Joomlatools: Some myths and misconceptions about Joomla! you often read while browsing forums.

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Joomlatools: "It's even more frustrating when I see a Joomla! 1.5 site that doesn't have proper feeds. J!1.5 makes it so easy, and still some people manage to mess it up."

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"Working in a garage-based company that's looking to create its first killer Web site? Or maybe you're toiling in the bowels of a behemoth corporation, wondering why you're mired in an old-fashioned, "waterfall" software-development process when all you wanna do is board that Web 2.0 train, and quickly. Well, I've got the answer for you, and it's called Joomla."

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JoeJoomla: "The simplest way to develop a Joomla! site on your local Mac OS X computer is by using MAMP. MAMP is short for Macintosh, Apache, MySQL, PHP. MAMP works just like an application. It is released under the GNU General Public License. You can download MAMP from Living-e AG. The download page can be found HERE.

Current MAMP versions require Mac OS X 10.4.x. If you're running Mac OS X 10.3.x you can download an earlier version of MAMP 1.4.1 (universal binary), for Intel and PowerPC."

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Compass Design: Many readers of this blog are one of two types of business, customization/design of Joomla websites or downloadable digital products. Prompted by a chat among some of my colleagues, I'd thought I'd see what people think about an important part an online business - your refund policy.

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I know I'm a week behind about this, but I just came across the link via Gadgetopia:  Open-source PHP applications that changed the world.  The CMS related applications that were determined world changers are listed below.

• PHP-Nuke - 1999
• eZ Publish - 2000
• osCommerce - 2000
• phpBB - 2000
• Gallery - 2001
• Drupal - 2001
• MediaWiki - 2002
• WordPress - 2003
• Joomla! - 2005
• Magento eCommerce - 2007

When you split the list into three sections, you get the feeling that PHP-Nuke, ezPublish, and osCommerce have been around for a very long time.  More importantly, you begin to think that it is time for Gallery, Drupal, and MediaWiki to either be seen as mature applications or for those applications to finally grow up.

Webdistortion, a web design studio in Northern Ireland, recently reviewed nine different e-commerce platforms. All nine platforms reviewed were open source software packages.

With e-commerce webdesign really starting to take off, its never been more important to choose a platform which suits you as a developer (i.e. one that you can support) and one that will provide your clients with the features that they need to run a successful online shop.

There are a number of ways of getting a shop online, and we’ve focused primarily on open source e-commerce platforms here.

Those nine e-commerce platforms under review include: osCommerce, ZenCart, VirtueMart (Joomla!/Mambo), Magento, DashCommerce, CubeCart, X-Cart, LiteCommerce, and Shopify. If you're looking for a brief and consolidated review of open source shopping carts, then the Webdistortion reivew is a nice place for you to visit.

For those curious, I found this story via DZone.

The Joomla! community has released a new version of their CMS, Joomla 1.5.3.

The Joomla! community is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Joomla! 1.5.3 [Vahi]. This release is earlier than scheduled in order to correct a database name validation error introduced in 1.5.2. It has been a month since Joomla! 1.5.2 was released on March 23, 2008. The goal is to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla! end user community containing the latest bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Latest bug fixes and enhancements in this release includes:

• Database name validation
• xHTML compliance fixes
• Help screen updates
• JFilterInput infinite loop fix
• PDF fixes for PHP 4
• Minor CSS and RTL issues

Additional information about Joomla 1.5.3 as well as goals for a future release can be found at Joomla.org.

OpenSourceCommunity: As I look at the Psystar Web site, built using Joomla! and VirtueMart, both free, as in liberty solutions, I can't help but wonder if we might be seeing these little extra pushes right now.

Psystar offers a product called "Open Mac." Well, today Psystar wisely renamed the product Open Computer.

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Building Websites with Joomla! 1.5 is a new book from Packt which is written as a practical step-by-step guide to building a website from scratch. Written by Hagen Graf, this book takes the reader through the tasks essential to create a Joomla! website as rapidly as possible.

Joomla! started as a fork from Mambo in 2005, when many of the original developers of the Mambo CMS moved to working on Joomla! It has rapidly grown in popularity and is a cutting Edge Content Management System and one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management systems in the world. It is used world-wide for anything from simple homepages to complicated corporate websites. It is easy to install, easy to manage and very reliable.