Being so active within the Joomla Development Community and recently talking so much about the benefits of social networking recently I was thinking about all of the resources that I knew about that most other people using Joomla probably never knew existed. I thought I would share some of these valuable resources here with you.

For those that have a Twitter account and want to follow primarily Joomla related tweets here are a few links that you WON'T want to miss. You can follow everyone on these lists in one easy click.

Main list of Joomla Experts
http://tweepml.org/Joomla/

Some of the best Joomla Extension Developers
http://tweepml.org/Best-Joomla-Extensions-Developers/

http://tweepml.org/joomlaextensions/

Some of the best Joomla Template Developers
http://tweepml.org/joomlatemplates/

There are also 2 additional and might I add, very complete lists of RSS feeds from everything Joomla that you can imagine. 

http://start.joomlaworks.gr/

http://joomla.alltop.com/

Although this is a short list of resources in this blog post if you click on these links you will find that these links will provide you with an extreme amount of very valuable information right at your fingertips.

I suggest that you bookmark these links as they are constantly being updated and added to.

Enjoy!

The way I really learned (and keep learning)  about Joomla security was to start reading the security forum every morning:

http://forum.joomla.org/viewforum.php?f=432

If the tales of woe wept within do not spark your security urge, nothing will.

Action Item #1: A web guy from WV (Jeff Channell) frequently helps people out within the forum, and recently posted that he has found 9 Joomla extensions with XSS Vulnerabilities. He was kind enough to answer some questions about this issue and what to do about it, I will post Q&A separately. Here is the XSS vulnerability security forum post:

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=432&t=420895

Action Item #2: Recently in my inbox I received an email blast from Phil Taylor, subject: 'not up to date' Joomla sites are being hacked by automated hacking bots at an alarming rate. Conclusion - make sure to keep Joomla installations up to date, and, of course, only download Joomla from the official Joomla site:

http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5242-joomla-1512-released.html

Resources: For Joomla security beginners (aren't we all) Joomla provides solid commonsense checklist:

http://docs.joomla.org/Category:Security_Checklist

For the advanced player, or if you just want to be scared, very scared, I like Tom Canavan's Joomla security book. Additionally, for those interested generally in network and computer security as a career, you will get a ton of great tools and tips from this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Joomla-Web-Security-Tom-Canavan/dp/1847194885