On quite a few occasions fellow developers ask me which is the best way to get started with Joomla! Development. Among other things, I always propose that they should have a complete reference of the Joomla! Framework API. The only book which was up to this task was “Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development”, albeit a bit outdated since it was written when Joomla!1.5 was still in beta, some two and a half years ago. When Packt Publishing announced that they'd release the updated “Mastering Joomla! 1.5 Extension and Framework Development (Update)” I got ecstatic! So, here you go, I reviewed the new edition of the book and I'm willing to share my experience with you.

Like all of you, I just found out that the upcoming Joomla! World Conference in Melbourne was postponed due to... a rain forecast?! I understand that this is a figure of speech (OK, I'm Greek, I'm not stupid). The "rain" is used metaphorically and this is exactly why I tweeted yesterday that “It takes more than a website and a joomla.org announcement to organize a world conference. It requires COMMUNITY involvement”. Some people mistook my tweet as a bad take on the Australian and Asian Joomla! Community and the event's organizers, implying that they're incapable, or unimportant, or something like that. On the contrary! This is why I am writing this blog post.

Unless you live under a rock, you already know that the past three days J and Beyond 2010 was taking place in Wiesbaden, Germany. The fact that it was the first international Joomla! event was further stressed as it was organized (impeccably!) by the community, for the community. It has been an amazing experience and – certainly – the best three days of my Joomla! life.

Republished from http://www.alltogetherasawhole.org/profiles/blogs/an-urgent-call-to-community.

For everyone who has read the latest Joomla! Developer Working Group notes, there is one thing which instantly became apparent: Joomla! is like a patient on life support.

Let me explain this as best as I can. The last major release of Joomla! was 1.5, made over two years ago. The code base is starting to show its age. There is an immediate need for a new release if Joomla! is not to lose anymore traction. However, there is a shortage of developers who work on the Joomla! 1.6 code base, in order to bring it out of the door any time soon.

How does this affect us? We are all professionals working with Joomla!, building Joomla! sites, developing Joomla! extensions, providing Joomla! training and support or creating Joomla! templates. Like it or not, our core business revolves around the CMS. Bluntly put, if Joomla! becomes irrelevant in the global web market, we become obsolete. Having Joomla! around for a long time to come is in our best interest. Even more, it is absolutely essential to our very existence.

This is where community involvement is necessary. We are the Joomla! Community. We have the development skills to help Joomla! get out of its current state of stagnancy and bring it back where it belongs: the front line of the global CMS market. However, we all know what happens when we do solo attempts to help the project. The bureaucracy we have to go through usually kills off our passion very quickly. But, there has always been a remedy for bureaucracy, known to the world for centuries.

Team play.

The plan is to get 10-20 developers and offer our help as a team. Bureaucracy can be tackled much more easily by volunteering en masse. ATAAW, a neutral ground where Joomla! developers share their concerns, will serve as our home base and provide us with the much needed community feedback. If you choose to join this effort, I can’t promise you glory and retribution. I do promise you a 5 hours per week schedule of bug hunting and fixing for each one of us, so as to get 1.6 out really soon. I firmly believe that once 1.6 is out, we can actively contribute to shaping 1.7 (or 2.0, version numbers don’t matter) to what we know that the market wants. Each one of us has a unique perspective. Let’s get this vision to a team level and make it happen. This is what all together, as a whole, really means.

There have already been volunteers, recruited from private contacts, willing to be part of this effort. But, our personal contacts are only so many. There are just a handful of us right now and we could really use some more. We need you. Joomla! needs you!

So, who’s with us?

You can sign yourself up to our effort at the forum thread we started for this purpose. For any question, remark and what not, just post a comment here.