We're gearing up for the 2010 CMS Expo, are you?

First, let me start by saying "Happy Birthday, Joomla!" You've been a great friend to many of us and we can't know where we would be without you. It has been a long four years since you first donned your title way back in September of 2005, and we're all anxious to see what the next four years will look like. But, while many are pausing for a quick celebration and then continuing with their work, we here at JoomlaPraise wanted to ask a question:

What about the rest of us?

Today the Joomla! team released another update to 1.5. Wojmamni Ama Woi, Yaqui for 12, comes with a few bug fixes and three moderate-level security fixes. We encourage you to update your installation, of course, and we'll make sure that our templates and extensions don't have any problems with the new version. If you do run into anything, though, be sure to let us know.

Download the entire package of 1.5.12 or an upgrade from the Joomla.org website.

Cory Webb just launched a wonderful idea implemented well: http://resources.howtojoomla.net/

HowToJoomla! Resources uses a custom Google search to only search relevant Joomla! sites with your keywords.  This isn't rocket science, it's just a really good idea that someone should have come up with long ago.  Cory is well known and respected in the Joomla! community, so I think this just might stick.

In a recent post it was announced that the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) will soon stop accepting extensions that aren't GPL, and then phase out those extensions and Joomla 1.0 extensions.  Naturally, this caused an uproar in the community, as these types of announcements always do. I'm going to steer clear of our opinions on the matter.  This reason for this post is to let everyone know that we're establishing a new home for extensions AND templates: CMS Market!  We've always felt left out since templates haven't ever been allowed in the JED (though templates are technically extensions right? They do fall under Extensions > Template Manager in the default admin template).  Our timing for CMS Market is extremely fortunate.  We thought it's main purpose would be for those who don't have sites to sell their products, but with these latest changes to the JED, CMS Market will be just as useful as a directory!  The goal of CMS Market is to be the best and most reliable marketplace/directory, and not be biased at all.  Any money CMS Market makes will only serve to make it better for its users.

Also, CMS Market will be donating a portion of its profit back to the community.

It's official, our good friend Roger Perren is stepping down from his lead position at JoomlaNews (http://www.joomlanews.ch).  Roger made the announcement yesterday, with his 400th post in this article (English translation).  Roger originally contacted Tobias about ProjectFork and since then has frequently posted about it and provided the german Projectfork translation and demo site.  I personally got to work with Roger on a new logo for JoomlaNews after the Joomla police made him remove the Joomla logo mark, and it was a pleasure working and chatting with him, even through the language barrier .  Roger's successor will be Yannick Spang and it sounds like the site will be in extremely capable hands, welcome Yannick!

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 .

For anyone concerned with their search engine efforts (which should be everyone), we've recently done a custom Joomla template for a new site that has built some great technology on Joomla 1.5, SearchPageRankings.com.  SPR (as we call them) offers a very cool free feature in which you get Google search results instantly, as you type your keywords (you must enter you domain name first of course).  This is a nice way to check mulitple variations of keywords by simply backspacing and typing more words, inspired by another great site InstantDomainSearch.com, which shows you domain availability as you type.  The search results are more human friendly than Google, because the results are numbered and your domain will show up in a different color.

SPR's instant domain search is just the tip of the iceberg though.  If you create an account, you can rank 3 keyword phrases, and track those keywords over time.  This is extremely useful in tracking how you're doing with competing sites, as you can see which sites are moving up or down over time.  An even cooler feature is that you can have these results emailed to you in intervals that you define.  Here's a tour of their features.

There are subscription packages for 5-20 keywords, and you can choose to pay monthly or yearly for a discounted rate.

Here's a couple of shots of the instant search and keyword history:

"This is a quick turnaround release to address the Duplicate Title error from 1.5.4 . This release also contains important SEF URL improvements and fixes for com_content in addition to a number of bug fixes and improvements."
(joomla.org, full article)

Download Full or Update Package

Joomla! 1.5.4 [Naiki] is now available for download.

"This is a normal maintenance release which includes a few low to moderate security issues, many bug fixes, and several very nice improvements. It has been a little over ten weeks since Joomla! 1.5.3 was released on April 24, 2008."
(joomla.org, full article)

Download Full or Update Package