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.

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.

Anyone else find ioncube a huge pain?    I appreciate the desire or need for a developer to want to protect their code but it's such a pain to get ioncube running on most hosts..    I have a client on BlueHost and while they have a "simple one click" install for ioncube, it's an old version... DOH!    So, back to square one and after fighting with it for an hour I manage to make it work. 

Honestly at this point when I see that a tool I'm interested in uses ioncube, I start looking for another tool...   Why penalize me for being the guy that is willing to pay for your stuff when the hacker is just going to find a way to steal it from you anyway?

If you haven't gotten started yet, now is the time to get involved in the Joomla Chicago online community.  In just the last few weeks, there have been daily increases in activity -- and that means more opportunities for all of us to network with other Joomlaistas and expand our web skills, our web activities, and our web businesses.

Try these three simple ways to get into the swing of things:

• * log onto Joomla Chicago and update your profile to tell the rest of us about yourself
• * take a close look at all those snazzy pictures of the other members and pick a few to "friend" - it's fun!
• * follow the links to recent updates to discussion posts. Add your two cents! You'll start getting emails as other people join the conversation

Get started now! You'll be amazed a month from now to see how many great connections you've made!

What's your favorite way to interact with the Joomla Chicago online community?

Starting in January, JoomlaChicago will be offering a Developer Group session, for more advanced web developers in the group who want to focus on the technical side of Joomla CMS. JoomlaChicago is at a point where there is enough demand for both beginner and advanced techniques to warrant two concurrent sessions.

The main thrust for the Developer group will be to discuss advanced Website development trends, techniques and insights.  Using, customizing and creation of extensions will be discussed, as well as best practices, javascript / MooTools, CSS and more.

More will be announced at the upcoming JoomlaChicago meetup on November 11th. If you're interested in participating as a presenter, please contact John or Linda Coonen.