At the last JoomlaChicago meeting, it was announced (I think again) that we were going to be rebuilding the Durty Nellie's website for the restaurant / pub.  I was very happy to hear we are going to perform this as a group effort.  Of course, there are always pitfalls to a "group consensus" design.  We just have to remember we can't ALL have everything we want in the design.  Compromise is key. :)

I'm personally looking forward to being involved either as a tester or developer / implementor of the site.  At the meeting, it was not announced who the leadership will be for the development of the website.  I believe the Core Team is hard at work discussing who to ask to take on such a project.  I'm sure that we will likely hear more about it at the next JoomlaChicago meeting.

Durty Nellies site rebuild should be a very interesting project to be involved with.  It will lend itself to explore quite a few possible avenues.  The venue is available for live concerts, dining, drinks with friends, and meetings.  What functionality will they need to accommodate all these different aspects of the business?  Will it all need to be on the site or will we just include some of it on the site?  What technologies are out there that could help with something like displaying concert information or linking to it from an external source like facebook as an event? 

I can imagine we may find some pre-built extensions that will work for what we need.  What happens if we can't?  Will we need to create a custom extension to handle some pieces of the site?  Will we have to modify some existing extension to work for our needs or change the design of the layout to match our site design?

There's a lot of unanswered questions.  You can be assured that the project will be a good learning experience for ANYONE involved in it.  If you want to be involved, let Linda or John know by putting your name on the evaluations you get at each meeting.  Yes, they do get read by the "management".   We value your feedback and input.

I don't know about you, but I'm really excited to see what JoomlaChicago can come up with for Durty Nellie's! 

Okay, so it's a bit of a strange subject, but it caught your eye, didn't it. ;) 

The subject refers to the kick off of our Business Index project.  I'm heading up this initiative with support from other Core Team members as well.  We're looking to develop a very useful business index that will allow Joomla Chicagoans to find assistance when they need it.  We hope that we are able to have a very strong participation amongst our Joomla Chicagoans.

Our goal is to have a useful, searchable and fairly heavily populated list of people in the Joomla Chicago group.  We want people to participate to not only identify resources in the group, but to also help people potentially increase their business from the group.  If people know about you or find you in the index, maybe they'll be more likely to chat you up at the next meeting!  This index could open up some new avenues for the shyer people in our midst, assuming they participate. :)

Check out the post in our JoomlaChicago group discussions in the site squad.  Oh, you aren't in that group, then join the group and you can read, comment, or just follow the progress of the group as we plan, build, and deploy our upkeeping JoomlaChicago Business Index!

Group discussion: http://www.joomlachicago.com/viewdiscussion/163-Business+Index+for+Joomla+Chicago.html?groupid=5

Interested in being involved?  Contact me on the discussion or through messages on JoomlaChicago. 

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!

Here's a quick update on the JoomlaChicago website. 

I. Phase One - Complete!
"Phase One" is always the hardest phase isn't it? You know, the first step. The JoomlaChicago Leadership Team accomplished a complete overhaul of the website over the past three months, with the three over-arching objectives:

Now that the functionality is upgraded and final bugs are being worked out on the site, we are entering Phase Two: Design.

Thank you to ALL the volunteers who have stepped up to help upgrade the site's functionality, design and other improvements. 

II. Now Phase Two Begins: Design! 

"Form follows function," right?  That means, it's time for our super-fabulous Web Designer, Robert Nowak, to step in.  Now that the functionality of the site is operational (with some bugs still needing to be worked out), Robert can study how the site flow works, and give it a facelift.

Over the next 30 days, you'll see major design changes to the site to make it faster, sleeker, more attractive and more communicative. We've very fortunate to have Robert helping re-design the site. I've already gotten a sneak peek at the design and it is simply marvelous. 

I must say, I'm not easily impressed either. It truly is a work of art. I can't wait to unveil it!

During this Design Phase, you'll also start to see new content! John "JB" Vanover will join our very own Joe Scarry in offering up a regular Blog on the new "The Loop" Blog section. Hopefully, it will inspire you to get onto the site and write your own blog too - right here on JoomlaChicago! Finally, during the Design Phase, Avery Cohen and Ken Novak will work their magic, and we'll have some great Google Analytics and Web Marketing systems in place!

Come October 1st, we'll being Phase III: Content.

Content means "happy." I for one will be "happy" to be on Phase three. :)

By December, you will witness an entirely new website, completely re-written from top-to-bottom.  I want to make sure you are VERY PROUD to be a Member of JoomlaChicago, and when people ask "What is this Joomla CMS you speak of?" You can simply point them to this site, and be fully confident that when you show it off, at bare minimum you won't be embarrassed; at the best case, it will help you achieve your professional objectives.

Want to get involved? You're 100% WELCOME to join our team. Just send me a PM here on JoomlaChicago.com. It's that simple.  Meanwhile, please spread the good word about the incredible folks here at JoomlaChicago.

If you're not growing, you're not going.  Thanks!