Community Blog

GSoC Geeks Ogle Googleplex – 2009 Mentor Summit Report

mark.dexter@community.joomla.org (Mark Dexter) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:46:40 +0000

On October 24, 2009, the geek factor at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, jumped even higher as representatives from 124 GSOC projects swarmed in for the weekend 2009 GSOC Mentor Summit.

Steve Fisher and I were lucky enough to represent your favorite CMS. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet people from so many other FOSS projects and enjoy the geek-gadget-grab bag that is the Googleplex.

Three giant flat-screen panels display a joy-stick-controlled Google Earth as you enter. The effect is like riding in a helicopter over anywhere on the planet. Turn around to see a wall-size display of words that people from around the world are searching as you watch. Another wall shows a world map with dots representing how many people are online from different areas.

Despite all of the gadgets, the real draw for me was the opportunity to meet, talk to, and learn from the other attendees. The take-away items came in two flavors, general and specific.

JoomlaCode November Maintenance

Sam.Moffatt@joomla.org (Sam Moffatt) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:32:44 +0000

We're all done! Enjoy! (Updated below with open issues)

Due to some awesome shifts with JoomlaCode to get newer, more powerful servers (thanks again to Rochen). However as a part of this we're going to have some scheduled downtime for parts of JoomlaCode as we reconfigure the system into a new environment. I'm intending this post to be a sort of rolling update page as I work through all of the items and get the different bits and pieces finalised with Rochen.

As these are pretty significant changes, I'm hoping to keep the amount of disruption to a minimum. This is one of the first times I've personally tried to shift JoomlaCode as a whole beast so I'm hoping for the best and expecting some issues to fall out. I'm aiming to structure the moves in such a way that we're going to cause as little disruption, move in as small a chunk as possible and get everything tested.

The deadline for this project is the end of November, however I hope to be up and running at least a weekend before then. More updates as they come to light.

14th/15th Nov 2009 Downtime

We're planning some significant (8 hour chunk) down time for JoomlaCode over the coming weekend (Saturday 14th November Midnight GMT to 8am). This will impact on all web based services - downloads, SVN, trackers and project services. During this time we are hoping to migrate the database from its current environment into a new server. This is the first of a few moves to migrate services from the current hardware onto newer hardware.

During this process we'll be upgrading from PostgreSQL 8.3 to PostgreSQL 8.4 for the database backend of JoomlaCode. The last PostgreSQL upgrade, from PostgreSQL 7.4, brought JoomlaCode to a new level of stability. Recently we've been having issues with the stability of the database layer with JoomlaCode so we're hoping a PostgreSQL upgrade and some beefier hardware will help us chew through even more queries as we grow.

At this point in time there is no major maintenance planned for the Sunday however if there is an issue shifting the database server, I will be redoing this again on the Sunday. For testing purposes the system may appear to be online during the scheduled downtime and hopefully I will be able to restore service earlier.

15th Nov 2009 Downtime

Due to incredibly success and speed on the 14th, the plans for next weekend have been advanced to the 15th. All services are offline as off Sunday 15th November at midnight for eight hours or until the down time is completed.

Open Issues

At the moment I'm working to resolve a few issues:

On the 14th and 44th minute (or there abouts), JoomlaCode may issue a Forbidden error message. This is due to a bug in the way that Subversion 1.4+ (including 1.6.6) appears to parse the authorisation file that wasn't an issue for Subversion 1.2 that we were previously on. I've filed a bug on their tracker but I am doubtful that it will be resolved any time soon.
ViewVC appears to be only returning the first revision for some reason. Not sure why but I also tried ViewVC 1.1.2 and it did the same so I'm still trying to work out what is going wrong. It appears like it is only returning the first revision of the repository. ViewVC is what powers the "scmsvn" pages for a project.
There appears to be an issue with some of the mailing lists. Some systems are having handler issues (sendmail isn't liking the PHP backends in some places) and the system is also refusing some inbound emails because of identity problems. As a result items like commit mailing lists and some bug notifications may not work properly. Some emails however are working and being sent so as to the exact problem I'm presently uncertain.

Again, I'd like to reiterate the thanks to Rochen for helping to make this happen. Without the great, professional services provided by Rochen, the web infrastructure for Joomla! would not be the same.

