If you’ve been following the developments lists (or even if you haven’t), you’ve noticed a flurry of activity around Joomla 1.6 in recent months. While we haven’t been very good about keeping our milestones, there are a few very good reasons for that.

The first and biggest reason is we’ve been trying to shoot at a moving target. The scope for Joomla 1.6 was pretty basic—adding ACL and nested categories. Had we stopped there, we could have theoretically had Joomla 1.6 out by now. But while working on it, we and others in the community have been constantly saying to ourselves “wouldn’t it be really friggin’ cool if Joomla had…?” This kind of scope creep happens all the time in the real world, and there’s a propensity to go overboard when our hands aren’t forced on a specific deadline. There’s always that “one last thing” we can squeeze in.

Secondly, it’s the fallacy that “this will only take a few minutes to implement.” Many developers (and not just developers) often fall victim to the notion that a task will be short, only to discover that it’s more complex under the surface than initially thought. Minutes quickly turn into days or even weeks. It’s human nature.

Third of all, there’s a feeling that if something doesn’t go in now, it won’t go into the Joomla core for years to come. We have a pretty progressive roadmap for the next versions of Joomla and we’ll try to keep a regular pace of development. Since Joomla progress is primarily determined by its contributors, the pace will be commensurate with such. So while this isn’t true, some have the feeling it is.

In the past, we’ve had some false starts and sometimes been unclear about direction or needs, but we hope to be better at it. The Joomla Project has taken a lot of criticism during it’s relatively short existence, which, deserved or not, comes with the territory. But, all in all, we’re all working towards a common goal of making the next version of Joomla as powerful, extensible, and compatible as it can be.

If you work with Joomla, you know full well that the community is pretty vocal about the things they like and don’t like. Joomla events are prime occasions where we receive feedback on what’s working for people and what isn’t. There may not always be an answer to every issue, but we do listen.

Essentially, the process of working on Joomla 1.6 is where all of this activity comes together—all those emails, forum discussions, Joomla Days, and other random “ingredients” of information go into a giant bubbling cauldron and soon becomes (hopefully) the tastiest soup you’ve ever eaten. Decisions are made based on what ingredients we can combine and recommending against others that won’t taste good (or even spoil the stew). All is done with a keen eye on the quality of the end-product—it has to look good and taste good.

At this time, the bubbling cauldron of Joomla 1.6 is getting near time for us all to get our first good taste. We’ve added the ACL, nested categories work, a new Article Manager is written, new core libraries like JForm have been added, and we’re working on fresh new templates for both the front-end and the back-end. We’re also working on a way to make upgrading from Joomla 1.5 as painless as possible. So, in order to get a round of solid feedback from the community, we’re looking to release a second Alpha very soon and follow up with a quick Beta after that.

So please be patient.

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If you haven’t visited the Joomla Site Showcase yet, you’re missing a collection of some of the best Joomla sites out there. We’ve just broken 1000 sites (congratulations to our 1000th site, the Junction Motel in Australia), many of which are great examples of sites in over 100 different categories. Check it out here:

http://community.joomla.org/showcase

We’re looking for new community members to join this team. What’s expected of team members? A few simple things:

1) Spend a small amount of time each week verifying site submissions. The process is quite simple and you’d need to verify such things as whether or not a site is really running Joomla and if the owner properly submitted their site information.

2) Decide what the Site of the Month will be. Each month, the team discusses what the best site is for the month. Past winners are here: http://community.joomla.org/showcase/sites-of-the-month.html

3) Familiarize yourself with the Showcase Guidelines. All submissions need to adhere strictly to them.

4) Occasionally, answer community questions on the Joomla Discussion Forum about the showcase or problems with submissions.

That’s it. We communicate via Skype so you’ll need to be on it to share information. If you’re interested in joining the team, email us at showcase@community.joomla.org.

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Last week Mark wrote the first Production Working Group Leadership status blog.  At last Saturday’s meeting, for some strange reason I volunteered to write one this week.

Work continues on 1.6.  As Mark stated last week, the biggest task remaining for the release of 1.6 is ACL.  The other night Louis showed me some mockups of one of the UI widgets and they look quite sharp.  It is pretty exciting to see this much sought after feature finally starting to come together.  Hannes and Andrew have also been working hard to get all of the pieces together.  Once this gets to a workable stage we will be really close to 1.6 going beta!  Keep an eye on the branches in the SVN to get a look at what is happening.

The other area of focus is the Joomla! Labs Project. As most are aware, one of the struggles we’ve had as a project is figuring out how to open our doors to fresh developers. The Labs Project is one piece of the puzzle that will change the way we do development.  Stay tuned for more details.

Well, those are the highlights - we’ve come so far with 1.6 yet we still have some distance to travel as we head towards the beta process.  Can’t wait!

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