If it has been a while since you have seen the Joomla! Doc’s Wiki, you should take a look at all of the improvements made over the past few months. The Documentation Team has been hard at work organizing, adding features and cleaning out the clutter.  We’ve even made it easier to contribute with the new wiki editor, including buttons to help insert code snippets into wiki pages.  

What we need now is more involvement from the Joomla! Community.  You don’t have to be a developer, on the Documentation Team or even a Joomla! expert, just five minutes a day or a half an hour on a Saturday morning can help improve  the Joomla! Docs for everyone.  

 

Some of the improvements are:

 

1. Searching the Wiki -  The Doc’s Wiki has integrated Google's Custom search for web sites.  You can search the Docs Wiki as you would normally search; the difference is Google does all the work now.  What does this mean?  You will get search results more relevant and precise.  As an added bonus, we even added a results tab at the top of the search results for the Joomla! Forum.  If you can't find an answer in a wiki article, it might be found on the Joomla! Forum.  
2. Navigation - One thing a user will notice now is visual clues on a page.  Some of them include tagging icons,  title prefixes, such as J2.5 or J3.1, color schemes and page notices.  These clues are used to at least let readers know the version of Joomla! an article refers too.  Navigation is an area we are continuing to work on and improve.  
3. Archiving - We’ve also been busy archiving Joomla! 1.0 and 1.5 articles.  A large part of improving navigation was cleaning out and cleaning up content.  
4. Landing pages - We are making and plan on making more useful landing pages and easy to find links for different versions of how to articles.  
5. Editing - We’ve made editing a wiki page simpler.  All users should have as their default editor the new Wiki Editor.  There are buttons to perform common tasks such as bolding text, creating lists and insert code snippets.  There really are just a few wiki markup syntaxes  to learn for creating a professional looking article and the new editor makes it even easier.  As an added bonus the WikiEditor teaches the simple wiki markup while you’re editing.
6. Watching articles - For logged in users, watching articles on the wiki is simple now too.  Just click the ‘star’ icon at the top of a page to quickly add it to your watch list of articles.  
7. Tutorial page layouts - The installed extension called Headertabs makes longer pages easier to read.  Here is an example of Headertabs in use, http://docs.joomla.org/J3.1:Installing_Joomla!.

 

Looking forward, there is still a lot of work to do on the Docs Wiki.

 

1. Clean up continues  - While there has been a noticeable reduction in incomplete, uncategorized, unlinked, redundant or out of date articles, the Docs Team still is working hard to find other articles of these types.
2. Localisation - Many of our community members have expressed a desire for some time at Localising Joomla! Documentation. The Docs Team is getting closer to this realization and as soon as our “Clean Up” is complete, we can proceed with translations.  The Docs Wiki will use a special extension to aide in tagging pages to translate, tracking translation percentages of a page and provide some automatic translations which can be improved with human interaction.
3. Documentation projects - The Docs Team realizes the Joomla! Code Contributors and Extension Developers have done a lot of work writing and helping improve Joomla! Documentation in the past.  We need your continued help!  There has been a downward slide in participation, just take a look at our Docs Wiki Activity.   The Docs Team needs your help and is trying to make it easier to contribute. With perpetual JDOC Projects you can share the work and at the same time keep our documentation organized.  Here is our first project, JDOC Developer Tutorial Project of many more to come.  These types of projects will also help with translation, just imagine seeing your contribution in multiple languages!  The Docs Team will be adding more.

 

Documentation has a Docs Wiki  Roadmap with short and long term goals, please post constructive suggestions and ideas on the Roadmap’s discussion page.  Joomla! Community members can also participate in the Documentation discussions on the Joomla! Docs Mail List.

 

What?  You want to get involved and find out how to help improve Joomla! Documentation?  Read the article,  How to Contribute to Joomla! Documentation. The Docs Team is looking forward to seeing your contributions!

 

Please discuss this blog here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=806532

The Joomla! Production Leadership Team (PLT) is responsible for leading and coordinating the development of the Joomla! CMS and Framework. This includes releasing new versions, fixing bugs, adding new features, and creating documentation and translations.

We are looking for your nominations for new PLT members. We acknowledge that the greater worldwide Joomla! community can help us a lot in this election process, and make us aware of potential candidates we may overlook.

