14. Interviews with Experts
The Joomla! Project is filled with people with expertise in all kinds of areas. Both we and Joomla! have benefited greatly from their knowledge and experiences. Getting to know them and working with them on various tasks has enriched our knowledge and understanding of many of the issues touched in this book. We can’t introduce you personally, but we have brought together participants in the Joomlasphere to talk personally about the project, their involvement, and their experiences working with Joomla!
Andrew Eddie, Software Engineer at eBay Australia and Platform Maintainer—The Joomla! Story
I work for eBay Australia as a software engineer and have some ten years of professional experience in Web-based software application development, though I’ve been programming since the early eighties. I’m known mostly for my involvement in the Mambo and Joomla! projects, which started very early in 2003, and since then I’ve worn many official and unofficial hats within both projects. I’ve also made past contributions to other open source projects such as dotProject and phpDocumentor and a few other smaller ones. I was very privileged to win the 2009 Software Queensland Medal for outstanding contribution to the Queensland Software Industry and also a High Commendation from the Pearcy Foundation.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: Well, my involvement predates Joomla! I became involved in Mambo (the project from which Joomla! forked) in February 2003. At the time I was working for Toowoomba City Council, and we were looking for replacement systems for our 300-static-page Web site. Prior to this, I’d been learning the open source ropes in a project called dotProject, which I believe is still around. I had been trialing a number of CMSs (there weren’t actually that many to choose from back then, and even fewer would install reliably) and, after a few failures, found that Mambo 4.0 had the makings of what we needed for Council’s Web site. I knew I’d be putting a lot of company time into the system based on what I was allowed to do customising dotProject for Council’s use. So, I sent an e-mail to the guy running the forum to put my hand up to help, and things took off from there.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: It depends. I always look for an open source solution first for desktop applications, even though I don’t really need the “source.” It’s usually a case of it’s “free,” as in “free beer.” But for Web-based applications, I go exclusively with open source systems, mainly so I can fix it when I find bugs (and I usually do). For other platforms such as my iPhone, I’m obviously restricted to what I can use.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: The most exciting part is meeting people who are talking about what they’ve done to create something that they could not have done without Joomla! Seeing people enabled to produce Web content without having to know all the technical Web stuff is fantastic. I also have some quite emotional moments when people have rallied around to get a site up quickly when there is a great need. I remember the time I went to Byron Bay and that local user group helped a woman get a site up quickly to keep everyone informed about her husband (a popular footballer) who was badly injured one day. It really tugs at your heartstrings when you know you’ve been part of making a difference in that person’s life. There’s obviously some personal excitement when you produce a really cool feature or something, but ultimately it is seeing ordinary people do extraordinary things with the software that keeps me going.
Q: Given your history with the project as someone who has been involved in development since the inception of Joomla! and before that with Mambo, what sort of changes have you seen in the CMS market? How have these changes helped end users?
A: Mambo was born out of the frustration with the “Nuke” years (phpNuke, postNuke, and a heap of others that just copied the same formula). It was really the first CMS to my mind that was catering for the business sites, and this also meant that it would be suitable for “normal” people as well. Mambo was really on the cusp of that period when the CMS could be used by people who weren’t programmers or geeks. Mambo and Joomla! have certainly been criticized for concentrating on eye candy and what looks good for the regular person, but that’s kind of the point of what a CMS is supposed to do. So, the major changes I’ve seen are the CMSs are constantly trying to look better and be easier and more intuitive to use. I think Joomla! and Mambo have also been ahead of the pack in terms of making the CMS easier to style and extend. I really feel the others are only now starting to catch up with that philosophy.
Changes in Web standards, hardware, and browser capabilities also allow for natural improvements that make things easier on the user, and we’ve certainly seen that in the Web 2.0 space.
Q: What are some of the most interesting challenges you have been able to solve using Joomla!?
A: I certainly seem to attract “interesting challenges” from various people. There are a couple of notable projects that come to mind.
For www.is4profit.com, they have a lot of data that comes from an XML-based Web server that they subscribe to. This data needed to be converted from XML markup into something suitable for a Joomla! article. Not only that, but these articles were multipage, had links to other pages in the article, and also had links to other articles from the Web service. I devised a command-line version of Joomla! that sucked the XML information from the Web service and converted that into the Joomla! articles, doing differential checks so that only new articles are added and modified articles updated. Then we had to coax the Joomla! router to get all the interpage links to work properly. On top of that, it was a Joomla! 1.0 to 1.5 migration, so all up, it was probably the most complex traditional Joomla! site I’ve done.
The other big site I’ve worked with is PeopleBrowsr.com. The company building it had decided to use Joomla! as a base, and I was called in to guide the initial architectural development of the Joomla! site. The client-side site was nothing like you’d ever seen in a typical Joomla! site. It’s basically a JavaScript framework that’s running everything through Ajax calls. The challenge here was to give their developers a good framework to allow that Ajax system to work, on top of all the other idiosyncrasies that accompanied that site.
Certainly these systems could have been done via bespoke methods, but the Joomla! framework is capable of handling a 12-page brochure site as much as it can really complex animals like the previous two I mentioned. Without the discipline of working within a framework, I would be reinventing the wheel on nearly every project.
Q: As one of the lead developers for Joomla!, how has the development process changed since Joomla! 1.0 came out? Can you give a bit of history behind the main releases and how the project has evolved to 1.6 (which you played a key role in)? What has the separation of the Joomla! Platform from the Joomla! CMS meant for this?
A: Joomla! 1.0 had a very quick birth. It was born out of the salvaged wreckage of Mambo 4.5.3 that was nearing alpha release. Back then, the Core Team was almost entirely developers, and you had to be on the Core Team to actually commit code. It was an extremely exclusive club. We also generally had one or two people who were able to devote massive blocks of hours to the project, and that kept the pace up. After our first Joomla! Core Team Summit in 2005, there was a tepid plan for the features that were to be released in the next few versions. But as the months rolled on, problems arose that delayed some areas of the code, which meant that we really just started playing with other interesting things.
Unfortunately, that’s all we ended up doing, and the changes that were happening on a daily basis meant that reaching a point of stability was just not going to happen.
By this time we had so many new things in the stack that the release was rebadged from 1.1 to 1.5. The Joomla! Bug Squad was formed in an effort to stop the playing in the sandpit and begin the process of stabilizing the core code for release. The effectiveness of the JBS was unparalleled to anything we’d seen in Joomla!’s or Mambo’s history. It worked really well—almost too well. Our most fatal mistake during the period up to release of 1.5 was that we did not encourage new development that could continue and slot in after its release. Also, after 1.5 was released, most people were so burned out that nobody had time to really think about the next version. Couple that with lack of planning and experienced leadership (for which I take some of the blame), and the development side of the project began to flounder.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, the way we were doing development wasn’t going to ship 1.6 or any future version in a hurry, so we made quite a few changes. We’ve opened up the development lists to the public, and anyone can have a branch to work on new features, which has meant that a lot more people have been getting involved dealing with the real problems and issues to move development forward.
Q: What is coming on the horizon for Joomla! development as the project looks to the future? What do you think will be the impact of the Platform Project on CMS?
A: Well, that’s an interesting question. Joomla! 1.7 was as much a new process as it was a new version of the software. There have been a number of initiatives that will improve the reliability and credibility of the Joomla! release cycle. We’ve introduced operational changes such as a calendar-based release cycle. The idea here is that we release what we call a minor version every six months more or less to the day. This gives site owners and developers alike the ability to adjust their own internal maintenance cycles to the Joomla! cycle, allowing for much better planning on a host of fronts. This short time frame (in comparison to between two and three years between releases) also allows us to inject innovation back into the software at a much faster pace because the incremental steps are smaller. It also means that larger features can be worked that could possibly span two versions if the team working on them thinks they will take a year to develop. There is nothing stopping that kind of flexibility.
Of course, the last step is to try to marry people with the great ideas to people with the capacity to deliver them. Unfortunately, that is the part of the process that is least under our control.
So, in summary, I actually don’t know what the coming versions will be, but I’m very keen to see how it works out because it’s a massive paradigm shift compared to the culture we have worked in for many years now.
Mark Dexter, Production Leadership Team—The Joomla! Bug Squad and Joomla! Development
I started and ran a successful commercial software company for 28 years, before retiring in 2007. I am mostly self-taught as a software developer. My formal education was in liberal arts and business. As I thought about retiring, I decided that I would like to retire from business but continue working on software. I started learning about and working on open source software. My first project was to learn Java and Eclipse and create some video tutorials called “Eclipse and Java for Total Beginners.” Two years ago I became the Webmaster of a local community group and started learning Joomla! I found the community to be very welcoming and have gotten more and more involved with the project over the past two years. As of now, my Joomla! roles include development coordinator, a member of the Production Work Group, a member of the Leadership Team, and a coordinator of the Joomla! Bug Squad. Last year I also served as the Google Summer of Code Administrator.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I volunteered to take over as Webmaster for a local community group. I had no experience with Web site administration or content management systems. At the time the Web site was a static HTML site. Someone suggested using a CMS and suggested looking at Joomla! I downloaded it and started learning it and eventually deployed it for the site.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: Yes. I like the philosophy of open source, and I like the software. I use open source software for as much of my work as I can.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: I enjoy the fact that the Joomla! community is so international. I regularly work with people from all over the world. The community is also very friendly and welcoming, which is why I started to volunteer in the first place. I wear a number of hats in the community, including development coordinator, being on the Leadership Team, and being coordinator of the Bug Squad. To me, the great benefits of my Joomla! work are working with great people and the opportunity to learn about Web software.
Q: What prompted the creation of the Joomla! Bug Squad?
A: The Bug Squad was created before I started with Joomla!, but my understanding is that it was created with two goals in mind: first, to have a group whose only focus is to fix bugs and improve the overall quality of the code; second, to lower the barrier to entry for new contributors to the project. For example, you don’t need to be an expert in Joomla! or in programming to join and be a great contributor to the Bug Squad. Working on the Bug Squad is also a fantastic way to learn more about Joomla! and programming. Several of our Bug Squad members are now contributing to the CMS project.
Q: How do you think the Joomla! Bug Squad has benefited the project?
A: By allowing less experienced people to contribute to the project. This has expanded the number of people working on the project. Some of these people have gone on to contribute in very significant ways. The Bug Squad enables people to contribute as their time and experience allow. We have a small core of people who do a lot of work in the Bug Squad. We also have a much larger group that works on a less frequent basis but still contributes significantly. This combination has worked well for the project. For example, in the first nine months of 2011, the Bug Squad fixed over 750 issues.
Q: Outside of maintaining the stable releases, has the Joomla! Bug Squad affected other areas of the project such as core development?
A: Yes. For example, several people who started out in the Bug Squad have contributed significantly to versions 1.6, 1.7, and 2.5.
Q: What is bug squashing, and why does the Joomla! Project organize Bug Squashing Events such as Pizza, Bugs, and Fun (PBF)?
A: We try to create fun events. Fixing bugs is hard work, and some people find it more fun to do it as part of an organized event. It is also a way for people to see how much fun it is to do meaningful work.
Q: What is the tracker, and how do people report bugs?
A: The tracker is a software program that anyone can use to report on and follow the progress of bugs or issues with Joomla! When a user first reports an issue, someone needs to look at it to determine whether it is really a bug and whether it has already been reported or fixed. Many times there are questions or comments that go back and forth. Eventually, the issue is either closed because it is not a bug or because it is fixed and tested and the fix is added to the next software release.
Q: What are the criteria for joining the Joomla! Bug Squad?
A: The Bug Squad can use people with a variety of skills and experience. Most people need to have a good understanding of how to install and use Joomla! You do not need to be a programmer. The three main jobs that Bug Squad members do are: (1) monitor the tracker and determine whether newly reported issues are really bugs, (2) write code to fix bugs, and (3) test proposed bug fixes to make sure they really fix the bug and don’t cause any new problems. If you notice, only 2 requires programming skills. Nontechnical people can do 1 and 3. A new and exciting development for the Bug Squad is the introduction of automated testing. For version 1.6, we are hoping to incorporate automated software testing into the daily work of the Bug Squad. For example, when a bug is fixed, the tester might write an automated test for that bug that gets added to the list of tests that are run each day. That way, if a future change accidentally breaks that fix, we will know about it right away and can fix it before it gets released in a production version.
Q: You coauthored Joomla! Programming (published by Joomla! Press). What are your goals for that book? What do you hope readers will get out of it?
A: My most important goal for Joomla! Programming is to make programming for Joomla! accessible to as many people as possible. I had two types of readers in mind when I was writing the book. The first group consists of the many people in the Joomla! community who start off as users, then become power users, and then progress to editing or writing code. Many of these people have little or no programming background, but they are smart, motivated, and eager to learn what they need to in order to advance their Joomla! programming knowledge. For them, the book has to explain everything in clear language and not assume that the reader has a lot of programming experience.
The other target group for the book is people like myself—people who have experience with programming but perhaps little or no experience with Web programming, PHP, or object-oriented programming. The book needs to give these people background in these topics so they can get up to speed quickly.
In both cases, I hope readers will get two things from the book: practical knowledge that they can put to immediate use in their Joomla! work, and a good reference to use when they encounter questions or problems down the road.
Q: Besides reading your book, what would you suggest that someone who wants to start off in developing for Joomla! do to learn?
A: I think working through some of the examples in the wiki can be very helpful. A lot of people start with the tutorial for developing an MVC component: http://docs.joomla.org/Developing_a_Model-View-Controller_(MVC)_Component_for_Joomla!2.5.
I also think that fixing bugs is a great way to learn about Joomla! programming. I know for me it gets me involved in parts of the program that I would not otherwise learn about.
