Blog entries

2010 schedule has been set

Victor Drover — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:57:23 +0100

After reviewing the responses to our survey, Gabe and I are happy to announce the entire 2010 schedule for JUG Milwaukee.

As the year proceeds, we will finalize presenters for each topic.

02/10 – Extension Selection & Evaluation (Vic Drover)
03/10 – Joomla Ecommerce – Stores, Carts, Subscriptions, Downloads and Content (Gabe Wahhab)
04/10 – Editors: Compare & Contrast
05/10 - Joomla 1.6 Features & Upgrading
06/10 - Must haves extensions that makRead More...

Geraring up for JUG Milwaukee 2010

Victor Drover — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:45:55 +0100

As we look back at 2010, Gabe and I are pretty impressed at what you've all done at JUG Milwaukee in 2009. We've had 12 meetings and brought in impressive speakers from around the word.

Together, we've created a Joomla community in this area where we can come to learn, share and grow.

As we look forward to 2010 however, we know we can do better. We can bring in more relevant speakers, and we can do a better job of planning the JUG.

An ongoing issue in 2009 was schedRead More...

CMS Expo was worth every penny!

Gabe Wahhab — Sun, 03 May 2009 05:00:00 +0100

A few months ago I was faced with the decision of whether or not I was going to make the CMS Expo this year. We had attended last year when it was called the Joomla Expo and found it to be a great experience. This year they added a few more CMS's and a second day but also tripled the price. Yikes! With a tight budget I had a tough decision make. I ended up deciding to go and take my development team with. So last week Thursday and Friday we made our way dowRead More...

Why non-GPL extensions are bad for YOU! My experience.

Gabe Wahhab — Sun, 03 May 2009 05:00:00 +0100

There is always lots of talk about GPL and non GPL extensions in open source communities. Previously I never gave it to much thought until last week when it affected me very harshly.

GPL & non-GPL
For those of you who dont know what GPL is, it is the General Public License and it is the license Joomla and many other open source projects are released under. The GPL states that any licensee "is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy and rediRead More...

Joomla 1.5.10 is on the way

Victor Drover — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 05:00:00 +0100

In case you hadn't heard, Joomla 1.5.10 looks to be ready soon.

Keep an eye on the Joomla Forum Announcements board for details and upgrade instructions.

Custom content creation, now for Joomla!

Victor Drover — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

As a member of the editorial team at the Joomla Extension Directory, I see a lot of extensions in the course of a day. Many times these are helpful plugins or modules that make site maintenance a little easier or a little smarter. I love those gems.

But occassionally, an extension comes along that really looks promising and generates a lot of buzz in the Joomlasphere. The recently released social networking application JomSocial is one such extension that has taken the community by stoRead More...

Joomla 1.6: I'm giddy like a little school girl!

Gabe Wahhab — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

So i was surfing the Joomla Developer site today and came across Andrew Eddie's blog about Joomla 1.6 and some of the new functionality. The 2 main things coming in this major release is going to be the way extensions are stored in the database and access controls. He didn't go into the packages to much just said:

"this will ultimately make it easier for developers to make multi-installable packages. I'll let Sam blog about this more at another time.".

This is soRead More...

Weekly JUG meetings, now that's dedication!

Victor Drover — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

I received an e-mail today from Joe Scarry of Arc Technology, one of the JUG MKE sponsors. Joe writes a blog for Joomla Chicago and today he was pointing out the recent JUG activity in Michigan.

I received Joe's e-mail while finalizing the agenda for JUG MKE #2 with the Agenda Committee and I guess all the JUG talk got me thinking about all the Joomla users meeting around the world. So I took a trip on over to the JUG calendar on Joomla.org. JUGs can post their upcoming meetings on thiRead More...

Trials and tribulations of forum integration, part 27

Victor Drover — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

So to give you some perspective, I've been trying to implement a seamlessly- integrated forum on this site for about 2 months now. I first started playing with it over the Christmas holidays and have been experimenting with it off-and-on ever since.

The problem is that I have been spoiled by the relative ease of integrating the SMF forum into Joomla 1.0. There is a very good extension available on that platform and, despite having to hack the core, it works near-flawlessly. Once i did sRead More...

Joomla Milwaukee 1st Meeting & More

Gabe Wahhab — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 06:00:00 +0100

So I'm little behind on this blog post but what the heck better late than never.

The first Joomla Milwaukee was huge success big thanks to everyone for coming out and to our food sponsor Arc Technology Group for putting yummy food in our bellies.It was really great meeting everyone and networking.

We have tentative speakers for the next meeting lined up and topics should be announced soon. Here are some of the topics you had all suggested from the survey:

Search Engine OpRead More...

Joomla Milwaukee takes a confident first step

Victor Drover — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

What a day! Gabe and I have been working feverishly for the last 5 weeks to get the first Joomla Milwaukee meeting organized. It looks like our hard work paid off as over 35 people turned up. There were people of all interests and experience levels and were it not for the robust participation of the group, I might have thought folks just showed up for the free lunch (thanks Arc Technology for the grub and Joe for the great blog post).

Not only did people participate with queRead More...

How to pick a CMS

Victor Drover — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

I've just read an interesting "anti-joomla" article called "How to choose the right CMS". While I don't agree with the broad-stroked advice of the author regarding Joomla, I was intrigued by some of the promising new CMS options out there.

In particular, I liked the look of Concrete5 CMS and the"What is concrete5" demo video got me even more interested after just the first 60 seconds.

Concrete5 make it very easy to test-drive their CMS on their dedicRead More...

MKE JUG is now a recognized Joomla User Group

Victor Drover — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Well it's official, JoomlaMilwaukee.com is now a recognized Joomla! User Group (JUG).

Elin Waring, President of Open Source Matters (the copyright and trademark holder of the Joomla! project) wrote this morning to say that we are officially "Joomla! User Group Milwaukee II". As soon as the administrative tasks are completed at Joomla.org, I'll be updating this site to indicate the status change.

As some of you know, another JUG was created last year in MilwRead More...

Welcome to Joomla Milwaukee

Victor Drover — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:00:00 +0100

Hello Milwaukee!

You've reached the home of Joomla in Milwaukee and the surrounding area. I am totally pumped as there i only a week until our first meetup on Jan 29.

There are less than a dozen seats remainingfor this meeting and I can't wait to see you all there.