We are excited! We just released our first ever fully native Joomla 1.5 extension - it is Joomla Knowledgebase which is now available for Joomla 1.0.13 and Joomla 1.5 both natively (That means you do not need the legacy plug-in layer in Joomla 1.5).

However that is only the start of our news! We have already credited the Joomla 1.5 compatible Joomla Knowledgebase to our existing customers of Joomla Knowledgebase for Joomla 1.0.x - you are now getting TWO components for the price of one! (Along with 3 mambots/plugins included for free!)

EVEN MORE GOOD NEWS Coming…. the latest version boasts the following new features…

• 100% compatible with OpenSEF and sh404SEF, two of the leading SEF extensions for Joomla 1.0.x
• Totally JoomFish aware and has content elements and language files making full translation of JoomlKB into any language a real possibility!
• A granualar layout technique powered by the world known smarty templating system - no longer do you have to hack code to get great layouts - just use your wywiwyg editor and smarty syntax
• Reliable comment SPAM PROTECTION provided by an API to the absolutely fantastic spam filtering service at Akismet - FREE FREE (API Key needed but thats free too!)
• Completely UTF-8 compatible - any language supported in Joomla 1.5 and almost all languages in Joomla 1.0.13

Why not check out the condensed FEATURE LIST or view a VIDEO or try the DEMO for yourself?

Convinced? You can purchase Joomla Knowledgebase for a special offer price (limited time only) at the following link

Watch out for more great components in the run up to the New Year - oh and by the way - HAPPY CHRISTMAS! *Only 23 days to go!!*

We have already completed some huge new features, and fixed (almost) all reported bugs (reported in the forum).

One of next weeks big announcements will be the first release of Joomla Knowledgebase for Joomla 1.5 which will operate without the need for the Legacy Plugin that Joomla 1.5 has for old components. This is a great testament to the bfFramework that we have developed that allows us to rapidly code once and run that in both versions of Joomla.

We have also ensured/completed development and testing of SEF integration with third party applications such as OpenSEF and sh404SEF as these are quite popular SEF Extensions for Joomla. You are no longer limited to SEF Advance. This is also in the release next week

Joomla Knowledgebase (next release) is now JoomlaFish compatible! Meaning you can now have multiple language translations of your articles and categories. Also better support for non utf-8 encoding in Joomla 1.0.x is built in now - with Joomla 1.5 being all UTF-8 all special chars will display perfectly!

Well just a few of the highlights already complete in the code and being tested over the next few days before release next week

Joomla Knowledgebase for Joomla 1.5 will be a separate zip file from the Joomla 1.0.x version, this is to make it compatible with Joomla 1.5 installer in non legacy mode. Other than the installation XML file the two zip files are (almost) identical (Some things like the free addons might be different between the two to ensure that the new implementation of plugins in Joomla 1.5 is used to best advantage)

Joomla Knowledgebase for Joomla 1.5 will be automatically added to your myJoomla.com account when released.

Remember you can download JoomlaKB updates for free (after initial purchase) from https://secure.myjoomla.com

Have a great weekend - I’m swapping islands and returning home for a few days…

Phil.

“Joomla! proudly presents its most important coding adrenaline surge to the development and designer community. With today’s release of Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2, we’re shifting gears into turbo mode; an entirely re-factored core, internationalisation, FTP layering, next-generation API and framework that’s so flexible and powerful and, of course, a designer’s dream for unparalleled templating flexibility.”

So at last Joomla 1.5 Beta 2 is released.

You can download Joomla 1.5 Beta-2 Here

Judging by the latest logs from the SVN repository, Joomla 1.5 will include MooTools in its 1.5 release… Joomla 1.5, revision 6400 (a milestone in the making) has the following log entry: “JavaScript conversion to Mootools WIP”. (WIP = Work In Progress). Changed files in this revision includes lots of Joomla JS files, the khepri template, the contact component and the administrators media manager, so I think it is safe to say that MooTools will be a significant part of Joomla in the near future.

Torkil Johnsen » Joomla 1.5 to include MooTools

UPDATE: It seems my post has attracted the attention of Amy

Here is a note to explain best I can that the inclusion of mootools DOESNT (yet) mean Joomla 1.5 has AJAX support.

[quote from here] Mootools is about more than ajax, ajax in mootools is only a very small part of the library, in fact its the most least used part of mootools for a lot of people.