The last thing I would suggest, especially for someone with some programming experience outside of Joomla!, is to create an extension and publish it in the Joomla! Extensions Directory (JED). If you find you have to write an extension to solve a problem for one or more of your Web sites, chances are that others might have the same problem. Writing an extension and publishing it on the JED is a great way to contribute to the community and to get feedback on your programming.
Sam Moffatt, Joomla! Platform Maintainer, Production Leadership Team—Participating in Joomla! Development
Sam Moffatt is quite possibly a geek and almost certainly a developer. Vicious rumors of anything more won’t be entertained. As a narcissistic hobby, he maintains a collection of biographies he’s written (or have been written about him) over the years, and strangely they seem to get read (or maybe it’s just the bots): www.pasamio.id.au/content/category/3/80/49/. At one point he considered writing a proper bio for this book but figured it would be too hard, and then he realized it was supposed to be done first person, not third person, all too confusing. And yes, he did write the 1.0 to 1.5 migrator, and yes, he still has a 1.0 site.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I was working at Toowoomba Regional Council (previously Toowoomba City Council) as a school-based apprentice. As a part of that I was actually located in the Strategic Planning department (almost an oxymoron for local government, but it existed) and was working on a “Safer Communities” Web site and forum. The forum used phpBB2 and didn’t particularly pick up, but I ran into a fellow called Andrew Eddie who was from the Information Management Branch. After a while, I shifted from working within Strategic Planning to working with Andrew within IMB, and from there I started working with Mambo and the various items. From there I participated in Summer of Code for Mambo in 2005, which turned into Joomla!, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: In addition to Joomla!, I strongly promote a wide variety of open source projects. To me it represents the ability to pick up high-quality software that meets a need and deploy it for the purposes that I need. I feel with open source software you get the choice of picking the best option out there. My previous employer, the University of Southern Queensland, uses a significant amount of open source. In my time there, I have worked with Moodle (the PHP learning management system), EPrints (a Perl-based institutional repository tool), VuFind (a PHP/Solr-powered discovery layer and search tool), and Mahara (portfolio software). My desktop at one stage ran Ubuntu, and Eclipse is my primary IDE for work either at home or in the office regardless of platform. Personally I run a wiki powered by MediaWiki, my blog actually runs WordPress, and of course I have Joomla! for my main Web sites. The advantage I find is that when I find a bug or an issue with any of these systems, I have the source code to fix or improve it. Typically these systems predominantly support a plugin infrastructure, which means adding improvements is a lot easier and better supported than on other proprietary platforms. At the moment I’m running up some new software a division of my university has produced that is open source and provides a different way of searching and sharing information.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: For the longest time, and perhaps even now, I have a hard time believing just how popular and widespread Joomla! has become. I came from a different perspective where I missed a lot of the news about Joomla! because in some respects I was already there. I came to Joomla! through a completely different route than I believe anyone has ever done or perhaps will ever do again. So for me, the most exciting part is actually discovering all of these people not only using Joomla! but also using my extensions and seeing just how global the community is, seeing how big the world has grown around Joomla!, and seeing just how awesome everyone else is. In my way, I contribute in the little things that are out of sight and out of mind; it’s how I prefer to work. I have a few extensions that I’ve developed since 1.0 that I keep on working on, mostly stuff I find useful that I feel the rest of the world might find useful as well. Nothing earth-shattering, just useful.
Q: What prompted the creation of the Joomla! Bug Squad?
A: A lack of pies. The Dutch don’t have pies like the Australians do, and Wilco Jansen needed an excuse to visit Australia. I think it may have nearly killed him (something about having a pie at 3 a.m. in the morning; personally I find that’s exactly when you want a pie after you’ve drunk too much), but one of the first things I did when Wilco came to visit Australia was to get him a pie at a pie shop on the side of a highway in almost the middle of nowhere.
In all seriousness, Wilco was the driving force behind the Bug Squad. JBS was his drive to create an entity within Joomla! that effectively and efficiently handled bugs within the system, handled the stabilization of the product, and was open and accessible.
Q: How do you think the Joomla! Bug Squad has benefited the project?
A: JBS is a place where almost any skill set is required: it needs people to test things, not only the bugs themselves to confirm them but also the fixes that are developed, and it needs the people to make those fixes and the changes to the system that make them work. As such, the Joomla! Bug Squad is a great entry point for the project. It is a place where it doesn’t matter if you can’t put in much time because every little bit works, and the infrastructure is designed that way. Find a bug, do what you can do on it (confirm it, fix it, or test a patch), and contribute your thoughts. This has led to a lot of squished bugs and perhaps some of the most stable software around.
Q: Outside of maintaining the stable releases, has the Joomla! Bug Squad affected other areas of the project such as in core development?
A: Bug Squad is a good entry point for the project to help people grow into different roles. For some, Bug Squad has meant that they’ve risen all the way to development coordinators (yes, I’m looking at you, Mark and Ian). Bug Squad is a great place to get to know the environment, is a great place to learn the code, and can be a great launching pad into the different areas of the project. This has meant we’ve picked up developers for the core of the product who have improved it and work on different aspects (particularly unit testing) that help us make great software quicker.
Q: What is bug squashing, and why does the Joomla! Project organize Bug Squashing Events such as Pizza, Bugs, and Fun (PBF)?
A: Bug squashing is what JBS exists to do. We have bugs, like all software, and they need to be fixed. The process is rather aptly called squashing bugs. We try to do collaborative bug squashing because getting people together is a great way to be productive and get instant feedback and something you can aim to set time aside for. Pizza is involved because you can’t have a software event without pizza; it has to be some form of geek rule. But pizza is also there so that we can get people to be sociable; I’ve never met a geek who will turn down a free pizza, and talking over pizza is always an interesting thing. The fun bit is rather obvious. You need to enjoy what you’re doing; otherwise, it becomes like work. Bugs, fortunately for us and unfortunately for them, are the losing party in the whole equation: not only do they not get pizza or fun, but they hopefully don’t exist by the end of the event.
Q: What is the tracker, and how do people report bugs?
A: The tracker lives on JoomlaCode.org at this big ugly URL (http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/), and basically it has this equally ugly form where you have options you have absolutely no idea about; if you click them in the right order, you get a magical prize. Nobody has yet worked out the right combination, not even me, and I’m the JoomlaCode administrator! So, the tracker is where Joomla! stores its bugs, feature requests, and all sorts of other things we should keep track of in the long term. There is a tracker for each release of Joomla! (1.0, 1.5, 2.5, and currently 3), and this is where bugs are reported for each release. Reporting a bug is a matter of working through the submission screen; it really is scarier than it looks. You don’t need to get it all right the first time. Just answer as best you can (and no, you won’t be examined on it later) and describe with as much detail as possible the steps to replicate the problem. The hardest thing about bug squashing is trying to replicate the bug (particularly the tricky ones), so the little details of what you clicked in what order can make the difference. There is obviously a bit more to it, but check out http://docs.joomla.org/Filing_bugs_and_issues, and there are some more details on how to report new bugs.
Q: What are the criteria for joining the Joomla! Bug Squad?
A: There are really no major criteria for joining the JBS; you just rock up, put in some time, follow the procedures, and have fun. Anyone can join the JBS, and there is no particular limitation. JBS welcomes people who are starting with Joomla! who perhaps want a place they can explore issues, and believe me, replicating bugs is always a great way to learn how a system works. Anyone can be a tester and either confirm issues or test patches and give feedback; no special programming skill required. Of course, the people with those coder skills who perhaps aren’t all that familiar with Joomla! can jump into JBS and for the same reasons as before: nothing teaches you a system better than trying to dig through a system to find a bug. And sometimes you need a hand, and that’s where the experience in the JBS comes in. JBS is a friendly place to ask the questions and get them answered so that you can improve your knowledge of Joomla! even more.
Marijke Stuivenberg, Translation Coordinator, Open Source Matters Board—Internationalization
I was born and raised and still live in Enschede, a city in the eastern part of the Netherlands right near the border of Germany. I’m a musician by profession; I studied at the Conservatory of Twente and Maastricht in the Netherlands. In daily life I teach children and grownups to play the saxophone and play in an orchestra. Since I learned about Joomla! in 2006, I got more and more involved in the Dutch and the international Joomla! community. I am a cofounder of the Dutch JoomlaCommunity (joomlacommunity.eu) and Stichting Sympathy, the Dutch organization that supports and promotes open source and Joomla! in particular in the Dutch language area.
Q: What prompted your interest in and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: At the time the computer and Internet started to be a part of my life (and home) I also began experimenting with creating Web sites for all kind of purposes. Curiosity and wanting more and more each time, especially when I was searching for a good way to present my genealogy, resulted in my first domain name and a Web hosting account with PHP support and . . . Installatron. Yes, my first Joomla! install was with Installatron. I believe that was also the last time I installed it that way. Of course, not only Joomla! could be installed with that tool, and I’m sure I tried all the software that was in the package. Joomla! clearly was the winner for me, and after all these years I haven’t regretted that for a moment. On the contrary, it brought much more into my life than just a tool that I was looking for.
Q: How important is it to you to use open source software? Open source has grown tremendously in recent years; what has this growth meant to you?
A: To be honest, before I learned about Joomla! I didn’t give it much thought. I knew the term and for me open source software was just related to software that’s free. Together with getting more and more involved in Joomla!, I’m glad I learned so much more about open source. Today I’m much more considerate and aware of choosing the software I want to work with. Software is not simply just a tool where you choose to pay or not in order to use it. I’ve learned a great deal about licenses, the people behind the software, and the creation of it. But even much more important to me is what I’ve learned about the idealism behind it. A project that is driven by passionate people all over the world, working and learning together with a vision to share all they learned and know, seems the best investment to me. So if there is an open source solution that fits my needs, to me the choice is easy if by simply using open source software I support this vision.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. What for you is the most exciting part of being involved? How do you contribute to the community?
A: At the moment I am active as the coordinator of the Dutch Translation Team, member and one of the coordinators of the Joomla! Translation Teams, Bug Squad member and leader of the testing team, member of the JSST (Joomla! Security Strike Team), and OSM board member. In 2008 I was one of the founders of the Dutch JoomlaCommunity of which I am still one of the managers. In 2011 this resulted also in founding an organization, named Stichting Sympathy, of which I am the secretary. Globally my activities can be divided in two parts, the part where I contribute in the development and improvement of the software itself and the part where I contribute in the organization and leadership of the project. Both parts to me are exciting, and it still amazes me from time to time how my daily life and profession are influenced by the experiences in the project while at the same time I use the experience I have in my profession for the Joomla! community. I think this interaction is the most interesting part of being involved.
Q: Why are you so passionate about making sure that Joomla! supports all languages?
A: Well, the answer to that is easy. If we have a vision to make software available to everyone, translations are very important. Even though English is considered a world language, in fact the number of people speaking and understanding English is not the biggest part of the world. There are some interesting figures available on the Internet about that.
Since Joomla! is all about Web sites, it’s even more important that Joomla! support all languages, not just for users who develop or design Web sites with the software but also for visitors to a Web site.
It’s good to see that in development there’s also good progress in making Joomla! translatable in the best possible way. Translators often face the difficulty of how to make the best translation that is functional but also respects the language’s grammar. It’s such a pity to see how a good piece of software becomes degraded just because the translation looks bad.
When I started using Joomla! version 1.0, only a translation for the front end was available. Getting a time and date displayed on the front end in the right way needed a good study, and you’d prefer to avoid using UTF-8 characters on the Web site. Since Joomla! version 1.5 this has already improved hugely; together with UTF-8 support, the back end could be translated, and there even was a way to provide translated Help screens on the back end. I think that translating documentation is also an important part. If people can read in their own language how to use the software, it will make it easier for them to use it in all the ways it can be used.
Joomla! 2.5 also brought new improvements for translators; the pluralization functions, transliteration, and of course the feature of a multilingual Web site are important improvements that will only make Joomla! look more professional and become more popular for non-English countries and people.
Q: Can you tell us more about the Translation Teams and how they work?
A: The Joomla! Translation Teams provide the translations for the Joomla! core. At the moment there are about 64 Translation Teams involved. Some teams consist of only one person; other teams have more members. At least one member of every team is present in the Joomla! Translation Teams Working Group. Each team organizes the translations in its own way, some using SVN on JoomlaCode, some using Web-based translation tools, and in some cases they have set up their own environment to work together on the translations.
The members of the Translation Working Group have contact via a Skype group and a private forum. On this forum they are informed by the Translation Coordination Team on upcoming releases and the changes that are related to the new releases. They also provide in some cases translated release notes on their own Web sites. Occasionally they are asked to help translate important blog posts so non-English users are informed about important issues in their own language and are encouraged to participate in discussions.
Q: You are very involved with the Dutch Joomla! community. What is that community like? Why is it important for there to be different language communities participating in Joomla!?
A: The Dutch community joomlacommunity.eu intends to be a platform for everything related to Joomla! in the Dutch language. This community was founded in 2008, providing news articles, documentation, a Dutch distribution of Joomla!, translations for many extensions, and a support forum. A team of approximately 25 Joomla! hobbyists and professionals from the Netherlands and Belgium ensure on a voluntary basis the continuity of the community. In 2009 the community started to organize the Joomla! User Groups in the Netherlands and Belgium. Today there are 15 active JUGs spread all over the Dutch area; most of them have monthly meetings. This is forming a strong base for the Dutch community which also results in growing attendance at the Dutch Joomla! Days that have been organized since 2006. In 2011 Stichting Sympathy was founded, a nonprofit organization that supports and promotes Joomla! in the Dutch language. The board currently consists of six persons. In addition to facilitating the Dutch community it organizes the annual Joomla! Days.
The existence of different language communities is important since joomla.org is mainly in the English language. Although many Dutch can understand the language, a significant group feels more confident finding everything in their own language and being able to participate in their own language. The international Joomla! Project is very large, and finding the right channels, the right places, and the right people in the project in order to participate can be a challenge if you do not feel confident enough in the English language. Starting out in a local community can be a way to finally also participate in the international community. I experienced that myself when starting to translate and participate in the Dutch translation team, then little by little found my way in the international project. Now I point people from the Dutch community to the right channels and help them get involved.
