all of our own sites and can't imagine Joomla development without it.
[Download]
Visitors, if you've ever needed a reason to join, this is it! Also, if you join during October, we'll take off 20% with the coupon code: ilikecandy
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 It's official. The Joomla 1.0.x series support will end July 22, 2009, as stated in an official post by Wilco Jansen [An old friend comes of age]. I'm sure this information will be received differently amongst the millions of Joomla users, but it's a good thing, believe me. Having to support two versions takes a ton of extra time for everyone, from the core team to our club. Joomla 1.0.x was fantastic and laid the groundwork for everything Joomla is now, but it is far less customizable and flexible. If nine months is enough time to birth a baby, it's enough time to put together a migration plan. With this announcement, you can be sure that developers will be releasing 1.5 versions of their extensions, if they haven't already. If not, it's probably not a project you should be following anyway.
So with that I make the official announcement that we will also stop developing and support 1.0.x versions of our template/extensions on the same date, July 22, 2009. |
 If you could take a peak under the JoomlaPraise hood, you'd see that the engine is running on all cylinders. It's been 8 months since our February launch, and we have progressed from the "little template club that could" into a club that's making fairly successful attempts at changing the Joomla! experience. We've released 14 solid templates, one of which (AdminPraise) can hardly be called a template, as it's changing the way Joomla! sites are administered. We've also released 8 extensions, which range in scope from PraiseUrl, a simple but extremely useful module that reveals Joomla! system urls, to ProjectFork, which in all fairness existed before our club, but has been rebuilt from the ground, up while under the JoomlaPraise roof.
Ok, enough back-patting :) So where to next? Fall is going to be extremely exciting for JoomlaPraise!
First up, let's talk about ProjectFork. We'll be releasing a beta this month (before we get bombarded with emails, we don't have a release date yet ;). We recently made the move to eat our own dogfood and start using PF to manage all of our internal projects. This was pretty painful at first, but has helped us guide the project in a very productive direction. I can say that at this point, PF is actually helping our team stay on top of everything and it is a pleasure to use. The most recent features we've added that aren't publicly available are:
- Milestone ordering: extremely useful in prioritizing
- Task Quicklinks: links to quickly Edit, Finish, or Comment on a task
- Progress Dropdown: dropdown box to quickly change progress percentage of a task
- Milestone Percentage: a percentage of completion calculated from a milestone's tasks completion
- Email Notification: configurable email notifications for new and modified tasks
- Calendar Dates: now project and task dates show on the calendar
- Discussion Board: messages are pivotal for project management, now teams can have discussions in a central location
Here's a preview of the new Task Section (shown using an upcoming alternate theme):
Next up, we have AdminPraise, which is quickly becoming our most popular template/extension (it's not fair to simply call this a template). AdminPraise started as an attempt to optimize the Joomla admin site on an iPhone and has transformed into a movement to make the entire Joomla administrative experience more streamlined. Here's the latest great features we're working on:
- CQI Integration: While the AdminPraise cpanel and mini-cpanel icons are extremely helpful, they're not customizable. To alleviate this, we've connected with the developers of CQI (Custom Quick Icons), an admin component/module combo that replaces the standard cpanel icons. When installed, CQI will automatically show up in a sliding div in the AdminPraise cpanel and mini-cpanel, allowing for custom icons and ALL admin pages.
- Component Quicklaunch: With all the navigation options of AdminPraise, the one core feature we miss is the component dropdown. Rather than simply incorporate this feature, we've decided to one-up it. AdminPraise will have a link which will use mootools to open a grid of all installed components, with larger logo links, rather than just text links.
- Turn Off Left/Right Columns: With all these new navigation options, a user may wish to completely turn off the left or right column, rather than simply collapsing them, which will result in quicker load times since the necessary JavaScript won't load.
- Here's a preview of the AdminPraise cpanel with CQI integration (and the left column turned off):
A new version of PraiseSlides is in the works, which will come packaged with several themes, all of which will be easily customized. Customization has always been the biggest request for PraiseSlides, so this release is a direct result of customer requests. We're also adding several key features:
- Top/Right/Bottom/Left Nav: Place the navigation wherever it fits best for your needs
- Slide Direction: Choose whether your content slides in from the top, right, bottom or left
- Fade Transition: Choose whether you content slides or fades
Here's a preview of a top or left navigation using one of the new theme selections:
Let's talk templates, since after all, we are a template club. We're currently developing a duo of Tableless Templates which will use the most html template overrides we've ever used to allow for a tableless Joomla site. For those who've followed JoomlaPraise since our 1.5 Template Contest entry, we actually developed a tableless version of our template way back then, and we're reintroducing these overrides to all of our future templates.
Lastly, we've received a ton of requests to purchase our templates individually. We're developing something to facilitate this, and a whole lot more :) More on that soon, stay tuned!
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I wanted to let everyone know that we've made some awesome progress in the past weeks and you can except the beta to be released in the next 10/15 days. We've received a lot of questions via email where you could download the stable release and if a subscription is required. I want to say it again: ProjectFork is a free open-source extension for Joomla...no subscription/payment or whatsoever required at all! The stable release can be expected this November and will be announced here. Another thing I would like to mention - and I know many people who come here are looking for this - is that along with the beta release, an online demo will be available! The demo will be available to all the lazy people who don't want to download and install ProjectFork just to see what it does and if it suits their needs. However, the demo will have a few restrictions for security reasons. |
 It's time for our monthly update! I actually intended to release the beta version today,
but I didn't make it that far. So you'll have to wait until next month, sorry :)
Nevertheless I have tons of new features and improvements in this updated alpha release for you:
- Proper install/uninstall of sections, panels and themes
- Added XML Parameters to sections and panels
- Set custom color scheme per project
- Upload custom logo per project
- Modular project details page
- Reworked project list page
- Reworked task list page
- Configurable task milestones
- Added customizable ordering to tasks
- News panel for the controlpanel
- Workspace panel for the controlpanel
- Upload multiple files in the file manager
- "Documents" have been renamed to "notes"
- Content editor can be enabled/disabled individually for each section
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 Do you think there's enough room in town for 2 Joomla Administrator Templates? Weigh in your opinions over at Alledia.com! See what pros and cons others have to say about AdminPraise.
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