As an example of how (currently) moo is used, for the Pane Sliders in Joomla 1.5 the moo tools for Pack and Slide are used to produce the new sliders that are used for params tables etc…

Moo is about easy javascript, about being able to have nice slide in/out effects, about referencing DOM objects easily and manipulating them.

At the time of writing, the J1.5 SVN doesnt even have the mootools AJAX plugin JS. All it has is moo.fx.pack.js and moo.fx.slide.js so using moo for ajax (at the time of writing) is impossible anyway

I believe you are confused about mootools and ajax and about exactly what including mootools really brings to Joomla 1.5 - it is certainly NOT included by the core devs to provide ajax functionality and is certainly not a change in direction from the official line - yet !

I was amazed when I logged into my Joomla site to find the warning that my Joomla version was exactly 100 days old today

Come on Joomla Devs - release Joomla 1.0.12, I know you are working hard on Joomla 1.0.12 (I see the tracker has been closed to new bugs, and core developers are crying out for bugs to be assigned them) and 1.5 but 100 days is a long time between security releases.

And any news on a feature freeze for Joomla 1.5? I see that function/method calls are still being changed daily by some core developers meaning Joomla 1.5 is still not a stable platform for the 3rd party developers! We (developers) are still having to change our extensions to call renamed methods.  Really is there any difference in calling a function initisalise instead of init ?? initisalise could be confused by some as initisalize ?

I, as many developers, cannot wait for Joomla 1.5 to stand still long enough for a beta or even a stable release — but I, as well as other developers, do not believe a stable version of Joomla 1.5 is very close.

This article has been well researched and is presented by Phil Taylor, a Joomla Expert and ex-core developer of Mambo Open Source, the basis on which Joomla 1.x is founded. It is based on publically available facts.

If you don’t read the whole article, just read the next line!

* FACT: Joomla 1.5 does not provide an ‘upgrade’ path from earlier versions. *

UPDATE: After 3 hours research for this article, Darn Wordpress stripped all my links to the fact sources when I saved the article, - Google the text of the facts and you will find them true - all were quotes from dev.joomla.org blogs or the joomla forums and all were from Jinx or other ore team members.

I am asked everyday now about Joomla 1.5. Due to the marketing that is being released at joomla.org users of Joomla are being very badly misled into believing that “upgrading” their current site to Joomla 1.5 will be an easy task. This blog post is hopefully going to show some of the pitfalls and smash that false conception.
The “upgrade” of a Joomla 1.0.12 website to Joomla 1.5 will be VERY easy and very smooth ONLY if you are:

* A Website that has just content in Joomla Content Manager, banners, users, weblinks

* A website with NO 3rd Party Components, modules or mambots

* A template designed for both Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.0.x

* A few days for research, migrating and reconfiguration of your new Joomla 1.5 site

* The memory of an elephant!

* No custom SEF enabled

If thats you then great! but for 99% of Joomla websites at least one of the above will be a problem. For some it will be the fact that they are using custom components, for some they will not have the time to reconfigure Module positions and configuration settings.

* FACT: Joomla 1.5 does not provide an ‘upgrade’ path from earlier versions. *

* FACT: “this is exactly what the move to 1.5 will consist of. Building a new site with a facility to migrate existing content.” *

* FACT: “The only things that will be fixed [in Joomla 1.0.x versions] are security issues” *

* FACT: “As with all beta releases the [bug] tracker of 1.5 looks massive” *

* FACT: The Joomla 1.5 Beta was rushed, changes were still taking place 1 hour before release & Since the beta, Fundermental and huge changes have been made that have forced 3rd party developers to recode templates & Components to maintain compatibilty - even function name calls are changing and the whole template system - the API is still changing*

* FACT: The user interface was frozen in July - yet changes are still being made *

* FACT: Joomla was declared feature complete in July - yet features are still being added and more changes considered *

* FACT: the earliest point where a third party developer could start developing on the new API and expect it to remain stable was announced Jult 8th - yet changes are still applied that break 3rd party development and even core components! *

There are currently two ways to convert your Joomla 1.0.12 website to a Joomla 1.5 website - both require that you start from scratch!