Q: What do you think the future is for internationalization of Joomla! and the Joomla! community?
A: I am happy that there is a large interest of the Leadership Team in internationalization overall. During the last Leadership Team’s summit we discussed this in several sessions. Although Joomla! is an international project, there is not much really organized or documented on internationalization. Only the Translation Teams are organized, but the project can do a much better job by reaching out and trying to get more interaction with local communities. This can result in a bigger community from where we can recruit more people for volunteer work in the project.
Since the summit in San Jose in 2011 a group has started to create an oversight of all local organizations, local communities, Joomla! Days, and JUGs in every part of the world. The next steps will be getting in contact with them and learning about their needs and ideas and helping them lessen the challenges to participation in the project. I think there is a huge resource of skills and talents in these non-English areas that the project can benefit from. Today the project is still mainly English oriented. I hope that in the next years we will see more diverse participation in the teams and the overall community.
Ian MacLennan, Platform Maintainer—Securing Your Site
I have been involved with the Joomla! Project in a variety of capacities, most recently as a maintainer of the Joomla! Platform Project.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I first discovered Joomla! while working on a Web site for a nonprofit for which my wife was the executive director. As I was building the site, there was one thing of which I was quite certain: I didn’t want to have to be doing all the updates for the content. So, I took my knowledge of PHP and began to write a simple application that would make it easy for her and her staff to make the edits themselves.
I invested a good deal of effort into this pursuit and ended up with a feature-poor rudimentary solution. Somewhere around the time I was beginning to build on and develop new features, I stumbled across an application called Mambo. As I investigated, I discovered that it did just about everything I was hoping to do right out of the box, and there were extensions available to make it easy to do the rest. It was written in PHP, which was a language I was already familiar with. It seemed like a no-brainer decision. Several years later, here I am.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: Open source software is a part of my daily life. I have some flavor of Linux installed on every computer I own. I use Linux because it just works. It gets out of the way and lets me get the job done. Also, as a Web application developer, it makes sense because the Internet runs on Linux. It is what the majority of Web sites (and especially Joomla!) are running on.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: I find being part of the Joomla! community exciting for a number of reasons. First, it is exciting to be a part of producing software that is used by a significant number of people. I take pride in doing the best I can to help create something that is stable and useful to many people.
I have also thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to work alongside very talented people. I have learned far more than I have contributed.
During my time with Joomla! I have contributed in a variety of ways. My first area of significant involvement was with the developer documentation team. This was an incredible opportunity for me to really dig into the Joomla! code and to understand the framework.
I moved on from there to become a member of the Joomla! Bug Squad. I transitioned through there to become a member of the Development Working Group and was then invited to become a member of the Production Leadership Team.
While no longer a member of the Production Leadership Team, I still serve as a Joomla! Platform Maintainer, providing guidance and direction for the development of the Joomla! Platform.
At the core, though, the most exciting part about being a part of the Joomla! Project is the opportunity to work on interesting problems and come up with interesting solutions—whether it be rewriting a library, implementing new features, or improving reliability or flexibility—the thrill is in solving new problems in new ways.
Q: You were previously a member of the Joomla! Security Strike Team. What are some of the main security issues that you are concerned about?
A: The JSST works hard to ensure that Joomla! is secure. We take all reported vulnerabilities seriously. Obviously, vulnerabilities that are more severe in their impact or are particularly easy to exploit are considered most urgent.
Q: What is the right way for someone to respond if their site is attacked?
A: The best way to proceed is to follow the security checklist that is hosted on http://docs.joomla.org. If a site administrator does not feel that they have the necessary qualifications to ensure their site is safe, it is recommended that they find a professional who is able to do this.
Q: What should someone do if they discover a Joomla! security problem?
A: If somebody discovers a vulnerability in Joomla!, they should report it to the JSST. JSST is a member of oCERT and strives to adhere to the prescribed guidelines and reporting practices.
Q: Do you have any other tips for keeping a Joomla! site safe?
A: In my experience, the two most important things in keeping a Joomla! site safe are a trustworthy, knowledgeable host and using extensions from reputable vendors.
The first especially is often overlooked. If the site is intended for e-commerce of any sort or plays a mildly critical role in an organization, it should at least be on a VPS (virtual private server) or a dedicated server. It is often tempting to choose a host based on price alone or to opt for a host that offers unlimited disk space or unlimited data transfer. It isn’t necessarily the case that the most expensive host is the best host, but oftentimes the cheapest is too cheap. On shared hosts there are certain server configurations that are more secure than others. Finding a host that knows how to properly configure a server is essential. Also, it may be tempting to try and save money by managing your own server or even hosting a server on your premises. Unless you really have expertise and knowledge in this area, I would strongly advise against it.
Using extensions from reputable vendors is also very important. There are currently almost 10,000 extensions in the Joomla! Extensions Directory. Unfortunately, some are better than others. Look for extensions that are heavily downloaded and are reviewed well. If possible, get the code audited by somebody who is aware of the principles of Web security.
Sometimes, no matter how many precautions you take with choosing a good host and choosing good extensions, your site can still get hacked. For this reason, it is important to have a system in place to take backups of your site so that if something does go wrong, you can recover anything that was lost.
Q: As the Developer Documentation lead and then as the lead for the Joomla! Bug Squad, you’ve taught a lot of us how to code. What do you think is the best way for someone who wants to learn more about Joomla! development to learn?
A: The answer to this question really depends on what somebody wants to achieve and what their background is. That being said, one of the best ways to learn how to code is to find a good tutorial that introduces you to the basics of computer programming (that is, control structures, conditionals, data types, and so on). It’s also important to learn the basic principles of object-oriented programming.
From there, the best way to learn how to code is often to study good code. There is a great deal to learn by inspecting the core code and by inspecting the code of third-party extensions.
Q: You’re a Maintainer for the Joomla! Platform. What does that involve?
A: My role as a Joomla! Platform Maintainer is primarily to provide big-picture oversight to the Platform Project. This includes providing input into decisions as to what approach to take with a particular package and what general direction the Platform is heading in. More day-to-day duties include reviewing code submissions and where possible/appropriate providing advice to contributors as to how submissions could be improved.
Q: Joomla! really has two separate projects, the Joomla! CMS and the Joomla! Platform. What does that mean for application developers?
A: The Joomla! Platform evolved out of the Joomla! framework, which powered Joomla! 1.5. This framework did not spring to life in a vacuum. Although it was a general-purpose framework and was much more flexible than the set of libraries that lived underneath Joomla! 1.0, it was still developed and conceived with the needs of the CMS in mind. The JApplication class had hard-coded references to the site and administrator platform. The Document package was built around the preexisting concept of modules. The notion of modules and component and plugins as extension types was brought into the framework because it fit with what was done in Joomla! 1.0.
While all of these decisions were probably good decisions if you want to write a CMS, they don’t necessarily fit with general PHP applications. Launching the Platform provides the opportunity to extend the underlying libraries in a direction that makes it more suitable for a larger variety of applications.
This has a few implications. First of all, it means that if you are writing an application on the Joomla! Platform, there is more flexibility in solving your design challenges in a way that makes sense for your particular application. You aren’t forced to try and fit the mold of the CMS.
Second, it also serves to push the CMS to extend its boundaries. While a large portion of the CMS market consists of typical brochure-type sites, or subscription-based sites, which have largely owner-generated content, the Web is increasingly becoming a participatory and immersive experience. More and more people are using Joomla! to build sites that don’t fit into this box. The increased flexibility in the Platform will make it easier to use the CMS to build these types of sites.
Q: What kinds of applications have you built on the Platform?
A: The most notable and widely used application that I have built on the Platform is the Pulltester. My involvement with aspects of the project related to unit testing and continuous integration led me to wonder how we might make the process easier for contributors and for maintainers. As Platform maintainers, we had no way of knowing if a pull request was going to cause unit test failures, and we had no way of knowing if the submitted code complied with the coding standards. Ideally contributors would check all of these things before they open a pull request, but the extra obstacle can sometimes discourage contributors, and in any event, we have no way of knowing if they actually did run the tests or not.
I then stumbled across the GitHub API. This spurred the idea of retrieving data from GitHub relating to the code contributions that have been submitted and automatically testing the code both for failed unit tests and for coding standard violations. The results of these checks then get published for the benefit of both contributors to see errors in code submissions and maintainers to verify that contributions meet all the validation checks.
The end result was a new library for the Platform for interfacing with GitHub, and the introduction of the JHttp package for interfacing with Web services.
Ron Severdia, Production Leadership Team and Creative Director at Kontent Design—Building a Great Site
I’m the Creative Director at Kontent Design in the San Francisco Bay Area where we provide Joomla!-based solutions for a variety of mainly corporate clients. I’m also CCO of Metrodigi where we’re building a Joomla!-based conversion tool for e-books. I’ve been on the Joomla! Leadership Team since 2009, though “orbiting” around the project since 2005.
Q: What prompted your interest in and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I wanted to put together a Web site about Shakespeare (one of my passions), and I was not looking forward to the daunting task of putting together his complete works in a “flat” Web site. So I started looking into content management systems that would better handle thousands of pages of plays, characters, et cetera. I discovered Joomla! right after the fork from Mambo happened in 2005. Being a total newbie to the CMS world, it was a real dilemma at that time which one to choose. I’m happy to say I bet on the right horse and it changed my life.
Q: How important is it to you to use open source software? Open source has grown tremendously in recent years; what has this growth meant to you?
A: Open source software has become an integral part of my business and, with my Web site, part of my personal life as well. So I could say that it’s everywhere I turn. Coming from a more corporate professional background, there was a fair amount of reticence in the past. But the importance of open source has grown for me over the years because of my direct daily exposure. The growth in use of open source software is a great boon for all projects, large and small, and it shows it’s not something to be feared—it should be embraced.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. What for you is the most exciting part of being involved? How do you contribute to the community?
A: There are many exciting reasons to be involved. The overarching one is the feeling that you’re contributing to something that is helping millions of people all over the world accomplish what they couldn’t otherwise do (or do as well). The words contribute and community will get you a number of different definitions depending on whom you ask, but I try and contribute to the community by running the Joomla! Site Showcase, designed and built a generation of Joomla.org Web sites, contributed to extensions such as Kunena, and I’ve taken on the task of helping third-party Joomla! developers move to the GPL for their software. My latest endeavor is to improve the usability of Joomla! with the new Joomla! User Experience (JUX) project.
Q: One of the things that you do for the Joomla! community is lead the Site Showcase team. What is the selection process for being included in the Site Showcase? What are some of the common elements of the best sites being showcased? How can people use Site Showcase to help make their own sites better?
A: The idea of the showcase originated out of a personal need. I needed good-looking, high-profile Joomla! sites to show potential clients and convince them Joomla! was a viable solution (open source in the corporate world has become somewhat easier, but marginally). I had only a handful of sites, and clients wanted to see stuff that was more specific to them (for example, a financial company wants to see an example of another financial company of relative size using Joomla! before they jump in). This was hard to do, so I just put together the showcase. It’s a win-win for the community because site owners get to show off their work, and potential customers/users get to see it in action in a variety of circumstances. People building their own Web site can browse around and get ideas as well.
The selection process is pretty simple. A user submits a Web site (it doesn’t even have to be their own, though that’s most common), and the team makes sure it’s a good representation of Joomla! While that’s somewhat subjective, we’ve become more selective lately in turning down gambling sites or sites overwhelmed with Google AdSense. Some of them are pretty ugly, but we try to be somewhat objective and not force our tastes on the community (except when choosing the Site of the Month).
Q: What advice do you have for users about how to make a beautiful and effective site?
A: That’s a difficult question to answer because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But there are some broad concepts that apply to just about everyone. Design your Web site in the simplest way possible in order to make it easy for your users to find what they are looking for. For those new to design, try an online color picker to come up with a pleasing color scheme so your site isn’t too garish.
Test, test, test. Try some task analysis where you pick a few things a user would commonly do on your Web site and ask someone to do those things while you watch. You can learn a lot by seeing where people stumble. Then change or fix the problem and test again (and again) until you get it right. If you do this enough times, you start to understand how people think and navigate and you can pretty intuitively solve problems before they even start.
Q: You built and run www.playshakespeare.com. Please tell us about the site, why you built it, and who visits it.
A: PlayShakespeare.com is a free resource for Shakespeareans which runs the gamut from a kid reading him for the first time, to a theater professional performing his plays, and including the serious Shakespeare scholar. We have a team of reviewers from all over the world writing reviews of performances and a pretty lively community of people sharing ideas, thoughts, and experiences. It’s really great to see those with more experience helping those who are experiencing the plays for the first time.
Q: What advice do you have for people who want to make a Web site on a subject they are passionate about?
A: Well, that’s the first ingredient: passion. If you’re not passionate about the subject, don’t even bother. It needs to drive you. I think creativity is an important ingredient. There are plenty of Shakespeare Web sites out there, but you should think about what makes your site special and different. A discussion forum? A document library? These are things that differentiated my Web site. A good approach I picked up early on was browsing the Joomla! Extensions Directory and trying to fit each extension into a context of Shakespeare. Some of the combinations were just crazy, but by juxtaposing two unrelated ideas, you might come up with a brilliant new idea for your site nobody has even thought of yet. That kind of open creativity can help you take your Web site to places you never dreamed possible.
