Continuing with our updates for JomSocial 1.8 (SocialPraise was last), our CommunityPraise Joomla template has been updated to support the latest from Azrul. The live CommunityPraise demo has also been updated.

Included in the latest version is support for the Default JomSocial layout. Previous versions only supported the Blueface JomSocial layout, which is only included in Professional Editor of JomSocial. View screenshots after the break.

JomSocial 1.8 "Wazi" is out, and it's fantastic. We're now in the process of updating our JomSocial Templates for compatibility with the latest and greatest. First up is SocialPraise (which is also compatible with Community Builder). The live SocialPraise Demo is running all the latest versions.

This is our second article on building a mobile friendly Joomla website using two of our releases, the Template By Browser Plugin and MobilePraise Template. You can read Part 1, an introduction to why and how you can building mobile friendly Joomla websites for iPhone, Android, Palm and other mobile browsers here.

In this article I go over some tips on how to customize the MobilePraise Joomla template to be even more mobile friendly than the default configuration allows.

Making The Template Yours

When you finally have your copy of the MobilePraise template installed on your website (and the Template By Browser plugin is enabled and configured to display the template on mobile devices), you'll want to do a few things to completely own the structure of the template and make it unique to your website's purpose.

The mobile web has been a big topic of conversation for people over the last year. Everyone wants their Joomla site optimized for the iPhone, Android and other mobile devices and operating systems. New smartphones are being released every few hours, it seems, and people are quickly finding the need to build mobile friendly websites. Unfortunately, building a mobile website using Joomla has been difficult, at best. So we've decided to make it simpler.

You've already been introduced to the Mobile Template and the Template By Browser Plugin that we released a few days ago. But have you seen how easy it is to build a mobile friendly site with them? Over the next couple of days I'm going to be sharing some tips with you on converting your own website to becoming more mobile compatible using our MobilePraise Template, the Template By Browser Plugin, and , of course, the Joomla! Content Management System.

It's a bloq party! We've just released Bloq, a free Joomla template. The name Bloq comes from the fact that the template is grid of blocks and that Bloq will be the building block for our future templates.

Bloq is certainly our most capable free Joomla template to date. 31 module positions (don't use them all at once :), 1-3 collapsible columns, 8 color themes and 5 module styles provide plenty of layout variation. If you're into customization, Bloq's color parameters and Fireworks source artwork give you everything you need to tweak the template for your site.

[View Demo] [Download Bloq (free registration required)]

Rounding out one of the biggest release days we've had in quite a while, AppPraise is available. AppPraise is a Joomla Template made to sell and market any kind of app, whether it's for the iPhone, iPad, Mac OSX, PC, Palm webOS, you name it.

AppPraise features a kaleidoscope of 10 color themes that should just about suit any App sales site, along with a built-in CSS dropdown menu, 10 button styles, 1-3 columns and 18 module positions. Perhaps the best feature of AppPraise is the custom 2-column K2 blog and K2 blog detail layout, a first from JoomlaPraise.

When you visit the AppPraise demo site, you'll see we chose to test the site out to sell our own iPhone Joomla Template, MobilePraise, which was our 2nd release today. We thought it would be a good idea to eat our own dogfood and use AppPraise as we intend you to use it, and it taste delicious! (note: AppPraise and MobilePraise are 2 separate templates sold individually or in our Joomla Bundle).

Our other release was a free Joomla plugin, Template By Browser. This free plugin lets you route viewers to different Joomla templates depending on their browser.

[AppPraise Info] - [Demo] - [Buy Now] - [Included in Joomla Bundle]

We've just released a Joomla iPhone Template, MobilePraise. MobilePraise will actually work on all mobile webkit browsers but was designed for the iPhone and to appear like a native iPhone App.

MobilePraise features a theme that's extremely easy to customize for any color, and a super slick Control Panel that mimics the iPhone Home Screen.

If you're on an iPhone check out the live demo, otherwise you can get a good idea of the iPhone display using this online iPhone simulator.

[More Info] - [Buy Now] - [Joomla Bundle]

If you've ever wanted to choose which of your Joomla templates are displayed on particular browsers (like iPhone mobile Safari), we've just done you a big favor.

To coincide with the release of MobilePraise, a Joomla iPhone Template, we've just released Template By Browser. TBB is a free Joomla plugin that will work with any Joomla template(s). Simple install the plugin and then choose which template is seen by a specific browser. This is perfect when you want to use an iPhone (or iPad) template, but there are probably lots of other uses for it.

[Download Template By Browser (free)]

Now that Joomla 1.6 Beta 1 has been released, we're ready to dig in and start prepping to support Joomla 1.6 with our templates and extensions, and migrated our current templates.

We've migrated Genesis, which is our very first free Joomla template. You can download Genesis for Joomla 1.6, but treat it as a beta as well for now.

Joomla 1.5 to 1.6 Template Migration

From our sister site AdminPraise.com:  AdminPad is live and ready for your iPad enjoyment! We've worked hard to create a productive and enjoyable admin user experience on the iPad and from out own tests, we feel like we've achieved fairly significant success. AdminPad includes several innovations to allow things like article editing and browser specific admin template assignment.

If you're reading this article from an iPad, stop right now and head to the AdminPad Demo to check it out yourself (AdminPad works nicely in Firefox, Safari and Chrome as well).

[More information] [Demo] [Buy Now] [Included in AdminPraise Admin Bundle]