==Semi-Automatic Conversion==

Converting an older site to a Joomla 1.5 site requires first, dumping the existing Joomla 1.0.x tables using a free Joomla 1.0.x component called com_migrator

What the com_migrator will do:

* Dumps your existing Joomla 1.0.x tables into 3 files.

* A file with a complete backup

* A file with core Joomla Tables

* All other tables (anything not core Joomla) in another file

* Thats It !!

The com_migrator is actually more of a backup component as it just dumps your tables to flat sql files - it doesnt actually do any conversion or migration, its just a backup tool!!

What the com_migrator will NOT do:

* The com_migrator will backup 3rd Party Component Tables, but then they are not used anywhere.

* Any conversion, encoding change, manipulation of data.

This migration of _content_ (Read, the content, weblinks, banners, contacts, newsfeeds, polls and users - Core Joomla features - NOT content in 3rd party components) is NOT a one-to-one process and involves conversions and modifications to the content dump (Changing encodings and table structure).

A manual creation of a brand new empty site using Joomla 1.5 upto to stage 6 of the installation wizard is then required, you can then feed it the Core Content (No information here about 3rd party data) file created by com_migrator. The installation wizard will then convert your data to UTF-8 (Whether you want it to or not! You might already use a different encoding!) and manipulate the table structure and field names so that they fit the new Joomla 1.5 structure and import your content (Read, the content, weblinks, banners, contacts, newsfeeds, polls and users - Core Joomla features - NOT content in 3rd party components).

* The wizard migrates all core content records in the database (i.e. content, weblinks, banners, contacts, newsfeeds, polls and users - NOT 3rd Party Tables).

* The wizard reconstructs menus to the new menu data structure with menu items that link to core content (not 3PD components)

* The wizard APPENDS all core module records from the old site to the module table of the new Joomla 1.5 site. Original Joomla 1.5 modules records are not deleted but set to ‘unpublished’. All parameter settings are preserved.

– — –
* Warning: NONE of your links in ANY menu to ANY 3rd Party component will be restored, they will just be abandoned!

* Warning: The user will need to reset module positions, order and publish settings.

* Warning: The wizard does not migrate database records for ANY 3PD extensions.

* Warning: The wizard does not migrate non-db content such as banner images, files, photos etc. So all your images paths will need changing if they are absolute (and even if they are relative) and links to files and images will need manual checking, you will need to manually copy these to your new Joomla 1.5 website.

* Warning: The wizard requires iconv module to be loaded in PHP.ini to convert encodings (Only enabled in PHP5 by default, users with PHP4 will have to get their webhost to enable this module)

* Warning: Uploading of the migration file could time out or be restriced on some webhosts by their file upload limits.

== Manual conversion ==

This is a nightmare and should only be attempted by those with considerable experience with databases.

* The table structure of some core Joomla tables are different between Joomla 1.0.11 and Joomla 1.5

* There are 2 known field names that have changed

* The mambots table has been replaced with the plugins table

* You cannot manually migrate your menu! (Menu records are no longer valid as the structure and menu system has changed.)

* Typed Content (Static content) is no longer a valid content type, you have to manually convert these items.

I am painting a black picture I know, but these are the facts taken from the people who have developed Joomla 1.5. I personally am amazed when I hear of customers and visitors to our site that are actually running their live site on Joomla 1.5 !! or are asking me to help them “upgrade” asap!

The fact is this - moving from Joomla 1.0.12 to Joomla 1.5 is going to require a lot of hard work for the webmaster of the site - but it will all be worth it - Joomla 1.5 is a great platform and moving forward many great things are going to go out of the new framework the developers have laid down.

The situation for 3rd Party developers is this, there is no automated way to move your 3rd party component from your Joomla 1.0.12 website to your Joomla 1.5 website, and even if there was there would be no way to ensure it would be compatible. Its like taking the engine from one car into another car - it takes some hacking and chopping and reconfiguration, sweat and tears, but it is possible - or just buy a new engine designed especially for you new highly polished car that is especially made to integrate into the compartment and it snuggly (no duct tape required!)

You may have noticed that our Blog (Latest News) and forum have had a new template applied. This is a small test before we unveil our complete new website for all things Joomla 1.5.

