The Joomla Project is proud to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6 beta 5 (download). IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a beta version and is not intended to run any type of production site. It is intended to be used for evaluation purposes only.

Since the Joomla 1.6 beta 4 release on Jun 28, we have fixed approximately 65 issues in the tracker. Much of this progress is directly related to the stepped up efforts of the Joomla! Bug Squad. Thanks for all your hard work in bringing us one increment closer to stable!

See the CHANGELOG for details of what has been changed in this release.

What's next?

This is the fifth in our series of continuous beta releases. Beta 6 will be released on July 26, 2010.

There is already another security release of Joomla. You may download version 1.5.20 here. This is available immediately. Thanks Joomla!

The Joomla! Project announced the immediate availability of Joomla! version 1.5.19. This new version is for improved security. Download the full version or upgrade versions here.

The Joomla Project is proud to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6 beta 3 (download). IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a beta version and is not intended to run any type of production site. It is intended to be used for evaluation purposes only.

Since the Joomla 1.6 beta 2 release on May 31, we have fixed approximately 102 issues in the tracker. Much of this progress is directly related to the stepped up efforts of the Joomla! Bug Squad. Thanks for all your hard work in bringing us one increment closer to stable! This is the third in Joomla's series of continuous betas. Beta 4 will be released on June 28, 2010.

Download here: http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=5276

Now that the email notification issue is solved, we're finally out of Beta1. ;)

If you're part of the Joomla Chicago User Group, and you've spent any time at all in the Community Area of the site, it's likely you woke up this morning to at least one or two (or ummm...150) email notification emails from the site's social engine (we run JomSocial 1.7.15).

While I'd like to apologize for that little snafu, it wasn't a mistake or due to anything improperly operating.

Nope, rather, after many months of working on the site, I discovered how to toggle-ON the ability to send members email notifications when they receive friend requests, responses to their discussions, and a whole littany of other goodies (called cron jobs). In doing that, several months of important and overdue pent-up social messages made their way OUT of the bottleneck created by yours truly.

So, with this discovery, I can officially announce, we have graduated out of the 7 month Beta1 Phase of the new JoomlaChicago.com site existence. We are now in Beta2, until further notice. ;)

Life is a continuous beta test, after all. Cheers and enjoy your weekend!

-JC

Great news for the Joomla! Community!  Joomla! 1.6 Beta (1) was just released! Now you can dig into all the new goodies in the new version. We recommend you do NOT use 1.6 yet on your live sites, but go ahead and give it a shot for testing purposes.

Here's the link to the full article on Joomla.org

Here's a link to DOWNLOAD Joomla! 1.6 Beta1 now.

Have fun! Joomla 1.6 ROCKS!

This week, DocMan just released its much-anticipated version 1.5.  Great! Wahoo! Yipeee! Only...wait, it's no longer...free.  *Gasp*  I mean, not "free as in freedom" as Richard Stallman and Software Freedom Law Center put it, it but "free as in beer."

I read up on the Joomlatools blog about the new release, and yup...sure enough, in little black and white pixels, it says right there that DocMan is now going to CHARGE for its software.  Oh, the nerve of those guys, charging - let's see - twelve Euros for their software which was once free-as-in-beer!

I never much liked the "free as in beer" analogy the FOSSers of the world pinned on freeware, as they tried to distance peoples' preconceived notions of Open Source. They tried to re-define "Free" as in freedom, which is a bit much to get your head around. While I agree with them, it was an unnecessary stretch. But now, I see their wisdom after all. I read down the Joomlatools blog comments from a couple angry folks about the audacity of the Docman team to actually charge for the beer that once flowed free-as-in-dude-I'm-too-cheap-to-pay-for-it-anyways from an endless Joomlatools kegger. This, from Jessi:

"Totally removing DocMan from my 10 clients websites and finding another solution."

The free as in beer analogy was pure genius; I just didn't get it yet. I guess free as in beer is fine, until you have to peel the ornery drunks off the kegger at the end of the night.

Kudos to the DocMan Team, and Cheers on your new release!

(Editor's update <insert sarcastic smilie here> aparently, my sarcasm was too thinly veiled - let free as in FREEDOM ring!)

John Coonen is Co-Host of JoomlaChicago, a registered Joomla! User Group and the CMS Expo.

The JoomlaChicago Site Squad has been busily making progress on the JoomlaChicago website over the past few months, including a whole new interface design, upgrading to Joomla 1.5x, and a whole lot more. 

Now, the big push over the next 60 days will be improving the "Social Side" of the website. We installed and have been using JomSocial, a great Social Networking extension from Azrul Studios, built especially for Joomla!

We're also in the midst of deciding whether a Forum is a needed part of the site. We've been having some technical difficulties tying together a forum with JomSocial, so in the interest of not turning folks off, we've temporarily disabled (unpublished) the Forum. We still have the data and comments, but we're actively pushing toward a solution which will incorporate both JomSocial AND a Forum. We're encouraged by what we see on the near horizon, especially by the folks over at JVitals, makers of Agora Forum. We'll see how the coming weeks go as we work on integrating the two!  If you want to get involved, jump in, the water's warm.

;)

It was great to present Joomla! 1.6 last month at JoomlaChicago in November. We had a full house on-hand to see the Alpha 2 release of Joomla! Included in the upcoming release will be two much-anticipated major improvements for Joomla: Nested Categories and Access Control Levels (ACL).  Along with these improvements, you'll find a new fine-grain Template controls, improved User Profiles, many enhancements to the code and rules to boost performance, and several needed usability enhancements.

The Joomla! leadership has gone through a lot of change within the past year, with Wilco Jansen and Anthony Ferrara (and others) no longer on the Dev team. After a re-org, others have stepped up, and now, OSM has turned to professional, paid support in order to get back on-track on the long-overdue 1.6.  

There's still no word on how challenging the upgrade path will be. Also, still no word on when two other major enhancements may be coming down the pike: Versioning and Multi-site (multi-domain) controls.

We'll keep our ear to the rail on these and other developments! As always, feel free to comment here and join the discussion.

The beta test launch of Joomla Pro is December 9, 2009 at 11:00 am. During this Roundtable, we’ll discuss how to put your backup on an autopilot with Xcloner. This session will also focus on making updates, upgrades and working on a live site without the risk of messing the site up.  Joomla Pro will be led by Robert Nowak and Dan Pietroske (thank you, Robert for the write-up on Joomla Pro).

Meetings of JoomlaChicago are on the second Wednesday of every month, from 11am - 1:30 pm at the offices of The Acquity Group, 500 West Madison St, Suite 2200.