Elin Waring, Joomla! Contributor—Trademark and Licensing
In my work life I am a professor of sociology at Lehman College, City University of New York. I teach sociology and do research on white-collar crime, organized crime, and social networks. I have also been president of the board of Open Source Matters, the nonprofit organization that handles legal, financial, and organizational matters for the Joomla! Project, as well as a board member. I am an active community and code contributor.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I was actually part of the Mambo community, so I have been with Joomla! since the beginning. I was someone who hand-built Web sites for a long time. As long as I was doing it myself and the sites were small, that was fine, and I learned a lot of HTML and then CSS (yes, there was a time before CSS). But at some point, some of the sites started to get bigger and more complex, and I also wanted to turn over day-to-day management of them to other people. I really found that the way most of the systems for implementing site templates and WYSIWYG Web page creation produced unsatisfactory code, and there was no way my users were going to understand them or be able to afford the software. Then someone told me about this thing called a content management system, and I was off and running. I looked at all the major open source ones available at that time (this was probably late 2004 or early 2005) and ended up with Mambo. It was the easiest to set up and had by far the friendliest and most active community.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: I use open source software as much as I can, but I’m not always going to reject a closed product just on that basis. For Web applications, I have always been able to find good open source solutions; on the desktop, I think it is a lot harder to do that, although the situation is getting better. I think that open source produces better code. Having all of those thousands of people looking at the code pushes it to be better, and that means there is continuous improvement. With closed code, you really have no idea what the quality of the code is. You also have to wait for releases to get the changes you want. With open source, you have the ability to open up the files and make changes. And if you come up with a good solution, you can contribute it to the community so your solution becomes the standard or you can just keep it to yourself.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: Well, I’ve been active in most parts of the project at one time or another. I started off as an active forum user and answering lots of questions. Because of that I was asked to work on the creation of Frequently Asked Questions, so that was documentation plus I got to join the forum moderator community. Later I got involved in OSM, so I spent a fair amount of time working in areas like licensing and trademark as well as financial management. And somehow or other along the way, I was one of the people who helped start the Joomla! Bug Squad, so I’ve done some development, too.
To me the Joomla! community is absolutely amazing. It’s people from all over the world, of all different ages and backgrounds, all helping out just because they can, really. Right from the beginning I was amazed at how people would help me do the things I wanted to do with my sites. I still feel that way. The Bug Squad has been amazing with how it works as a team to solve issues. The camaraderie is fantastic. I’ve also been lucky enough to go to a bunch of in-person Joomla! events, and they always are a lot of fun because the people are a lot of fun.
Q: Joomla! is an open source project licensed under the GPL version 2 or later. Can you explain what the GPL license is and how it is beneficial to users for Joomla! to have this license?
A: First, let’s say what a license is. A license tells you the terms under which you may use a copyrighted work, in this case a piece of software called Joomla! The official name is the GNU GPL, and it has three basic versions plus some variations; Joomla! uses version 2, which allows it to be changed to version 3 or later.
The most important things about the GNU GPL are the four freedoms that the copyright owners (in this case the developers of the software) give you. They are the freedom to run the program, to study it, to modify it, and to share it. But those freedoms come with a major condition, which is that if you do share, you have to pass the exact same rights on to the people you share with. That is, they have the rights to run, study, modify, and share as long as they pass on the same rights to others. And so on into infinity.
This is a great license for software, because it encourages users to improve the code. It allows them to open up the files and fix bugs or improve the code and to share their improvements with other people. It lets thousands of people build extensions for Joomla! to do all kinds of interesting and useful things and to distribute those extensions. It lets other people make specialized distributions. They don’t need to ask permission; as long as they follow the license, they can do whatever they want. It let Joomla! exist, because it was what allowed the fork from Mambo back in 2005. If something ever happened to the Joomla! Project, the GPL will let other people pick up the application and continue to develop it.
Q: There is a significant third-party developer community involved with the Joomla! Project. How has the Joomla! ecosystem been influenced by their contributions?
A: Joomla! would not be the world’s most popular content management system without the third-party developer community. Joomla! is unique among content management systems in terms of the sheer size of its retail economy of plug-and-play extensions. Some of them are simple (I have released simple extensions, although for no cost), and some are incredibly complex.
Q: What are some of the most common incorrect assumptions people make about GPL-licensed software?
A: Probably the biggest misunderstanding is that “free” software has to be given away for no cost. Freedom in software means that you have the ability to run, examine, modify, and share code, not that people have to give away their work for free. Free software would not be the powerful force that it is if developers were not able to earn a living out of it. So, even though Joomla! is free of cost, we’re happy that there is a commercial GPL community around it that consists of people building new and exciting extensions to the Joomla! core.
People also sometimes think that they have to keep the “Powered by Joomla!” message visible on their sites. While we appreciate that, it’s not required. What you can’t do is remove the copyright or licensing information from the source files (all those PHP and other files that make up the Joomla! application) if you share them with someone else.
People are always sending me e-mails because they have seen Joomla! being rebranded under another name. That’s perfectly fine with GPL software as long as you don’t remove the copyright and licensing information from the source code. Again, as a project, we appreciate it when people credit the work, but it is not required.
Q: Can you explain what the Free Software Foundation is and how it assists open source projects?
A: The Free Software Foundation is a nonprofit organization in Boston that was founded by Richard Stallman, the author of the original GNU GPL. Today the FSF is centrally involved in the continued development of the GPL (such as writing GPL version 3) and related licenses and with general software advocacy. Their Web site is a good place to learn more about free software issues in general. They also have a really strong compliance staff that works with software projects and copyright holders to ensure compliance with the GPL. They also answer a lot of questions from developers and the public.
Q: What are some of the most important things someone should take into account when trademarking their logo or brand?
A: The most important things are to come up with a unique name and image that create a good impression for potential customers around the world. It is vital that it does not infringe on anyone else’s trademark. This is actually a lot harder than people think, because you have to check not just for the name itself but for similar names and compounds. If you are just starting out and can’t afford professional help, at least do some searching in the U.S. and European Union trademark databases, although that still leaves a lot of the world uncovered.
One thing I’d recommend against is using the Joomla! name in a product, business, or site name. OSM will most likely give you permission to do that, but you will never be able to register the trademark for the name because it would conflict with the Joomla! trademark. And OSM does not guarantee that your name will be unique.
Q: What steps can people take to protect their logo, license, or brand?
A: In terms of licensing, there are two areas people using Joomla! need to think about.
First, think about your site content. If you are writing it or doing art, you have the copyright. Let’s assume you’re doing all the creative work. Make sure you have a clear statement of what you do and do not want to allow people to do with your content. If you want to let people use your content, do that with a license such as one of the ones from Creative Commons, which will protect your rights. Do not just say, “Do whatever you want with it.” That will come back to haunt you in the future when someone starts claiming your work is actually theirs. If your site is really successful, you may want to reuse it or publish a book based on it or do something else. Definitely know your rights under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and enforce them. If other people are contributing, you need to make it clear what the copyright terms are. For example, are you allowed to reuse their work? Are other people? It’s best to make things clear up front.
If you are building a Joomla! extension, you should of course use the GPL license, and you should make sure you understand what people can and cannot do with your code. Also, make sure that you work to build a strong brand identity so that people will want to come to you for the extension, not another site. Also, know your rights if anyone takes your code and incorporates it in a proprietary application. The Free Software Foundation and Software Freedom Law Center may be able to help you if that happens.
Also, if you do choose to use a non-GPL application, make sure you also understand your rights there. For example, if a product violates the Joomla! terms, that does not give you the right to violate the license terms under which it was distributed. That is because you are (most likely) not a copyright holder in the Joomla! code base. They are the ones whose rights are violated when people violate the Joomla! license.
In terms of trademark, I think this is an extremely important area that people neglect early on. If you are providing any kind of trade or service, it is important to build a strong brand identity. That means having a clear, well-chosen, and unique name and also probably a logo.
I definitely recommend filing for at least basic trademark protection in one class in your home country and the country where your largest group of customers is as soon as you are sure you have a brand or logo that you will stick with. It’s an investment, but if you are successful at building a good brand, you will be glad you took care of that early. Even if you don’t register the trademark, make sure that you use the trademark symbol and put a trademark notice somewhere on your site. Also, publish rules for use of your trademark, because if you don’t protect the mark, you will lose it. Make sure that anyone who uses your trademark has your permission even if it is just filling out a simple form.
One powerful thing about a trademark is that it is a basis for filing a complaint with a host if someone is distributing copies of your software using your trademark. Since most warez sites operate by providing copies of software people are looking for, having to use a different name makes them much less effective.
Wendy Robinson, Rochen Ltd.—Creating Your Brand
I’ve been a Web designer and graphic artist for the past five years and an artist in various forms for as long as I can recall. I think my interest in branding and logo design began in the eighties when my parents owned a local print shop. I’d spend hours poring over clip art books and designing my own notepads and cards on the floor of the shop. This spawned in me an obsession with aesthetics from colours to spacing to patterns. From there, it’s just something that never left me and has proven quite useful in my Web/graphic career. I have volunteered for the Joomla! Project for the past seven years, most recenly as a member of the Community Leadership Team.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I had just a little bit of experience with HTML/CSS when I wanted to build my first Web site for my photography. Because coding something like a photo gallery was way beyond my experience level at the time, I began to research software solutions. I tried out a few different free CMSs before finding Joomla! In the end, it was simply the best solution for my needs at the time. Four years later it is something that I use daily.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: Yes. Most of what I use is open source, including my operating system and the majority of my photo and graphics software. The reason why is mostly that it allows me the freedom of choice. With OS software, if you want to contribute or build upon something to suit your needs or make it better, you’re free to do so as long as you abide by the license. That is not an option with proprietary software. Affordability is also a factor for me. I’m happier to pay a modest amount of money or make a donation to be able to use something that has potential to evolve than I am to shell out a large amount of money for something I have no say in or way of contributing to. The way I see it, open source is just more flexible. I don’t understand how anyone could not want a choice.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: I think the Joomla! community is diverse in both its culture and its levels of user/developer experience. That is what I feel makes it so great. I’ve held a number of positions as a community member. Most recently I have served on the Open Source Matters board, have been a forum global moderator and administrator, and have helped launch the Joomla! Resources Directory as an editor.
Q: Can you guide us through the thought process you go through when you are creating a brand for a client?
A: I usually start with asking people what their aim is for their Web site/product and who their target audience is. I also request a list of logos/brands or Web sites they identify with as a consumer as well as whether they have any strong dislikes. From there I create three or four concepts for them to review, usually from completely different visual takes (for example, corporate versus minimalist). Once we find a comfortable ground, I do another three or four concepts of their preferred style and reduce from there with the client’s feedback until we find a winner.
Q: What is the top piece of advice you would give to someone trying to design their own logo/brand?
A: Keep it simple, use clean lines, and make sure it’s a design that will look clear in black-and-white print.
Q: What are the three most common mistakes people can make in regard to their logo or brand identity?
A: Sometimes people make their design too personal. A brand should reach out to an intended target group, and you need something that creates an instant visual to obtain a buy-in from your audience. Your logo for your new Web site about running shoes should not be a sketch of your childhood dog because you used to take it for runs in the park. Nobody can relate to that but you.
I see way too many clichés in branding. I feel it is paramount in building a strong brand to make sure that your design is clean and classic. You shouldn’t have to update it in a year. For example, one branding concept that I am really bored with is the [company name] trend (your name in square brackets). I think it is great to stay current with trends, and it is wise to implement them in your colours and shading and the more subtle aspects of the design. I do not think that trends should be applied too literally, though, and because they change so often these days, you can be sure your logo will be outdated in no time.
Not only as a designer but also as a person with an astigmatism, I have a real problem with logos or brands that use too much colour or pattern, especially on the Web. A design should be readable without your having to blink a few times to focus on it. If your logo isn’t clear when converted into black and white, you should rethink it.
Q: A Web site is usually just a piece of branding strategy. What are the top three ways a person can leverage their Web site and brand in other areas?
A: Social networks are a rising trend in advertising. Make the best use of sites like Facebook and Twitter for promoting yourself. Also, start using Google Plus if you haven’t already. It is a very convenient way to get your name out there as well as help bring in page impressions to your Web site.
Blog. Pick topics that you are well informed about and write about them. If you have a real passion for something, people will pick up on that and really listen to what you have to say, and focus on what you have to write. Alternatively, they’ll be able to tell if you’re faking it. So, know your subject well! Tweet (Twitter) your blogs, and tweet the comments to your blogs. Respond to comments quickly and respectfully. Gain interest and trust from your visitors to ensure they return to your Web site.
Get involved locally. Research organizations or clubs in your region that you feel would be a good fit for your company. Attend events and hand out your business cards. If you can, sponsor some events either financially or with services that you offer.
Brad Baker, Rochen Ltd.—Joomla! Hosting
I have been a member of the Rochen team since early 2003, and I am a founding member of the Joomla! open source project. I am currently part of the Joomla! Leadership Team and regularly speak at Joomla! Days around the world on the subject of Joomla! hosting and security. I run and maintain www.joomlatutorials.com as well as my own local Web hosting business, www.xyzulu.com.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: Being on the team that supported Mambo (the project that Joomla! grew from), I was one of the founding members of the Joomla! Project.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: I find the open development often encourages high-quality products due to the ease with which developers can contribute/change code. Often, too, open source software has a much faster release cycle, leading to new features at a much quicker rate than other differently licensed projects.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: The sheer size and scope of the community is exciting to me. As one of the founding members of the project, my contributions are in the infrastructure and hosting support of the Joomla! Project. You’ll usually find me on the Joomla! Community Forum trying to help and educate people.
Q: Rochen is a host that specializes in Joomla! Can you tell us what procedures and setup you have implemented that assist your clients who are using Joomla!?
A: As the host of all the official Joomla! Web sites, we’ve gained a large amount of experience hosting Joomla! sites of all sizes, from small-business sites to enterprise sites receiving tens of millions of page views. We configure all our servers with the optimal security and performance settings for Joomla!, allowing Joomla! to run securely while not limiting functionality. Some security technologies we have deployed include running PHP in CGI mode with su_php, open_basedir, and Apache’s mod_security application firewall. No longer do you need to worry about using the Joomla! FTP layer because our server takes care of your file and folder permissions for you. We have also invested in a revolutionary managed backup system, called Rochen Vault, that allows customers to easily roll their account (including Joomla! install) back to points in time over the past 30 days.
