HowToJoomla! Blog: Joomla!

The core team has just announced the release of Joomla! 1.5 Beta 2! This release has been in the works for a long time (Beta 1 was released on October 12), and it marks a huge leap forward. I still wouldn't use 1.5 in a live site until the word "Beta" is removed from the title, but I can't wait to download it and start playing with the latest version.

Congratulations to the core team on a great effort! Great job!

I just discovered that the Joomlaboard team has merged with the Fireboard team. (Read the announcement at the Fireboard site here.) This is an exciting development for the Joomla! community because the Fireboard component breathes new life into a much needed component.

Joomlaboard has been around for a long time. It started out as a simple message board component for Mambo, and it grew into a more full-featured forum component like what you see today. It has long been the only full-integrated Joomla! forum component available, which in my opinion makes it more appealing than some of the bridged forum components like phpBB and SMF. However, development has slowed down in recent years, and it has not kept up with other forum packages' features.

With the birth of Fireboard, and the subsequent merger of Joomlaboard with Fireboard, it looks like this great component might once again become the forum component of choice for Joomla! webmasters. Thanks to the Fireboard team for picking up the slack, and thanks to the Joomlaboard team for recognizing their efforts by joining forces with them.

I just noticed an interesting series of posts at Alledia.com about Joomla! URL's. In a series of 6 articles, Steve covers default Joomla! URL's, default Joomla! SEF URL's, and popular SEF URL components.

After my How-To on turning on SEF URL's in Joomla!, I got a lot of questions about which 3rd party component is the best for customizing your URL's. My only real experience with 3rd part SEF URL components is with Open SEF, so I really cannot give great advice in that area. Steve covers the big 3 SEF URL components: ARTIO SEF, Open SEF, and SEF Advance (the only commercial component of the 3). Now, whenever I get that question, I'll just point people to the great articles at Alledia.com. Thanks Steve!

After a long wait, the Joomla! store is finally open! There is currently only one t-shirt option, but I bet that will change pretty soon. I recommend buying 7 shirts...one for each day of the week. Or, if you already have dozens of t-shirts and the last thing you need is another t-shirt, you could always make a donation to the project.

I started using Mambo toward the end of 2003. Today, just out of curiosity, I thought I would use the Wayback Machine to check out some archived versions of the Mambo website from the early days. I clicked on the the link to the archive from January 24, 2003, and I found something very interesting. Apparently, the community voted to make the koala the Mambo mascot. Scroll down to the article titled "And the winner is ..." on the archived site to see for yourself. By the time I joined the community later that year, the koala was already a distant memory. Go figure.