Why a new website you may ask? Well as you may or may not know moving from Joomla 1.0.12 to Joomla 1.5 is NOT AN UPGRADE but a migration (or in laymans terms, start from scratch!!) Many people are still misunderstanding what a big step it is to move your site from Joomla 1.x to Joomla 1.5, however I digres…

We will soon be launching our new website that will be our Joomla 1.5 dedicated website, hosting all of our new and exciting Joomla Extensions for Joomla 1.5!  From the launch www.joomla-extensions.net will ONLY contain information about our Joomla 1.5 offerings and customer database for Joomla 1.5 and www.blueflameit.ltd will continue to host our Joomla 1.0.11 components and customer database for older components. (We are busy rewriting our backoffice applications, thats what is holding us up on the launch)
If you purchase a Joomla 1.0.x component you will only be able to download from blueflameit.ltd.uk and if you purchase a Joomla 1.5 component you can only buy through and download from joomla-extensions.net  - simple eh?

We are doing this so that there is a CLEAR understanding between the compatibility of our components/extenstions for Joomla.

The Latest News and Forum will be shared by both sites, just to confuse things a little

*When its ready!

After we first announced that our components would not be made compatible with Joomla 1.5 we received quite a lot of feedback.  Most of it was positive and supportive but it was still clear that we needed to find some kind of middle ground to reward customers purchasing our Joomla components this late in Joomla 1.x product life cycle.

This is what we have come up with.

If you purchase, or have purchased a Joomla component from http://www.phil-taylor.com/ after the 1st November 2006 will will provide you with a free license for our planned Joomla 1.5 compatible product as soon as it is released.

For example. 
If you purchased Phil-A-Form today then when we release “Joomla Forms for Joomla 1.5″ you will be entitled to a single free license for that Joomla extension.

We hope that this will aid our customers in planning for the future and show some reward to customers purchasing components in November and December 2006.

FAQ:
1. I purchased a component in October, can I still apply for this offer?

Answer: NO, we must have a cut off date and we have set this strictly as 00:00 GMT 1st November 2006.

2. What components are planned for Joomla 1.5?

Answer:  Joomla Forms, Joomla Knowledgebase, Joomla Directory, Joomla Mailing List Manager are all confirmed, other components are still in planning.]

3. If I buy mosListMessenger today can I get a license for Joomla Forms when it is released?

Answer: No, we will be granting licenses on a like for like basis.  mosListMessenger = Joomla Mailing List Manager, Phil-a-form = Joomla Forms.

4. Are your Joomla 1.5 extensions just the same as your Joomla 1.x ones?

Answer: NO! We have invested almost 6 months of hard work into a new component framework to power a new generation of Joomla Extensions, powered by xAJAX and other great technologies.  With the exception of Joomla Mailing List Manager, all our Joomla 1.5 components are 100% new code, rewritten from scratch for Joomla 1.5 and run WITHOUT legacy mode enabled.

Further to my recent announcement of the upcoming release of “Mailing List Manager for Joomla 1.5″ I am now writing this post to invite existing msoListMessenger customers, who often send emails with mosListMessenger and are more advanced in Joomla and web development to join our closed beta team to test our new component and provide feedback.

We are only looking for a few ACTIVE people to test drive our software on Joomla 1.5 SVN and provide feedback within a few days - If you would like more details please email Phil direct at phil@phil-taylor.com

Please, no time wasters, we are eager to release this exciting component but we want to ensure it is well tested before we do. This offer only applies to EXISTING mosListMessenger License holders.

Ok so I have a few secrets at the moment, and I am just bursting to tell you all what we have been working on at Blue Flame IT, however I need to keep it under wraps a little longer until I have a public demo to show you - you are going to love it!

So for today I wanted to release a smaller secret. mosListMessenger for Joomla 1.0.x has been a huge success over the years and we are pleased to annouce, under license from Matt Simpson, the original creator of ListMessenger, we have developed a full Mailing List Extension for Joomla 1.5. Subscription Based and Admin driven, this Joomla Extension will be the first of our new solutions for Joomla 1.5 based on totally rewritten code.

We have forked ListMessenger (With permission) and have added more Joomla Specific Features and Wizards in this new version - You can even use “Joomla Mailing List” to email all your registered users or admin users, or any of your unlimited Subscription based mailing lists.

We are even completing wizards for creating the subscription modules so you dont even need ANY html knowledge at all - we will be releasing this new version very soon

- so keep watching our site for details, until then here is a screenshot!