Q: What are some of the most important things someone should take into account when searching for a host?
A: Are their plans realistically priced? Does their server setup provide a balance between ease of use and performance and security for your Web site?
Q: What are some of the most common mistakes people can make when choosing a host?
A: They often choose the cheapest (or free) host they can find, with little regard to site security, backup procedures, and performance.
Q: What is the first piece of advice you can give to people who are completely new to running a Web site in regard to hosting?
A: Do your research. If you want to be equipped to choose a good host, you’ll first need to make yourself aware of some of the technical aspects of a Web hosting environment. Once you’ve gained a basic understanding, you’ll be able to see through the marketing hype of many hosts and be able to make the right choice.
Chris Davenport, Joomla! Production Leadership Team—Finding and Editing Templates
I come from the town of Shrewsbury in the very rural county of Shropshire, one of the most sparsely populated counties in England. Although I started out as a mathematician, I’ve been a software developer on and off for most of the past 30 years. Only in the past decade or so I have been focusing on open source software. Before that I was working on proprietary platforms. Today I’m on the Joomla! Production Leadership Team with particular responsibility for documentation. For my day job I work as a developer for Clickingmad, a local Web design and development company in the picturesque town of Bridgnorth.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I first came across Mambo (the predecessor to Joomla!) in 2003 while looking for a content management system for an intranet project I was working on at the time. I was impressed by the ease with which I could build a working system, and I particularly liked the way in which extensions could be quickly packaged and installed using a Web interface.
After using it for some time, I really wanted to contribute something back to the project and perhaps even help with its development. I noticed that there was almost no developer documentation available, so I started writing notes as I was learning about different parts of the code. Pretty soon I was invited to join the Documentation Team, which I eventually went on to lead, and in November 2006 I was invited to join the Joomla! Core Team.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: My preference is always to use open source software whenever possible. Of course, sometimes I’m forced to use a proprietary product, but nowadays that’s mainly just to do testing to make sure that what I develop works with it. I think there will always be a place for proprietary software, but for the vast majority of software projects, particularly large-scale projects, there is no better way to create software than to use the open source model.
Open source is probably the wrong term to use, though. I should be talking about “free” software, or perhaps “free and open source” software. What makes this kind of software so important and useful is the guarantee of freedom that comes along with it. Being able to look at the source code is just one aspect of that freedom. Free software gives you the freedom to run, copy, and modify the code. You can also pass it on to someone else if you want to, but only if you grant to that person the same freedoms that you were given when you got a copy of the code. I think it encourages everyone to behave more altruistically, but the fun thing is that actually everyone benefits!
I’m constantly surprised to see free software popping up in places I didn’t expect to see it. For example, I recently bought a television from a major Japanese manufacturer and only when I started delving into its menus did I discover that it was running on the Linux operating system. How cool is that? Free software has become part of the fabric of our daily lives without us really noticing it.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: The great thing about a large, active open source project like Joomla! is that people are constantly pushing the software in new directions, and I find myself learning new ideas and techniques all the time. I’ve learned far more about PHP, SQL, HTML/CSS, design patterns, and so on because I’m involved with the project than ever I could from more conventional sources.
I enjoy contributing to the project whenever I can, and it’s exciting to see the work that I’ve done being used by so many people around the world. It’s also fun to see how other people are using Joomla!, and I still enjoy answering the odd question on the forum if I have a spare few minutes. Actually getting to meet Joomla! users and developers in person is even better, and I love going to Joomla! events whenever I can.
Q: What advice would you give someone new to Joomla! regarding finding templates to use on their site?
A: First you need to be aware of your own level of skill, your willingness to learn, and the amount of time you have available.
If you have few HTML/CSS skills but you’re willing to put some time into learning about templates, you can consider modifying an existing template, either one of the ones included in the Joomla! distribution or a template purchased from one of the reputable template clubs. But if you don’t have the time to spend on customising a template yourself, you should be looking to hire a professional to do it for you.
When looking for an off-the-shelf template, you should first and foremost look for something that has the layout you are looking for. Colour schemes are relatively easy to change, and images are relatively easy to replace, but layouts can be really hard to change, even for experienced designers. So, look for a template that has the right arrangement and sizes of images and blocks of text, and ignore the colour scheme to begin with.
Q: What tools would a novice user need to edit a template?
A: There are actually many ways in which you can edit a template, and different people use different methods, so it all depends on finding something that is comfortable for you. It is possible to edit a template using just the Template Manager, and that is probably a good way to get started, although you should be very careful about doing that on a live site. I recommend using a text editor that has an undo feature because you will usually need to try things out and revert changes that don’t work the way you want them to. Sadly, developing in HTML and CSS is more craft than engineering, and you need to be prepared to experiment and learn as you go.
When working with templates, you should always work in the first instance with the Firefox browser and then test against the others, notably Internet Explorer. With time and experience, you will get better at writing CSS that works across browsers with the fewest possible work-arounds for the problems with Internet Explorer.
With Firefox you can install some really useful plugins that help enormously when working with HTML and CSS. In particular, Firebug is absolutely indispensable, and I use Chris Pederick’s Web Developer toolbar quite often too. These are professional tools, and there is a learning curve to using them, but modern Web sites would be almost impossible to build without them.
Q: Is it really true that you don’t have to know coding, HTML, or CSS to use Joomla!? Is it true for editing and creating templates?
A: It’s certainly true that you don’t need to know coding, HTML, or CSS to start and run a successful Joomla! Web site. It’s also true that you can make some types of basic changes to templates with just a little guidance. For example, you should be able to change a logo or an image as long as you keep the image dimensions the same. Creating a template from scratch is definitely a skilled task, though.
Building a template that will work across browsers takes time and experience and considerable attention to detail. But that’s down to the fact that CSS is a difficult standard to work with; it has nothing to do with Joomla!
Q: What are some of the common pitfalls people run across when editing their templates?
A: One of the most common mistakes that newcomers make is to start modifying one of the templates included in the Joomla! distribution without making a backup first. Joomla! is updated periodically, and you’re in danger of losing your changes if you don’t take precautions. If you want to use one of the templates included in the Joomla! distribution, it is best to make a copy of it and then customise the copy. Leave the original template untouched. In Joomla! 1.6 there is a Duplicate button on the toolbar in the Template Manager that makes this a one-click operation.
Another common problem for novices occurs when swapping an image in a template, for example, changing the logo to your own company logo. It’s really important to ensure that the new image has exactly the same dimensions as the one you are replacing. If it doesn’t have the same dimensions, it is highly likely that the layout will break, and fixing layouts is not something that novices are likely to find easy.
Q: Where is the template documentation located, and are there other resources that will help me learn how to create a template or edit my template files?
A: There is an ever-increasing amount of documentation on Joomla! templates in the Joomla! Documentation wiki.
There is also a forum dedicated to helping people with template problems here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=713.
Angie Radke, Principal, Der Auftritt; Accessibility Expert; and Designer of the Beez Templates
Within my communications agency—Der Auftritt (www.der-auftritt.de)—I have been conceiving, designing, and implementing targeted communications solutions together with other colleagues since 1999, primarily in the areas of Internet and print. I specialize in marketing-oriented, accessible Web presences and tend to use the open source content management system Joomla!, depending on the customer’s wishes. The fact that appealing design, accessibility, and use of a content management system are not mutually exclusive constitutes the fundamental basis of my work. I am investing a lot of time and energy into further developing the open source CMS Joomla! I have already been actively involved in promoting accessibility in the previous version, Mambo. My dedication continues up to the present, and I have developed the three default templates Beez 2.0, Beez 5.0, and Beez3. In addition to the templates, the default edition of Joomla! is a major concern of mine. Here I see myself as an interface between the program logic and the actual output of contents. More and more frequently, I am leaving my desk to go and pass on my knowledge to others—for example, in training sessions, presentations, and workshops on the topics “Joomla!” and “Accessible Web Design.” I am the author of Joomla! Templates (available from Joomla! Press). I have also written a book on this topic together with Dr. Michael Charlier (published by Addison-Wesley, Germany). I am married, have two children, and am living in Bonn, Germany.
Q: What prompted your interest in and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: A few years ago I was looking for a suitable content management system. That must have been around 2005. I tried out different systems and ended up using Mambo. Already at that time, using Web standards as the basis for accessible Web sites was very important to me.
But at that time it was not yet possible (as it is now) to use the template overrides for modifying the HTML output, so I had to fall back on my own core hack to be able to design an accessible Web site. You may have come across the 508 hack.
Q: How important is it to you to use open source software? Open source has grown tremendously in recent years; what has this growth meant to you?
A: Open source software is the better and cheaper alternative in most cases. It has been tested by many users, so errors can be fixed more quickly and efficiently by a large group of developers.
I cannot say very much on the overall significance of open source in the IT market as a whole, as my main focus is on Joomla! I really enjoy working with Joomla! and spend a lot of my free time on it.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. What for you is the most exciting part of being involved? How do you contribute to the community?
A: I really like seeing my ideas go into the system. I believe that using standards-compliant code as the starting point for creating accessible Web sites is particularly important. Over the years I have been able to achieve a lot in this respect.
Joomla! is a widely used system with which you can now create an accessible Web site relatively easily. This increases the overall number of accessible Web sites on the Net. Each one on its own is certainly not 100 percent perfect, but it will have a certain amount of basic accessibility. I am hoping that this helps make the Net as a whole more accessible.
On the other hand I have learned a lot from working with the system. I have developed as a person and have had the chance to meet really great people with creative ideas. This has been a very enriching experience for me.
Q: You created the Beez2 and Beez5 templates. What were you trying to achieve with them?
A: Creating default templates is a great challenge and also a great honor. For me, the most important factor in designing both templates was to reflect the immense range of functions of Joomla! using specific examples while taking into account accessibility.
Some people find both templates too complex to be easily understood straightaway. This reproach is certainly justified to a certain extent, but I do believe that it is easier to remove things you do not need than it is to add things whose functionality you do not know.
In my book Joomla! Templates I have done my best to explain the whole complex issue in a way that is easy to follow.
Q: How is producing a template for the core distribution different from creating one for a specific site? What is it like to have a template in the core distribution and having your work reworked and changed by other contributors or teams such as the JBS?
A: The main difference: when building a template for the core, you need to be thinking in generic terms. This means you need to put yourself into the shoes of future users, consider which needs they might have, and then react to these. This concerns, for example, things such as the position of the navigation column, the integration of accessible tab modules or sliders, and the use of WAI-ARIA. But if you are working on a customer project, there are specific requirements which you need to meet precisely.
If you put a template into the core, this has the advantage that it will be tested by many people and that bugs will be fixed by the Bug Squad team. The JBS team really does excellent work.
Q: You are known in the Joomla! community for your commitment to accessibility to all. What do you recommend to Webmasters who want to have accessible Web sites?
A: This is a very large question which I cannot answer easily in just a few sentences. That’s why I have already written many sentences in response to this question and I can only recommend that you read my template book. Then you will see that it’s really not that difficult.
Q: You were a strong advocate of incorporating HTML5 into Joomla! starting with the 1.6 release. Why is HTML5 important? What does it mean for the future of the Web?
A: HTML5 is cool. In the last ten years we have not seen much change in the development of the markup languages. We had the choice between HTML4.01 and XHTML1. Both languages have a small semantic vocabulary. There is markup for headings and paragraphs, lists, addresses, and much more, but there aren’t any elements which describe page areas in more detail. This is now possible thanks to HTML5 with elements such as header, footer, nav, section, article, aside. Using these invariably creates a better-structured document. In addition to these semantic innovations, there are also some old elements which have gained new significance. The element small is now used explicitly to mark small print—to name just one example.
There are also new form elements which are particularly interesting for developers: for example, new input fields for e-mails, URLs, phone numbers, et cetera. These elements can, for example, have the attribute required and are automatically recognized by the browser. These semantic expansions will result in a more structured output of documents on technical devices.
Within the development of HTML5, the browsers have gained really fascinating new functions. Using JavaScript is becoming more and more important. With just two lines of JavaScript code, you can determine the position of the user or store information in the browser’s local storage. And that is by no means all.
Invariably, these new technical options will change the Net, and I am really curious to see what clever developers will make of them over the next few years.
Andrea Tarr, Production Leadership Team
I started working with Joomla! for about four years and fell headlong into the project when I created the Hathor administrator template as part of the Google Summer of Code. After a few years building sites and writing custom extensions, I moved to MetaScale/Sears Holdings where I get a chance to work with Joomla! in a big-data, big-corporation environment. I am the author of PHP and MySQL 24-Hour Trainer and a member of Joomla’s Production Leadership Team (PLT).
Q: What prompted your interest in and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I had worked for many years in IT, but more with business software. My Web work was with mostly static sites with the occasional Zen Cart site thrown in for good measure. About three years ago I decided to go out on my own, and I talked with other local Web designers and developers. That was when I first heard about Joomla! and I fell in love with it. I joined the local Joomla! User Group, started creating custom templates, then custom extensions, and never wrote another static Web site.
Q: How important is it to you to use open source software? Open source has grown tremendously in recent years; what has this growth meant to you?
A: I really like open source software and not just because it is “free.” I like that you aren’t locked into what one company has decided is the way to do things. You have the ability to make it do what you need it to do based on the business needs of your company or your client’s company. The growth of open source has given it legitimacy. It shows that open source software is not just hobby software but can be relied on.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. What for you is the most exciting part of being involved? How do you contribute to the community?