A Preview of Link Redirection in Joomla 1.6

andrew.eddie@community.joomla.org (Andrew Eddie) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:44:12 +0000

Joomla 1.6 will include a new component and plugin called Redirect. Its main function is to provide a mechanism to record 404 "not found" errors, and to give the Web site owner the ability to redirect those to another page if desired.

Planning the 2010 Joomla!Day Calendar

ryan.ozimek@opensourcematters.org (Ryan Ozimek) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:48:15 +0000

This year has been a terrific whirlwind of activity in the Joomla!Day world. With events on six continents, spanning the entire year, the community has rallied together to share lessons learned, make new friends, and help make the Joomla project better. At some points, there were multiple Joomla!Days happening around the world in the same week!

In our efforts to continue to expand the outreach of Joomla, and also to better plan for the upcoming year, I'm looking to the community to help me put together a list of Joomla!Days you'll be hosting in 2010. This will allow OSM to better understand the events budget allocation needs for the year, as well as providing the community with a long-view schedule of events for the entire year.

So, do you have a Joomla!Day you're planning to host?
Join the discussion!

Please note that posts to this forum thread will not be considered official requests, but simply a way for us to get an idea of the 2010 event expected needs. We want to make sure to get the broadest idea for the calendar, and then receive the official requests separately as soon as organizers' plans have solidified.

If you'd like to submit an official Joomla!Day request, please use our form to do so.

Here's to an exciting 2010 Joomla!Day calendar!

Proposals for Major Events Wanted

elin.waring@opensourcematters.org (Events Team) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 23:01:26 +0000

The Joomla! Events Team is excited to announce that it is seeking proposals from potential local organizing committees for up to four major events to be held on dates between the Fourth Quarter of 2010 and the end of 2011. Each event will be held on a different continent and in a different quarter. Details about the process and requirements are available as part of the Request for Proposals.

The process of selection will take a few months.

Phase one, starting today, will give local groups three weeks to put together a local organizing committee and announce their intention to work on full proposals.
Phase two will end in two months. During this phase the organizing committees will put together detailed proposals.
Community discussion of all proposals will take place in the Events Forum

We strongly encourage people interested in working on proposals to work collaboratively and to engage in discussion with the Joomla! Community on the events forum.

The events team would like to thank our friends at the Drupal Association for giving us lots of helpful advice about how to manage this process. We look forward to seeing some great proposals!

Few important changes in 1.5.15 release

kauselot@yahoo.com (Klas Berlič) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:53:32 +0000

To accompany the official release announcement, I would like to point out few of the most important changes in this release:

.htaccess change that prevents looking at your extensions XML files - while this was not a security hole by itself, it kept open doors for hackers to see what version of particular extension you are running. To put this fix into effect you have to uncomment (remove #) from corresponding section (lines 35-39) in htaccess.txt and rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess (or copy/paste that part into your existing .htaccess, must be inserted at the same place).
TEST before you put this on live site - if your site is serving publicly accessible XML than this is not directly usable for you - you would need to make exceptions for those files or use regex based rules for blocking. Also not usable for those without apache/mod_rewrite.

PHP 5.3.x compatibility - Joomla runs fine on PHP 5.3.x now (except of OpenID library)

Core components caching - com_weblinks and com_contact are using cache for the first time. Also com_content view cache comes with more refined caching logic, so that caching is disabled only where it needs to be (e.g. for users using filters). This should result in speed increases on high-traffic sites.

Other notable bugfixes:

TinyMCE is now working properly - all remaining bugs created by the recent TinyMCE upgrade should be gone now
Mootols were upgraded to 1.1.2 to ensure future compatibility with Firefox 3.6

Note:

For all that would like to enable access to XML inside their extensions, one way would be to create .htaccess in each directory that contains .xml files and put reverse rule in it (or in a directory above those directories that need exceptions - it applies to current directory and all directories bellow):

<Files ~ "\.xml$">
Allow from all
Satisfy all
</Files>

or even more explicit rule, limited only to myfile.xml:

<Files myfile.xml>
Allow from all
Satisfy all
</Files>

A Preview of the New Template Manager in Joomla! 1.6

andrew.eddie@community.joomla.org (Andrew Eddie) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:10:33 +0000

Joomla 1.6 will include some important new changes in the Template Manager. This article gives you a preview of what you can likely expect in the final product.