Since we will be adding new people one by one throughout the year, we have decided to put the nomination form up permanently on the developer site at http://developer.joomla.org to continuously gather suggestions. You can nominate yourself or someone else at any time. If you nominate someone else, please ask them first if they are interested and have the time available.

Nomination Information

Useful areas of experience and expertise for nominees include:

• Coding and code design
• Documentation
• User interface and design
• Student and developer outreach

Nomination Criteria

We are looking for people with a track record of positive contributions to Joomla. Some of the criteria that will be used when evaluating nominations include:

• Contributions to the development process - Candidates should have a demonstrated track record of participating in and contributing to the Joomla development process. This can be in the form of coding, documentation, localization, or helping with communications and facilitation.
• Ability to work with others - Candidates should have the demonstrated consistent ability to work constructively and positively with the wide variety of people in the Joomla community.
• Ability to devote time to the project - Candidates should be able to devote enough time to the project to be effective. This includes the possibility of travel to Joomla events.

Nomination Form

The link to the nomination form is listed under Resources on the home page of the Joomla Developer site.

Following the recent Vulnerable Extensions List team search for new members, the Vel team have invited some new members to join and who are currently in training. Here are some short Bio's on the members.
 

The Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) Team is seeking to upgrade the current JED website to Joomla 3.x with a customized extension(s) to facilitate the management of listings and users. Click here to view the JED 3.0 Requirements Document. This document is intended to outline the required processes and functionality for the new JED site and what is needed of a new Joomla software component.

We are currently seeking community feedback. Please note this is a working document and modifications will be made on a continual basis before it is finalized and before an Request for proposals.

To discuss the Functional Design Document go here.

Over the past few months, the JED Team has been working on a revised draft of the JED Terms of Service. This draft is below. One main goal of this draft was to simplify the previous terms of service. We are seeking feedback from the community. You can comment on the Terms of Service Draft #1 here.

Joomla! Extensions Directory Terms of Service

The Joomla! Extensions Directory (JED) is a free service provided to the Joomla community. By using the JED, you are agreeing to the following terms of service. Open Source Matters (OSM) has the right, in its sole discretion, to revise, change and update the terms of service at any time without notice.

 Table of Contents

1. Ownership of Copyrights and Intellectual Property

2. Submissions

3. General Site Usage

4. Listings

4.1 General Rules

4.2 Developer Sites

4.3 Derogatory or Malicious Content

4.4 Other Information Concerning Entry Submissions

4.5 Changing from Free to Paid

5. Extensions and Forks

6. Reviews and Voting

7. Suspensions

8. Support and Dispute Resolution

9. Privacy

10. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

11. Governing Law

12. Questions and Contact

 

 1. Ownership of Copyrights and Intellectual Property

OSM and its content providers, own the copyright and all other intellectual property rights to the descriptions, reviews and all other materials listed in the JED unless otherwise expressly indicated. You agree not to copy, reproduce, download, disseminate, publish or transfer content in any form or by any means without prior written permission from OSM. The only exception to this is that developers can use the JED API to copy and reuse their own listing pages, reviews, votes and content. Information may not be collected from the JED using automated means.

 2. Submissions

By contributing any type of content to the JED, the submitter is granting OSM a worldwide, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive and limited license to reproduce, edit, publish, translate, and distribute that content in any medium whatsoever. You represent and warrant that: (a) you are the author of the content and have the right to grant this license; and (b) the content or review does not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret or other proprietary right of any other party.

 3. General Site Usage

1. 1. All extensions, listings and developer sites must comply with the latest version of the Joomla license.
   2. You must not violate or attempt to violate the security of the JED or interfere or attempt to interfere with the proper functioning of the JED, servers or networks.
   3. You must not post, upload, email, link to, or otherwise transmit any content that contains any viruses, harmful code, or other computer software or program that may damage or adversely affect the functionality of the JED or impair others’ ability to use the JED.
   4. You must not use the JED to send unsolicited emails.
   5. You must not impersonate any person or entity or misrepresent an affiliation with another person or entity.
   6. Only one account is allowed per person. Users found having multiple accounts will have all extra accounts deactivated.

 4. Listings

Any person or company is welcome to submit extensions, tools or libraries for inclusion in the JED. There are some basic rules that all extensions must comply with to qualify for inclusion. Failure to comply may result in the removal of content. By submitting any form of content, you acknowledge these basic rules.