A: For me the most exciting part is working with a group of people toward a common goal that has benefits for more than just ourselves. The fact that this group of people is truly global in scope is great. I co-manage a Joomla! User Group, help organize Joomla! Day New England (come to Vermont, see the cows, and learn about Joomla!—it’s great fun!), help with code in the Joomla! Bug Squad, and my work as part of the Production Leadership Team.
Q: Tell us about the Hathor administrator template. What were your goals in creating it? What were the biggest challenges in creating Hathor?
A: In Joomla! 1.5, the core Beez template gave Joomla! accessibility on the front end of Joomla! for all those using the Web site. However, the back end was still inaccessible so people with disabilities couldn’t create the sites. The goal of the Hathor administrator template was to fill that gap.
The challenges of the template were twofold. One was the technical challenge of writing the template when the 1.6 release was still in a state of flux. One of the goals of the 1.6 release was to rewrite major parts of the back end, and that was still going on as I was creating the template. Since my template was dependent on those changes, it made it quite challenging.
There are also the challenges that face everyone working on accessibility. It is difficult to balance the sometimes conflicting needs of people with different accessibility issues. There is no checklist of rules that can get you to full accessibility and no automated tests that will tell you what still needs to be fixed.
Q: The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has set out accessibility guidelines and practices to make the Web more flexible to meet the needs, uses, and situations of individuals. Why is having an accessible administrator in Joomla! so important? How does Hathor fulfill the WAI goals?
A: It’s important for the Joomla! back end to be accessible because there are an amazing number of people who are unable to use Joomla! without it. More people than you think benefit from accessible sites. While a blind person using a screen reader is the iconic user, there are any number of reasons why a user might not be able to use a mouse or read small print, for example. Making Joomla! accessible is the right thing to do. It’s right because it opens Joomla! up to even more of the community, and it’s right for business reasons because more and more governments and organizations are requiring it.
The Hathor template was written using the WCAG 2.0 AA guidelines as the base and supplemented with some live testing. More live testing would be very helpful.
Q: You joined the Joomla! Project as a student involved in the Google Summer of Code program, and now you are on the Production Leadership Team. Can you give some pointers to students who are interested in becoming contributors to FOSS projects, and what do you suggest to people who would like to get involved in contributing to Joomla! specifically?
A: The biggest hurdle to getting involved in a FOSS project is just getting started. That’s where a program like the Google Summer of Code is helpful. You have a specific project, you know where to contribute the code, you know the procedures on how to do it, and you have a mentor who will answer all your “dumb” questions. By the time the project is complete, you know the players and you know how things work, and it’s easy to branch into other areas.
In Joomla! there are a couple of different ways to get started. One that anyone can do is to start answering questions on the forum (http://forum.joomla.org). This gives you exposure to what other users are doing and gets you exposed to the rest of the community. You don’t need to be an expert or technically inclined to do this.
The Joomla! Bug Squad is another good way to get involved. There is a list of bugs that people, like you, have reported. Other people, like you, provide code fixes that are then tested by people like you. There’s a JBS Google group where people exchange ideas, issues, and solutions, as well as a Skype chat for those interested. The developer site is a good place to get information on this: http://developer.joomla.org.
I started out answering questions on the forum, then became involved in the GSOC project, and then moved on to the Joomla! Bug Squad. I helped organize local Joomla! Days and met people when I went to other Joomla! Days. Before I was asked to join the Production Leadership Team, I served on the Open Source Matters board.
Vic Drover, Owner of Anything Digital—Extending Joomla!
I became interested in Web site development during graduate school circa 1997 and began hacking content management systems shortly thereafter. After much error-based learning, I started building Joomla! applications and now manage an extension and Web development shop at http://anything-digital.com. In 2008 I joined the editorial team at the Joomla! Extensions Directory where I focus on policymaking, extension evaluation, and directory maintenance. My formal training was in the field of biomedical research but in 2010 I retired from my position as Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry to focus my efforts full-time on Joomla! When not online, my primary hobby is the sport of rugby. I have spent about two decades on the pitch and now primarily contribute to my rugby club as an administrator and Web/PR coordinator. Our Web site, the Milwaukee Harlequins Rugby Football Club, is of course based on Joomla! and is one of the top club rugby sites in America.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I stumbled on another PHP-based CMS (phpWebSite, http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/) when starting a Web site for a sports club I belong to. The club quickly outgrew this CMS, and with the experience from using phpWebSite, I did a proper search and evaluation of the leading open source CMSs at the time. Mambo was at the top of the list, and then of course Joomla! followed shortly.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: It is essentially the only thing I use, though WordPress is very attractive for many of my sites these days; 80 percent Joomla! and 20 percent WordPress is a good estimate for my Web development work. As for apps, we only develop for Joomla!
The initial reason I started using open source was the cost advantage. Even with the advent of commercial GPL extensions in the J!sphere, sites are still much less expensive than proprietary systems. In addition, I’ve met some great folks in the Joomla! community, because the barrier to entry is really low (just answer a few threads in the forum, for example). Finally, I think open source apps are inherently more secure than proprietary ones because the baddies can see all the exploits, as can every coder who is interested. Thus, these tend to get fixed quite publicly and usually quickly.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: I think the J!Days and other Joomla! conferences are the most exciting parts. I talk sometimes at these meetings or help moderate group discussions.
Outside of these venues, I contribute primarily in two ways: I’m an editor on the Joomla! Extensions Directory, and I cofounded and co-manage the Joomla! User Group Milwaukee. I’ve really enjoyed meeting the other Joomla! users in my community and made some good friends.
Q: What are some of the most popular types of functionality that people look for to extend Joomla!?
A: Almost anything that involves user input, such as forms for collecting data or registering for an event, for example. Social networking was very hot but more important I think is the ability to add custom fields to forms (which is not new) but also to content.
Thus, most applications are trending to having some sort of CC (content construction) functionality, most notably the full-fledged content constructors like K2, ZOO, and FLEXIcontent. However, you even see this on smaller apps.
Q: What is the best way for new users to go about deciding which extensions they need and which ones to choose? How do users use the JED to get the best results when looking for an extension for their site?
A: The JED is a great resource, but it can be daunting. The search feature on the JED can be a bit unproductive also, so navigating using the categories is the best place to start (after some initial Googling, of course).
Selecting and evaluating extensions is really one of the most important tasks when building a Joomla! Web site, and the JED can help tremendously in this, of course. There is not enough space in this interview to do it justice, but I would say having a clear list of features is critical before you start. Once you have a short list of extensions to compare, evaluate the reviews (not so much the votes), evaluate the developers and their reputations, solicit some input on the Joomla! forums, and ask any experts you know (in other words, maybe you have a local JUG to attend). Once you download the application that best suits your needs, there are also some good ways to evaluate it for basic security. Again, this is for another interview.
Q: Being an editor for the Joomla! Extensions Directory allows you a lot of interaction with the third-party developer community. Can you explain what third-party developers (3PDs) are and their role in the Joomlasphere?
A: I love parties! The first party is the Joomla! Project. The second party is the users/consumers of Joomla! Third-party developers generally write application add-ons (we call them extensions) that install within the Joomla! framework and add new functionality. For example, a photo gallery for Joomla! would be a third-party add-on.
However, the term 3PD implies that these developers are somehow removed from the project. Perhaps the term Joomla! Extension Developer or JEDev is better. In any case, I truly believe that a large part of the success of Joomla! has come from the active extension developer community. This has only improved since most developers ditched encryption and adopted GPL-compatible business models (see the next answer).
I think many developers rightly benefit (that is, commercially) from this important role in Joomla!’s evolution, but it has also bred fierce competition. This is a good motivator for application development but can also make interacting with JEDevs on the JED challenging because people’s livelihoods are affected by JED policy and decision making.
Since traffic generated by the JED is so abundant and valuable, the JED is also a place for fraud and mischief as some developers jockey for top honors in their categories. When we detect this, we often give short bans, and this can be difficult at times to deal with.
Q: Software licensing can be confusing to new users. Can you explain what commercial and noncommercial GPL means and the differences between them?
A: There is no difference in the license per se. In each case, it is a nonproprietary license that guarantees that any changes made to the source code and distributed to the community are available to anyone who requests them. This is the essence of the GPL.
Importantly, if I make a change to a GPL-licensed application on my PC, the GPL doesn’t apply. The guarantees and freedoms of the GPL come into effect when I distribute my changes (in other words, post the edited application on a Web site for download).
That said, the only difference between commercial and noncommercial GPL is really a business decision; it is not a different license. Historically, GPL-licensed extensions are distributed at a cost of $0 (noncommercial). A commercial GPL business model is one where the distribution cost is greater than $0 (commercial). Note that we avoid using the term free when describing GPL extensions because many people confuse this with “zero money.” This is the most common source of confusion in regard to GPL-licensed applications. The free part of the GPL license is the freedom to make and distribute changes to the code.
To help explain this concept to users, you will often hear the phrase “free as in freedom, not free as in beer.” I have used this on occasion, but I think novices also find this confusing. To be direct and concise, the GPL guarantees creative freedom but not freedom from cost.
Q: If someone becomes interested in developing an extension for Joomla!, where is a good place for them to get information and documentation on how to begin?
A: Before someone jumps into Joomla! extension development, it is best to take a course in PHP. This is the bare minimum prerequisite. Once that’s done, I think the best tool is to download some popular extensions, examine the code, and thus learn by example from Joomla! experts. I also highly recommend Joseph LeBlanc’s book entitled Learning Joomla! 1.5 Extension Development (Packt). He also offers an online course in 1.7/2.5 development which can be found at jlleblanc.com.
Gary Brooks, CEO of CloudAccess.net—Benefits of Joomla! for Business
I am the founder and CEO of CloudAccess.net, a firm that specializes in offering software as a service (SaaS) based on the Joomla! platform. I love working with people and believe that good business is based on personal and attentive interaction with your clientele. My firm is the backbone behind the official Joomla! Demo site, and it has been an incredible experience to be part of the recent exponential growth of the project. Previously I was the founder of NMO.net. NMO.net was a dial-up ISP that was built when 28.8 modems came out. Our team managed a network of 4,000-plus dial-up and wireless broadband users. I got started in technology when my dad sat with me one day and showed me how to build a computer from the ground up. I can remember the first computer we built was a 386 turbo-powered AMD. It even had the little turbo button on the front. When I am not busy overseeing operations for my firm, I love spending time with my family, studying, fishing, playing basketball, and playing Frisbee golf.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I had a client who wanted to have control over his own Web content. He wanted a suite of applications to be included in the architecture. At the time I was working with WordPress. I quickly found out that WordPress was not the tool for the job. I had a limited budget of around $10,000, so I needed to find an application that was almost ready for the job. I could not make this deal happen if I had to code from scratch. I started my search, and one magical day I was sent a link to Joomla! I built the client’s site in Joomla!, and everything went smoothly. I had a front-end coder, back-end coder, and artist put together the project with perfection. After doing the implementation work in Joomla!, the client asked me to change parts of the calendar system, user profile management, and other moving parts of the code that I had downloaded from the Extensions Directory. I had to do a little research, but I quickly found out that the software in the directory is free to modify to fit the needs of your business. What I found even more interesting is that many of the developers would help you for a consulting fee. Joomla! had an amazing pool of talent all in one place. The project was a great success, and it led me to many larger Web applications using Joomla! I continue to have success with Joomla! and love the large talented community of developers around the project.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: I had not heard of open source software until I found Joomla! Joomla! made it possible for me to understand open source. I later learned that many cell phones (Android), microchip software, and Linux servers are open source as well. I feel the trend of open source is taking middle market and beyond. It’s hard to compete with the passion of community-based projects. Nobody can take the open source code away from you. When you download open source software, it’s yours to have and change as you see fit. If you want to put open source software on your local computer, you can do it. If you want to make open source software work on a large cluster of servers, no problem. If you have the talent and time, you can make open source do what you need. Joomla! is a perfect example of why open source is better. How can you compete against a community with hundreds of thousands of users and developers all working for one common goal? It has been said many times that open source is “free software” as a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer.”
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: I love everything about Joomla!’s open source community, but the best things are the people and the code. The community is alive, and they all have a passion to make Joomla! better. That passion transcends to an energy you can’t find in many places. The community has this fantastic belief to improve and innovate. You can’t pay for the passion you see from the Joomla! community and the quality of work you get.
I was personally involved in the Resources Directory and Trademark Team, and our CloudAccess.net team runs the Joomla! Demo site. In exchange for running the Joomla! Demo site, we donate money to the organization and share a percentage of the revenue from each hosting account.
Q: What is one of the main talking points you use to convince your business clients to move to Joomla! as a Web solution? Are there specific issues you have to address on a regular basis when it comes to talking to clients about open source software?
A: I tell clients that if you were to write Joomla! from start to finish, you would be looking at a $6 million investment. I tell companies that Joomla! is used by millions of sites with thousands of premade applications you can install just like the iPhone App Store. The system has the ability to alter the look and feel of each area on the site. I offer them security in that they own the code at the end of the day and that they can add and subtract from the code as they please. The data can be backed up to a local disk. I also tell them that Joomla! is all about usability. It has the capabilities to run a simple brochure site or multimillion-dollar Web application initiative.
Here are a few more points I make when talking to clients:
• Draw any design or GUI, and you can code it to the Joomla! CMS plus application framework.
• You can build applications inside Joomla! using the built-in framework. It’s secure and easy to set up on dedicated servers.
• It scales in the cloud to any level required. Some of the largest sites in the world run on Joomla!
• It’s supported by hundreds of thousands of people.
• Security is a top priority and we have companies like eBay, Citrix, Barnes and Noble, Notre Dame, and many others that support the project.
Q: What are some of the edge case uses for Joomla! you have been involved with in terms of business sites?
