General News
Introducing developer.joomla.org
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
The developer.joomla.org Web site has been re-launched using Joomla! 1.5. You are invited to frequently visit and enjoy a steady stream of information shared by approximately 50 bloggers, each of whom are actively involved with Joomla! development. Reading their blogs and providing your feedback is an excellent way to stay in touch with Joomla!.
Keep up-to-date on what is new in Joomla! Development
On developer.joomla.org, you will find posts from Joomla!'s Development Working Group Coordinators, Andrew Eddie and Wilco Jansen. Here, the coordinators share key development directions such as the decision to raise the Joomla! 1.6 minimum requirement to PHP 5.2 and discussions on community issues such as how best to lower the barriers for participation. In addition, presentation material of interest to developers will frequently be shared following Joomla! Day events and technical conferences.
Developer.joomla.org is the place that Joomla! Bug Squad members keep the community apprised of their efforts. Joomla! has adopted a release early, release often model as evidenced by the three maintenance releases already made available since the January 22, 2008 release of Joomla! 1.5. If you are interested in helping with Joomla! development, a great way to get started is to participate with the Joomla! Bug Squad. If you want to get involved, talk to Andrew or Wilco.
In mid-February the Joomla! Developer Team called for white papers for Joomla! 1.6 consideration. Nearly 150 white papers were submitted and 50 were accepted for Joomla! 1.6. This work is now underway. Team members will share their progress and requests for community feedback on the Joomla! Developer Team blog. Often, developers will share other great news, such as the announcement by Nur Aini Rakhmawati regarding the Joomla! 1.5 Debian package.
Google Summer of Code Project Blogs
The 2008 Joomla! Google Summer of Code project teams are blogging on the Joomla! Developer Web site. Nakul Ganesh S expressed the gratitude of the entire group when he thanked PackT for sharing copies of James Kennard's book Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development with each GSoC participant. That book will help these talented developers build what promises to be a great list of extensions for Joomla! 1.5. It will be worth your effort to follow these blogs and provide your input on those extensions that hold promise for your site development needs.
As you can see, developer.joomla.org is already a great way to stay up-to-date with Joomla!. You are invited to join these conversations and provide your feedback. We also encourage you to consider how you can contribute to help improve Joomla!.
Joomla! Google Summer of Code 2008 Projects
Wednesday, 30 April 2008
The Joomla! community is pleased to announce that Google is sponsoring 15 amazing projects in our fourth Google Summer of Code. Students and mentors from all over the world will work together this summer to bring great things to Joomla!. This year, Joomla! is honored that CiviCRM is also part of the team. Sincere thanks to Google for their continued support of Joomla! and the 175 other free and open source organizations participating.
Congratulations to the Joomla! Google Summer of Code 2008 Students
Your proposals were selected from a very competitive pool of nearly 100 applications. Thank you to the mentors willing to share time for this important effort. Projects that held the most promise were selected and we look forward to seeing this work shared with the community this fall.
This summer, each GSoC project team will share their progress on the developer.joomla.org site. Community members are invited to use the links below to join these conversations as the blogging begins over the next few weeks. End user feedback is an integral part of building useful solutions. If you have questions, please contact Wilco Jansen or Ian MacLennan, Joomla!'s GSoC project managers.
Joomla! Google Summer of Code 2008 Projects and Students
Advanced Media Manager, Nakul Ganesh S, Mysore, India
CiviCRM: Aesthetics and Usability, Jon Volkman, Seattle, Washington
CiviCRM: Multi-language Support, Piotr Szotkowski, Warsaw, Poland
Contact Directory, Chantal Bisson, Quebec City, Canada
Content Type Management, Ercan Özkaya, Konya, Turkey
Custom Content Layouts, Jaap Woltjes, the Netherlands
Forms, Mostafa Muhammad, Cairo, Egypt
Multi-DB Support, Alex de Azevedo, Brazil
Multimedia Portal, Marcelo Eden, Recife, Brazil
OpenSocial, Shannon Quinn, Atlanta, Georgia
Research Management, Luis Galárraga, Guayaquil, Guayas Ecuador
Semantic Web, Danh Le Phuoc, Vietnam, studying in Ireland
Tags, Jacek Zielinski, Poznan, Poland
Unit Testing, Scot Inscore, Whitewater, Wisconsin
Version Control, Flavio Kubota, Campinas, Brazil.
GSoC Student Application Deadline Extended
Tuesday, 01 April 2008
The Google Summer of Code 2008 student application deadline has been extended to Monday, April 7, 2008. GSoC is a great way for talented student developers to do what they love during the summer break and write great code in exchange for a $4,500 USD stipend from Google. This is Joomla!'s fourth year participating and we look forward to welcoming a new set of amazing talent.
Calling all Students
If you are an eligible student interested in this program, take time to read the student guidelines, review project ideas in the forums and on the wiki, and join the Joomla! Skype Discussion where you can ask questions before submitting your proposal. If you are looking for ideas, here are possibilities for which we have not received project proposals, but are very interested in seeing happen this summer.
Joomla! Core Package Distributions
Creating distribution packages is a tedious and critical job for any open source project. We welcome a GSoC project proposal aimed at creating a package distribution tool so that releases can be defined and automated processes build various packages needed. This environment must handle the creation of localized packages, an event which often occurs subsequent to the initial release. Statistical reporting for downloads given various time frequencies and regions of the world is desired. Environment will likely utilize SOAP and Phing.
CiviCRM - Organize your .org
CiviCRM is a PHP web application for non-profits, student organizations, and online communities to assist grassroots supporters, those they serve, and those they hope to influence. By helping integrate this vitally important "people management" tool with a powerful open source CMS like Joomla! v 1.5, you will contribute to initiatives which aim to:
- Stop global warming;
- End poverty all over the world;
- Assist refugees of wars and genocide;
- Organize action for positive social change;
- Help student organizations be more effective on campus.
This is a great way to get involved with CiviCRM, Joomla!, and Google's Summer of Code while helping make the world a better place! To get started, check out these project ideas.
SEF URLs, URL Migrations, Transliteration, and 404/403 Error Handling
If you are interested in helping ensure Joomla! websites maintain top placement in search engine results, you will enjoy this project. We are interested in seeing a GSoC Project focus on these deliverables: a plugin to offer options for SEF URLs patterns; a plugin to handle URL redirects needed for site migrations; a component to handle HTTP 404/403 error handling; and, a plugin to handle transliteration of aliases for SEF URLs. The Joomla! end user community would get tremendous value from such a project.
Editor for Building Template Override Layouts
A powerful feature introduced in Joomla! v 1.5 provides ability to create new layouts for components through the use of template override files. Now, envision a WYSIWYG editor that lists data elements exposed by the component model for use in a view layout. Further envision Mootools drag and drop capability at play, simplifying the construction of new layouts without requiring knowledge of programming complexity. Site builders could publish these easy to develop layouts to their Web site using this new editor. If building such an environment sounds like fun, imagine what thousands of community members will think this fall when they begin using it!
Consider Mentoring
We need dedicated, talented people to help mentor a project. If you are interested, please feel free to ask questions in the forums about participation.
Thank you, Google!
Thank you to Google and special thanks to Leslie Hawthorn for all you do in support of students and open source projects. This is certainly shaping up to be a great Google Summer of Code 2008!
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