 4.1 General Rules

1. 1. Entries must be licensed as GPL in order to be listed. Additional restrictions may not be placed on top of the GPL. Please note that the GPL does allow developers to charge for their products.
   2. The listing name for the extension must be the same name as the XML install file.
      1. Promotional text should not be part of the listing name.
      2. Extension-specific listings should contain the parent extension name.
   3. Links cannot be shortened URLs.
      1. The file download link has to point straight to the download page, even if registration is required. Download links cannot point to a list of extensions.
      2. Extension demo site links should point to a page that clearly features the extension in a prominent position.
      3. Developers for non-commercial entries are welcome to host their project at JoomlaCode. Downloads cannot be hosted from torrent websites or shared file hosting websites such as RapidShare and MediaFire.
      4. The following will not be listed:
      • 1. Extension-specific listings for extensions not listed in the JED
        2.  Translations
        3. Templates
        4. Anything that is not installable within Joomla
   4. All extensions must comply with the JED Submission Checklist. A listing that does not comply with the JED Submission checklist is subject to being unpublished immediately.

 4.2 Developer Sites

1. 1. Sites must state that the extension is licensed as GPL.
   2. Extension home and demo sites must not promote or engage in illegal activities or adult content.
   3. Sites may not imply in any way that inclusion in the JED constitutes endorsement by Joomla, the JED or OSM.

 4.3 Derogatory or Malicious Content

1. 1. Listings, reviews and any other JED content may not be used to promote derogatory or malicious messages.
   2. Derogatory and malicious messages include deliberate attempts to send messages about race, religion, age, gender and sexual orientation.

 4.4 Other Information Concerning Entry Submissions

1. 1. You are solely responsible for all content submitted to the JED. Each developer is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of their listing and for keeping their listing up-to-date. The JED team and OSM reserve the right to remove any content that is out-of-date.
   2. Extension listings that infringe upon one or more of the criteria listed above will not be considered for inclusion in the JED. In such cases, the JED team may choose, but is not obligated, to inform the developer about why their submission was rejected.
   3. Listings that have been unpublished have a 14 day period to be corrected before being permanently removed.
   4. Inclusion in the JED is a privilege, not a right, and inclusion is at the sole discretion of the JED team and OSM. Any listing can be removed at any time without notice.

 4.5 Changing from Free to Paid

If a developer changes the listing from free to paid, all votes and reviews made before the change will be removed.

 5. Extensions and Forks

See the Forked Extensions document for more information.

 6. Reviews and Voting

1. 1. A review may not contain:
      1. offensive language or dishonesty
      2. support questions or bug reports
      3. commercial disputes
      4. self-promotional content
   2.  A review may not be made in exchange for any type of compensation.
   3. Extension developers may not review extensions that are considered direct competition.
   4. Employees that work for a company or individual extension developer may not review that extension.
   5. Acceptance of reviews and votes is at the sole discretion of the JED team and OSM. 

 7. Suspensions

1. 1. 1st violation: the developer’s entire account and listings will be suspended (unpublished) for a minimum of one month.
   2. 2nd violation: the developer’s entire account and listings will be suspended (unpublished) for a minimum of three months.
   3. 3rd violation: the developer’s entire account and listings will be suspended (unpublished) indefinitely. After 12 months the developer may appeal the suspension. Appeals will be reviewed by the JED team with no guarantee that the suspension will be lifted.
      

 8. Support and Dispute Resolution

See the support and dispute resolution document for more information. (this document is in progress)

 9. Privacy

Unless required by law, no personal information from JED members will be shared with third parties. OSM will divulge any information collected from developers when required to do so by law. In the event that OSM, or its assets, are acquired, your information will be one of the transferred assets.

 10. Disclaimers and Limitation of Liability

The listings and reviews listed in the JED have been submitted by the community and are for general informational purposes only. Listings do not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by Joomla or OSM.

Because the listings and reviews are provided by others, Joomla, OSM, and the JED team cannot be held liable for accuracy of the information. Visitors wishing to verify that the information is correct should contact the parties responsible for creating the content of the resource.