• Google SSO integration
• 30,000-person intranet built as a social community for a hospital
• Full applications with Facebook-like JavaScript actions
• Fulfillment processing and tracking
• Search engine optimization
• Search portals
• Directory sites
• Learning management applications
• Large-scale shared hosting arrangements (30,000-plus domains per month)
• Running a single Joomla! instance in a 25-node cluster
• Cloud Web services integration
• API connections to external CRM applications
• LDAP integration
Q: Can you outline some of the training protocols you have set up to help your corporate clients’ workforces learn Joomla! and how their Web site works?
A: Joomla! training is readily available from many credible third-party sources. The Joomla.org Web site is full of resources, too. In fact, I know of a college that specifically instructs Web applications using Joomla! as the basis and structure. Typically we offer training with our service packages. The clients get remote training through live online meetings and free webinars. The live meetings teach clients exactly what task they need to accomplish. Most larger cities have an active Joomla! User Group that meets on a regular basis.
Q: The Joomla! Demo site is an initiative that is managed by CloudAccess.net. What are some of the most common questions business owners ask regarding Web sites and Joomla! in the interactions you have with them as Joomla! Demo site users?
A: Demo users are coming from all angles. We have small church sites and governments to large Fortune 500 companies interested in the Joomla! CMS. We see all angles and all questions. Some of the more common are questions about getting started, such as finding and installing a template and installing and configuring third-party components. CloudAccess.net is unique in that we provide standard Joomla! support for all users, even demo users. We want to make sure that these new users are able to get going quickly and easily with Joomla! It’s a big comfort to users knowing they have a team of Joomla! engineers that they can go to with any questions they might have about Joomla!
Q: When you were developing http://demo.joomla.org, what were some of the functionalities that you had to plan in advance for, and what sort of structure did you have to put in place to handle the load of the Joomla! community, which seems to be growing exponentially as each year passes?
A: We had to add and train new staff to help support and process tens of thousands of new Joomla! instances per month. Each staff member had to know Joomla!, Internet protocols, customer service, hosting, and much more. It was a very large task. On the technology side, it was not any easier. When you start talking terabytes instead of gigabytes, things get a little more complicated. Our studies led us to enterprise high-performance computing. The Joomla! Demo system needs to scale to 1,000-plus domains per day, and the only affordable way to handle the job was to build a cluster of servers to deliver the service. Every day is a learning experience for our team. It was much more than anticipated, and we continue to be surprised each day. The Joomla! Demo site is very popular, and it’s only growing.
Q: Cloud computing seems to be a big buzzword right now. What is the cloud, how does it relate to scalability, and why is it beneficial to business clients? Also, how does a cloud-based system benefit running a site like the Joomla! Demo site with thousands of users at any given time?
A: Defining cloud can be hard. I don’t see one definition for cloud. It has been defined by many companies and individuals and is usually specific to the case in study. I see the extreme of cloud as the convergence of software becoming data center and rack aware. We call this distributed computing with consensus theory and put much thought into how we deal with consistency in delivery. It’s much like Google Apps and how it’s provided as a service and can be delivered to you from many data centers without failure. Others think of cloud as a software service or a utility you purchase online. The cloud typically offers you flexibility in resources. Resources can come in the form of hardware, software, capacity, and even API services. The cloud comes in all shapes and flavors. The term sounds cloudy, but it’s how it works in this industry.
Q: What is the next big thing you predict in terms of hosting, software, and CMS software solutions? As an expert working with Joomla!, how do you see the future of the project, Joomla! 3, and the new technologies that are being developed?
A: On the hosting side I’m excited to see the possibilities of future versions of Joomla! working with cloud-enabled file systems and new-style NoSQL databases. I envision a Joomla! platform for developers building SaaS products. Joomla! could become data center and rack aware just like Google Apps.
Joomla! 2.5 is a pinnacle step for the Joomla! CMS. I do see Joomla! going enterprise with 2.5, and it’s pretty exciting. The Joomla! 3 features are going to make the community really come alive. I can see the third-party developer community really getting financially stronger and growing large service-based companies. The future of the Joomla! Project is bright. The people, the culture, and the system are what is driving this project.
Ryan Ozimek, Former President of Open Source Matters, and CEO and Founder of PICnet, Inc.—Joomla! in the NPO/NGO Sector
I’m the former president of Open Source Matters (OSM), the nonprofit organization that helps manage the Joomla! Project. I’ve had the great opportunity to be an officer on OSM’s board of directors since 2007, and I’ve provided stewardship and guidance most specifically in the project’s fund-raising and event management. I’m also the founder and CEO of PICnet, Inc. In the nine years since the founding of PICnet, the company has grown from a graduate school concept into one of the most recognized and trusted names in the open source nonprofit technology field. We’ve been able to forge strong relationships with open source software communities, most obviously Joomla!, in our efforts to provide organizations with the sophisticated and affordable services they need to be successful in meeting their missions. Through the years I’ve been able to learn and guide PICnet through the natural evolution found in many open source business models, including custom development, support services, and most recently an SaaS model. This business experience, coupled with my work for two years as president of OSM, provides me with a great opportunity to bring my skills to the table to help contribute to the success of the growing socially responsible business and organization communities. I have a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as a bachelor of arts degree in communications from UCLA.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: Throughout the history of our company (PICnet), we have been strongly focused on increasing efficiencies within organizations. One way we sought to do this was by delivering technology tools that made life easier for organizations by enabling them to more effectively spread the word about their great work. Back in 2003, we used a variety of open source Web publishing tools, but none of them were as well accepted by our organizations as Mambo (Joomla!’s predecessor). After seeing the reaction by our community in using Mambo, and then Joomla!, I was extremely interested in getting more involved to help this great software grow more successful in our nonprofit.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: When it comes to software usage, I consider myself a pragmatic person: find the right tool for the job. Whenever possible and appropriate for my needs, I prefer using open source software. I believe that open source software often provides the control, privacy, and features that I need to get my work done. That’s not all, though. I use open source software because I think that by doing so I can encourage and contribute to the next generation of brilliant developers and software designers. Investing and supporting open source software provides support for some of the most democratizing tools in the world today, and using open source software is my small way of being part of a very large world of open source contributors.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: I enjoy meeting people in person, and for me, the most exciting part of being involved in the Joomla! community is attending events. From Joomla! User Group meetings to Joomla! Days, the opportunity to meet people in person helps me better understand and see the spirit of the Joomla! community. With so many active contributors in the community, we rarely all have a chance to meet in person, so having an opportunity to attend events gives us a chance to tear down the technology wall that can stand between two individuals and enable us to better understand the true person behind the online avatar.
Q: How does Joomla! help you serve the nonprofit and nongovernmental agencies that you work with through PICnet?
A: We use Joomla! in nearly all our solutions for nonprofit organizations. At the core, we use Joomla! as the pivot point around which we can provide a highly usable interface to a variety of Web services. In today’s online world, organizations are looking to bring together a variety of affordable and powerful Web services into one user-friendly system. I don’t believe that our Non-Profit Soapbox service (www.nonprofitsoapbox.com) would be nearly as successful if it weren’t built on a powerful and inviting platform like Joomla! Using Joomla! enables us to focus on building powerful solutions that target the core needs of our organizations instead of spending time on technology problems. Joomla! provides us with the tools we need to help organizations be successful in their online publishing, social networking, fund-raising, and activism.
Q: What are some of the edge case uses for Joomla! you have experienced in the NPO field? What are the impacts you have seen in your work that make Joomla! the right fit in this sector as a solution?
A: We’ve seen Joomla! used in a variety of interesting ways, mostly based on the customizations needed by our organizations. We’ve built project management and collaboration solutions, created humanitarian relief data systems, and designed some effective integrations with third-party services (like constituent relationship management systems) with Joomla! Watching the impact of Joomla! within organizations is quite exciting. Joomla! shortens the distance between constituencies and organization leadership, by providing software tools that allow organizations to more easily communicate effectively and easily with their communities. Additionally, since organizations are highly attracted to low-cost Web services (such as photo, video, documents, and so on), Joomla! provides the flexible platform they need to connect all these services together.
Q: Joomla! is well known for its ability to be expanded and extended. What are some of the specific needs of NPOs and NGOs, and how are you able to extend to meet those needs? Do you have any specific extensions that are a “go to” for this sector?
A: The key functional requirements of nonprofits are not that much different from those of their for-profit friends: spread a message, bring in money, and execute tasks to achieve a mission. Our company has spent the last ten years learning and investing in tools that help organizations do all three of these more successfully. We built Non-Profit Soapbox to bring together the tools we believed organizations needed to have a strong Web presence that also provided the services they needed to have a trusted partner in their online efforts. The kinds of add-ons we most often integrate for our organizations include an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor, commenting system, integration services with Salesforce.com, and other CRM tools, donation processing extensions, and more. There is a huge variety of options to choose from, and we take the approach of finding the right tool for the job.
Q: As a long-standing board member of Open Source Matters, as well as being such an advocate for NPOs, how did your previous experiences in the sector aid you in defining and refining the processes and workflow of the OSM board?
A: I believe that all organizations should constantly be in a period of self-reflection and bar-raising. I’ve had an opportunity to see this done successfully, as well as dismally, in the past, and I’m bringing all my lessons learned from the nonprofit sector to the table to be a better leader on our OSM board. During the past ten years I’ve seen the growth of the earned income nonprofit model, as well as organizations that have focused strongly on improving efficiency and clarifying organizational structures. Having worked with leaders in more than 300 nonprofit organizations, I’ve had a firsthand look at what works and what doesn’t, and I’ve had a chance to build relationships with folks on the front lines of the new generation of social entrepreneurs who have shown that the most successful purpose-driven organizations are those with clear communication channels, strong leaders, and effective workflows that keep the engine running smoothly.
Q: Joomla! as software and as a community has exponentially grown over the years since it started. How have you as an OSM board member and as a community member viewed that growth, and what are some of your predictions for the future regarding Joomla!?
A: It’s been awe-inspiring to see the growth of the Joomla! community since it started. The growth in users, designers, developers, contributors, third-party developers, and more has contributed to the powerful success of the project. I believe that Access Control Lists (ACLs) were one of the key features that Joomla! was missing in the eyes of many organizations and companies, so the release of Joomla! 1.6 will help the project continue to grow. Additionally, I believe that some of the most exciting times in the project are during beta periods. That’s when I’ve seen a lot of developers come out in strong support of the project by reporting issues, squashing bugs, and contributing directly to the core system. With the focus on smaller and more timely releases of the software, I believe that our future will be even more exciting and engaging. Finally, I think that a number of successful businesses in our community are beginning to grasp the power of the underlying framework. By doing so, I have a feeling that we’re going to see some great new Web solutions built on the framework that might not use the CMS application but will definitely be powered by Joomla!
Jennifer Marriott, Joomla! Contributor—Sites for Education
I have a fascination with everything technology related stemming from using a Teletype for the first time when a young child. That experience set the stage for my current obsession with computers. I studied broadcasting and communications in school, and combined with the emerging Web as a communication tool, Web design and development became my passion. I am also a professional musician, author, and a firm believer that FOSS and music can save the world.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I was looking for a new host in 2004 and came across Rochen through the Web Hosting Talk forum. Connecting with Rochen as a hosting provider gave me the opportunity to talk with Brad Baker about Web technologies and content management systems, and he introduced me to Mambo. I really loved the concept and how it worked. I came over to Joomla! right at the beginning and was asked to be a forum moderator in the Templates forum. From there as the years have progressed, I have contributed to many aspects of the Joomla! Project.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: I use open source software every chance I can. I enjoy the aspect of contributing to open source to provide software solutions for others. If a client has a need for a software solution, I can usually find an open source version that does the job and does it well. The great aspect of open source for me is the community of user-to-user help and support that helps me in turn support my clients and gives my clients the ability get support and self-help themselves. I think open source software empowers people.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: For me the most exciting part of Joomla! is the people and the community they represent. From the least experienced person to the most adept experienced coder, all of the people contribute to make Joomla! a better project and better software. The collaborative environment has been very rewarding to me in terms of furthering my skills as a Web developer and designer.
I started contributing to Joomla! as a forum moderator for the Templates forum. At that time I had very little to no experience with PHP, but I was very experienced in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Being a moderator on the Templates forum gave me an outlet to contribute by helping others with their sites, and I would say of my 4,000-plus posts on the forum the majority are in the Templates forum helping users, and helping users help each other. From there I joined up with the Joomla! Bug Squad and started the process of learning PHP and understanding the code base. I also became a mentor for the Google Summer of Code, and co-administrator of our GSoC program. It was incredibly rewarding to see young students from all over the world working so hard to create software for others. I also was lead of the Trademark and Licensing Team until mid-2010, helping the community understand and use the marks of the project in a responsible way. In mid-2010 I stepped down from all official project duties, but I still dabble a bit on the Templates forum, helping users and squishing bugs with the Joomla! Bug Squad.
Q: You’ve been a consultant on a number of educational site projects as well as created a complex site for an entire school district. What is the scope of that site, and how is it organized?
A: The school district site was a distinct challenge. The district had the need of a site that was more readily edited by nontechnical users. At the time, the site was strictly a static HTML site that required all changes to go through the IT department, and with ten campus locations and administrative and other user groups, it was time-consuming and not very efficient. I proposed to create one district-wide site using Joomla!
One of the main challenges of the site was enabling an access control system to be able to assign editors to their campus or administrative sections and creating an editing environment that was easy for the least technical user to understand. This was accomplished in the first inception of the Web site with JACL as access control and using JCE Editor, which is a very easy editor both for Web site administrators to configure, as well as for users to use for editing content. Community Builder was the basis for our staff profiles and made it very easy to create staff lists based on location and departments.