Joomla! Developer Conference

elin.waring@opensourcematters.org (Elin Waring ) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 14:38:05 +0000

The first ever Joomla! Developer conference is December 5 and 6 in New York City. Seating is limited so you should register now. The conference will focus on working with Joomla 1.6 and is oriented towards extension developers. Speakers include: Louis Landry, Sam Moffatt, Andrew Eddie, Ian MacLennan, and Hannes Papenberg.

A limited number of scholarships are available. These will only cover admission to the conference, not travel or lodging. The final day for scholarship requests is 12 noon New York time on November 4.

Please note that this conference assumes that you already have good working knowledge of Joomla! extension development and the Joomla API. It is appropriate for extension development firms, custom Joomla application developers, and in house Joomla development specialists.

Streaming is planned, so even if you can't come, you can watch.

Please note that hotel space in New York is very tight in December. It is extremely important that you make room reservations early; many hotels are already filled.

Joomla 1.6 Alpha 2 Released

ken.crowder@forum.joomla.org (Ken Crowder) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:09:53 +0000

The Joomla project is pleased to announce the immediate release of Joomla 1.6 alpha 2. This release contains many new features requested by the community; most notably, ACL. Other features are listed below as well as what you can expect in the future for Joomla 1.6.

This is an alpha release. It is intended to be a developer/hobbyist preview and is not intended to be used on a production web site.

Joomla Community Building - my view

brad.baker@joomla.org (Brad Baker) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:09:45 +0000

Of course, everyone has their own opinions on this subject, just like everyone has their own preferences on operating system, web browser etc. So, the following brief thoughts are just an expression of my opinion on this subject. BTW I prefer Mac OS, Firefox/Google Chrome

What prompted me to write this post?
Having recently (last weekend) attended the Sydney JoomlaDay and now preparing for the Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam JoomlaDay the subject of community is on my mind. Now that is out of the way.. here goes.

Everyone has their own expectations when it comes to their involvement with Joomla. Often, people ask me for my reasons, primarily I tell them "Joomla is a great platform to make a living upon". Perhaps you feel the same way, or not. I know some people are here to 'make a difference to the world' and I also respect their reasons for their involvement in the Joomla Community.

That being said, reflecting on the times when I feel most *among* the Joomla Community, it would have to be when attending a Joomla Event. Again, you may agree, or not. So, as I prepare for my own exciting trip to Vietnam to attend the Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam JoomlaDay I'm reminded that I'm going to once again rub shoulders with the Joomla Community, in the flesh.

If there is any Joomla Community building or grassroots effort to improve things, I'd have to say, at these events such as JoomlaDay's as well as Joomla User Groups (JUGS) meetings is where it will have to begin.

So, in conclusion: Whatever your reason for being here, if you want to share that reason, help make a difference, or just increase your contacts with the Joomla Community, be sure to come along and attend a Joomla Event sometime.

I'd also just like to add, it's always a pleasure to get together with people like Andrew Eddie and Sam Moffatt who also attended the Sydney JoomlaDay along with a large number of others. When it comes to ensuring the Joomla Project codewise is sound, and driving ahead, these are the kinds of people who deserve our support. When was the last time you thanked someone like them?

There are a few more I'd like to mention by name (though I will obviously be forgetting some) who continue to be invaluable members of our community: Louis Landry, Chris Davenport, Elin Waring, Mark Dexter, Hannes (and all the other devs working hard on 1.6) all the JED and JRD Editors, the tireless hardworking forum moderators, as well as the people like Paul and Airton who help to look after this very site. There are scores of humble people who you don't hear much from that do so much, like Wendy Robinson, Dave Huelsmann, Ryan Ozimek and Claire Mandville.. and many more who's names I know I've forgotten.

Lift your eyes just a little, and you see people doing similar things in the Joomla International Communities. When was the last time anyone thanked people like Jean-Marie Simonet (JM) for their efforts? This guy's a trooper who continues to devote himself to Joomla. I think I could go on, but hopefully you get the picture. If you call Andrew Mr Joomla, JM is surely Mr International Joomla (hopefully the Mr Joomla contest doesn't include a swimsuit part).

Ok, and now for the actual final conclusion: See you somewhere out there in the Joomla Community, on our forum etc, or even better at the next Joomla Event I attend, like in Ho Chi Minh City on November 1 2009 at the Vietnam JoomlaDay or next year at Melbourne JoomlaDay 2010.