The information on this website is presented "as is" without warranty of any kind. OSM disclaims all warranties, whether express or implied, including the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. In no event shall OSM be liable for any damages whatsoever, including, without limitation, direct, special, indirect, consequential, or incidental damages, or damages for lost profits, loss of revenue or loss of use, arising out of your use of this site, even if OSM has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or limitations on liability. Accordingly, the above limitations may not apply to you. OSM and the JED team reserves the right at any time to modify, suspend or discontinue the JED (or any part thereof) with or without notice, and we are not liable to you or any third party for any modification, suspension or interruption in services.

 11. Governing Law

Any dispute with respect to the JED shall be governed by the laws of the State of Maryland, excluding its conflicts of the laws and rules. All visitors to the JED submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and/or federal courts of the State of Maryland.

 12. Questions and Contact

You can find additional information and help by visiting the JED Joomla Documentation. Any questions about these terms of service should be made in the Extensions Directory Forum or through a Support Ticket.

You can comment on the Terms of Service Draft #1 here.

One of Joomla’s 2013 overall project goals is to create a Joomla "app store" that will allow users to search for and install extensions directly from the backend administrator interface. This overall project goal supports our three year vision statement which is to improve adoption of the CMS and Framework.

Members of Joomla’s Production Leadership Team (PLT), Community Leadership Team (CLT), Open Source Matters (OSM), and the Joomla Extension Directory (JED) agreed that the initial step for this goal should be to form a small group to study the issues and provide some recommendations for the best way to move forward.

One of Joomla’s 2013 overall project goals is to improve our understanding of our users. This overall project goal supports our three year vision statement which is to improve adoption of the CMS and Framework. The better we understand our users (including what they want and what they don’t want), the better we will be able to know what areas to focus our resources on. And the better we know what areas to focus our resources on, the more effective we can be to improve adoption of the CMS and Framework.

We are seeking volunteers throughout our worldwide community to form a new team that will help us achieve this overall project goal to improve our understanding of our users. If you are interested in joining this team, please send an email to paul.orwig@opensourcematters.org summarizing your relevant experience and explaining what areas you are interested in helping with.

Some of the responsibilities for this new team will include:

• Identifying the many different types of users we have.
• Developing goals and plans for how to connect and interact with our users in order to improve our understanding of them.
• Designing and administering multi-language surveys and other research methods, and analyzing results.
• Publishing and engaging with the Joomla community to share and discuss the results of surveys and other research.
• Collaborating with leadership teams and project working groups to apply learnings that can help improve Joomla.

This is an important new team that is expected to have an ongoing role for the Joomla project. What our users want and don’t want will change over time, and so we need to be continually asking questions and listening to their answers. If you are excited about the idea of joining this new team, please send an email to paul.orwig@opensourcematters.org and help us improve Joomla - together!

Please discuss this blog here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=804161

In the March 2013 Open Source Matters (OSM) board meeting, the board voted to accept changes to the OSM bylaws that were proposed by the Community Oversight Committee (COC) upon their dissolution. For more details about those proposed changes, please read this previous blog and the public forum discussion.

By voting to accept those proposed changes to the OSM bylaws, OSM has become a self-governing group. In simple terms, this means that OSM is now empowered to add and remove board members on its own, without the approval that was previously required by the COC.

Since 2010 the VEL team have organised the Vulnerable Extensions List on behalf of the Joomla community. Since then the list has been hosted on the docs.joomla.org pages.The VEL team felt that now was the time to move the vel project onto its own website.

The Vulnerable Extensions List team is looking for new members.

Those interested do not need to know how to code or be a developer but they must be able to:

converse confidently in english be able to test POC where applicable have a proven record of assisting the Joomla community

This volunteer role requires only a little commitmentment but does require a lot of discretion as you may be dealing with exploits that will affect the joomla community as a whole.

For those interested please complete the expression of interest  form  by the 15th May 
 

It is our privilege and pleasure to announce the immediate release of Joomla! 3.1. The biggest feature of Joomla 3.1 is Tags, a built-in tagging system chiefly engineered by Elin Waring and Mark Dexter. However, it’s not just any kind of tagging, it’s dynamic tagging across content-types.

For people wanting to blog about this week's release of Joomla 3.1, we have some marketing materials ready for you.

Here's the main image for Joomla 3.1. This image helps to show that the main feature of 3.1 is Tags.