When the site was redesigned in 2009, it was updated from Joomla! 1.0 to Joomla! 1.5. Using Joomla! made it easy to roll over content that was essential to the Web site. It was also important to maintain a certain level of familiarity with the processes for end users and content editors to keep retraining to a minimum. There was also a need to add more functionality and information processes to our staff profile pages, while still keeping the interfaces for staff easy to use for nontechnical users. New access control was brought on board with the Art of Joomla!’s Control and Content Manager. The combination of both extensions made it very easy to create editor groups. JCE was used again, and also with its extensive configurability, it was very easy to create user groups that allowed front-end editors to easily edit content and protect their images and documents in confined directories. Community Builder is a great choice for extended user profiles, and with the update we added the functionality of easy-to-use tools for teachers and staff such as the ability to post lesson plans and announcements as well as pictures of their classrooms and student works, without having to be highly technical. An e-mail form was enabled on each teacher profile to allow parents and students to easily contact teachers. As with any site that serves a broad spectrum of users with differing levels of technical knowledge, every aspect has to be efficient and easy to use for end users.
Q: Who creates the content on the site? How do you plan for and train content creators?
A: The structure of the site followed a set form that was duplicated for each campus/administrative group. Each campus/administrative group was set up as a section, and within each section were categories that were common to all groups and campus locations. Setting the structure of the site in this manner created a consistent and understandable navigation across the site. This consistency was used to make the site easy to navigate and understand for the users and content contributors to the site, but also for parents, students, and the community. Using Control and Content Manager for access control allowed each section/campus to have control over its own content.
From the initial planning of the site, it was decided that a set group of people from each campus would be responsible for the content on their respective sections of the site. Each administrative group would also have an editor assigned to its sections and categories. Choosing set, small groups of motivated people allowed training to be done in phases. Once this initial group was trained, they were able to spread that training to the rest of the staff and faculty at their campus. Also, some online tutorials were posted for some of the more common tasks, and individual support was able to be given by the IT staff through the network to demonstrate editing techniques using screen sharing.
Q: What are some of the main challenges you faced in building the site?
A: I think the main challenge was balancing the requested functionality with the overall needs and experience level of the district staff and faculty. The beginning of the process had to start with the people who would be putting in content and making sure entering content was as easy as possible. Once that process was completed, the site structure and navigation worked into a form that facilitated the information that the district as a whole wanted to communicate to the community it serves.
Q: How is ongoing maintenance handled?
A: The IT staff for the district has handled ongoing maintenance. The basic maintenance of updating the site was made easier by using multipurpose extensions and keeping the total number of extensions used to a minimum. Extensions are monitored for updates and security issues. Akeeba Backup is being used to regularly back up the site, and a backup policy was put in place. Also, regular server maintenance is performed by the IT staff as the site is self-hosted on district servers. One of the greatest advantages of Joomla! is the ability for administrators of a site to do self-maintenance. I do consult and provide support on an as-needed basis.
Q: What are some of the main lessons you learned in building the site?
A: I learned that when a large number of people are involved in the planning process of a large Web site, it is important as a developer/designer to keep the group as a whole focused on the main purpose of the Web site. It is easy for the “want” of a person or specific portion of the group to overshadow the actual “need” that the site is trying to fulfill. Every person will have a different opinion as to what is essential and what is not. You also really do have to think in terms of what your least technically knowledgeable users are going to experience in their interaction with the site in performing any duties they may have and try to balance their need for ease of use with the more complex functionality that more experienced users may request.
I also learned that the initial planning of a site is likely the most important part of the whole process. Good planning will ensure a smooth production phase, and that will make for a good site rollout. As a final thought, it is always wise to be aware of “creep” in scope as you are developing. It is better to roll out a site in phases, implementing additions in functionality, because this will allow you to analyze the adoption of usage and if the additions are meeting the assessed needs of the site and the users.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos, Developer, Akeeba Backup and Other Extensions
I’ve been into computers and programming since 1992. I’ve programmed in a number of languages: various variants of BASIC (including VB, VBA and VB.NET), x86 assembly, Pascal, Delphi, Fortran, and, of course, PHP. A mechanical engineer by education, I became a part-time Web developer in 2003 and switched to full-time developer in 2010. I’ve never looked back!
Q: What prompted your interest in and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: Back in 2003 I had just graduated and was waiting to be called to fulfill my military obligations. At that time I began working on a friend’s IT start-up as Web developer. By the end of 2003 I had developed our own mini CMS, but many bits were missing. I discovered Mambo—the predecessor to Joomla!—by accident as I was sifting through installable packages for our Mandrake Linux server. When I saw it, I realized the potential it had and convinced my friend to switch to it. I consider that one of the best two or three decisions I’ve ever made in my life. When the split occurred, we immediately went with the new fork, Joomla!, as it was the real free and open source software implementation. Funny thing; everybody else also had the same views, showing that, indeed, Open Source Matters!
Q: How important is it to you to use open source software? Open source has grown tremendously in recent years; what has this growth meant to you?
A: Using FOSS (free and open source software) is something that is motivated by different factors for everyone: total cost of ownership, technological advantages, or ideology, just to name a few. For me, it’s a mix of all of the above. I began using FOSS for ideological reasons—I strongly believe that source code is supposed to be shared among developers—and I have found myself preferring it over proprietary software due to the reduced total cost of ownership. Even when FOSS isn’t free of charge, just the amount of time and money you save when you can do a modification/extension/adaptation yourself instead of relying on a faceless vendor makes it worth it. And did I mention that the people you get to meet and work with in the process—the community—add immense value to the product? Because, yeah, that’s the most important reason, but it’s nigh impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced this!
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. What for you is the most exciting part of being involved? How do you contribute to the community?
A: Joomla! is blessed with a truly passionate community! I was recently at Joomla! Day Israel and the most frequently asked question was “How can I contribute?” Hardly what most people would expect. Being able to contribute in so many areas and so easily means that there is a place for every person, with any skill level, even for those nontechnical volunteers who can “only” do marketing. For me, the most exciting part is, naturally, writing code, writing articles, and evangelising Joomla! Over the years I’ve been able to contribute writing articles for the Joomla! Community Magazine, committing and testing patches for the JBS, writing feature patches for Joomla! and even some tiny changes in the Platform. I also get to speak a lot about Joomla!, spreading the Joomla! love, in different conferences around the world, or even on the Greek national TV station. I intend to keep up with that!
Q: You develop Akeeba Backup, which is considered by many to be one of the “essential” extensions for the Joomla! CMS as well as a number of other useful tools for site administrators. What is it like to be an extension developer in the Joomla! ecosystem?
A: Well, being an extension developer in the Joomla! ecosystem is a lot like being Spiderman: with great power comes great responsibility. When I release a new version of an extension as popular as Akeeba Backup, I have to consider that it has the potential to be installed on 2.7 percent of the Internet—that’s one scary number when you think of just how big the Internet is! But this forces me to better myself by being more apprehensive and thorough, listening to my users and developing empathy, a sixth sense which helps me understand what they want before they know it. Being a Joomla! developer is an amazing journey! You get to improve yourself, you get to get known by the world, and you get to know the world and make new friends from places you’d have probably never gone to under other circumstances.
Q: You give a lot of advice to new developers on the development mailing lists. Where do you suggest that someone who wants to learn Joomla! development start?
A: How does anyone who wants to start learning programming start? It’s a different place for each one. Some people might prefer taking an existing simple extension and dissect it to see how it “ticks.” JED has thousands of them. Other people might want to start by reading a tutorial. The Joomla! wiki is an excellent resource for fledgling developers. On the Internet you can also find a plethora of video tutorials, both for free and for a fee, made by very well-known Joomla! developers. Other people—who think like me—might want to buy a book, read it, read it again, and start churning out code. There are many publishers with good Joomla! development books, and I’ve already shared my preferences with my readers in my blog and the Joomla! Community Magazine. But I’ll say it doesn’t matter where you start. It’s the journey that matters. Never stop seeking ways to improve yourself and your code. As the great mentor of the IT world, the late Steve Jobs, put it: “Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
Q: What do you think about the distribution of the Joomla! Platform as a separate application? What does this mean for you as a developer and for the future of Joomla!?
A: First I’d like to clear a misconception. We think of Joomla! as a CMS. The reality is that Joomla!, like all of the major CMSs, is not solely used as a content management system. In fact, Joomla! is more to a Web site as iOS is to iPad: it’s the operating system, the foundation on which we get to build custom, complex Web applications, usually without writing a single line of code! But what about going beyond the traditional Web application paradigm? How about building a Web service, the next Cpanel, or even the next Facebook or Twitter? For these extreme—but not far-fetched!—ideas we need a rock-solid framework, acting as the cornerstone of our aspiring project. The Joomla! Platform is exactly that. It’s not fully ready yet, but I will risk a prediction: we’ll start seeing the first truly usable software powered by the Joomla! Platform in mid-2013.
Louis Landry, Lead Architect of the Joomla! Platform
I am an application architect at eBay where I work with a team of developers who use Joomla! and other tools to provide useful access to vast amounts of data for people across the company. I am also a maintainer of the Joomla! Platform. In the past I have been a principal of a number of small businesses in the Joomla! space that specialize in Joomla! custom development and Joomla! extensions. Among the extensions I have worked on are the feed aggregator that powers Joomla! Connect on the Joomla.org sites and Finder and Comments, distributed by JXtended. I have also worked on large-scale implementations that use the Joomla! Platform such as the quizilla.com site. Currently I spend most of my Joomla! Project time designing and developing the Joomla! Platform. In the past I have had many different roles in the Joomla! Project.
Q: What prompted your interest, and/or how did you learn about Joomla!?
A: I discovered Mambo when it was somewhere around 4.0.4 because I was building a site for a friend and, like many people, looking to get away from static sites. I started submitting feature requests and patches, and then when the fork happened, I went along with the Core Team to Joomla! A few months later I was asked to join the Core Team, and I’ve been with the project ever since in various capacities.
Q: Do you regularly use open source software, and why?
A: I do use open source software whenever I can, but I am a firm believer in using the right tool for the job. I would not pass up a best-of-breed application to get the job done in a given situation to prove a point. I do think that for Web-based applications open source ones are almost always superior.
Q: Joomla! has a large community with a lot of active contributors. In your opinion, what is the most exciting part of being involved, and how do you contribute to the community?
A: I’ve been involved in so many different parts of the Joomla! Project. My main role right now is working with senior developers on the Platform Project.
Part of that is monitoring and maintaining the integrity of the code base, part of it is strategic planning around how the software and the project will evolve, and yet another part of it is doing a lot of speaking and education about Joomla! development, both in person and online. In my role I also find myself interacting quite a bit with developers from external projects such as MooTools, Eclipse, and so on. In the past I have had many different roles ranging from project manager to communications team leader. They have all been both challenging and incredibly rewarding, and I am grateful to have been able to serve in all of them.
Q: During your time as an independent developer you worked on some very large and challenging projects. What are some of the most interesting challenges you have been able to solve using Joomla!? Can you give a small case study on one of your more challenging projects?
A: Well, the Quizilla site is probably the highest-traffic site on which I have worked before I came to eBay. It has millions of users and at times will reach roughly 60 million page views in a week. The project was to rebuild the existing Web site, maintaining all the existing features as well as adding several new ones using the Joomla! framework. The legacy code base was a mix of PHP and Perl applications, and our goal was to have a consistent, easy-to-maintain platform on which to base the current site as well as future enhancements.
One of the biggest challenges we faced was data migration given the vast existing data set. We built command-line data conversion tools on the Joomla! framework so that conversion could be done in batches and then hooked that code into the application to allow for conversion on demand in some situations.
Q: As one of the lead developers for Joomla!, can you explain the development process and release cycle? How has it evolved over the years?
A: Historically Joomla! has had a very slow release cycle with releases about every two years or so. It has been a strongly feature-oriented release process. Starting with the 1.7 release of the CMS and the 11.3 release of the Platform, we have moved to a time-based release process with releases of the CMS every six months and the Platform roughly four times a year with a strong commitment to backward compatibility. This has required a rethinking and reorganization of the development process, including what is called the “stable trunk model” in which the trunk will only have code that is ready for release.
We will also be implementing more of a long-term-support model so sites that want to can settle on a particular release and then wait until the next long-term-support release to upgrade. For many users, our two-year release cycle has been pretty functional in that respect. Joomla! 1.0 and then Joomla! 1.5 are highly stable and reliable releases that received support for many years, and 1.5 was supported for over a year beyond the release of 1.6. We have spent a lot of time thinking about how to manage the balance between the need to move the software forward and the need for end users and extension developers to have a stable platform, and we think this approach will have the right balance.
Q: What is coming on the horizon for Joomla! development?
A: With the release of Joomla! 2.5 we have a stable, highly flexible CMS that solved two long-standing wishes, that for granular access control and nested categories. For CMS in the future, the horizons are really open, but I think that the content model will be looked at closely. That means both simplifying it so that there aren’t so many separate extensions and making it more flexible so that it’s easy to make custom content types. This is sometimes called the Unified Content Model or UCM. Also, Web services and integration with other applications will be very important. Infrastructure for both of these is in 3.0. Although it’s less visible to end users, we’ll keep improving standardization to make it easier to build custom applications that are secure and flexible. Our new release cycle will allow us to be much more agile in adding new features and improving all aspects of the Joomla! CMS.
Even more exciting for me is what is making this possible, which is the separation of the Joomla! Platform into its own project with its own goals and release processes, which of course include providing an outstanding platform for a modern, relevant content management system.
The Platform Project provides a space for people like me, who are interested in developing low-level, innovative solutions to architectural problems for the Web and beyond. The freedom to do that, not constrained by the immediate short-term demands of the CMS, means that the Platform can always be pushing forward. This helps keep the CMS from being bogged down in its past successes and huge user base, which in turn means that it can continually push forward. It also means that there can be hundreds of new applications built on the Platform, most of which may be totally unrelated to the CMS or content management as we currently think about it. Not only does that make it exciting and interesting for developers like me, it means all kinds of opportunities to build cool applications that let people do the things they need to do, want to do, and dream about doing.