From time to time, we try to share the best bits of news we discover online. This is our first attempt to do so!

Box.net support for Akeeba?

Overheard on Twitter: Lead developer Nicholas is working hard to add another external back-up solution to AdminTools Professional. The new addition will be Box.net, the popular cloud storage & syncing service. This new option will complemet existing options like Dropbox, Amazon S3, Azure, and - simple yet effective! - your mailbox.

Transifex unveils new site

Transifex, the popular translation platform and an important partner to ATAAW initiative OpenTranslators,  has unveiled it's new website today. This is good news for OpenTranslators, who looked forward to some of the new features which will "help to encourage and simplify collaboration between translators. 

With features like translation discussions, optional automatisation using Google or Bing and the addition of Reviewers who can check translations and approve them, Transifex is quickly becoming a very valuable asset for (Open Source) projects who want to have their stuff translated in no time!

SquareOne RC coming soon

Jeremy Wilken, also known as @gnomeontherun on Twitter, is working hard on his light weight Joomla! distribution which he has named SquareOne. This ultra light package, which has removed all the fluff - this includes virtually all extensions that are installed by default - is the dream of many Joomla! fans.

They'll be excited to know that a release candidate of this Joomla! distribution has been announced. It' rumored to become available in the nex few weeks.

Akeeba Kickstart, the widely used script to unpack Akeeba back-up archives, might not look like what you were used to when you download and use the next version.  The popular extraction script will likely get an extreme make-over in it's next release, thanks to Seth Warburton (@nternetinspired).  His new design for Kickstarter was accepted with open arms by the developer of Akeeba Back-up developer (@nikosdion), who announced he will implement the new design in the next release. 

In the land of SEO, there's only "One domain name to rule them all." Which means that its best practive that only one domain name points to your content. Since Google doesn't know the difference between visiting www.yoursite.com, yoursite.com, yoursite.net or yoursite.co.uk (or other domains you point to your site) you'll need to fix this, to avoid that Google assumes it's dealing with duplicate content.

This is sometimes called "canonicalization." The goal of this is to make all domains redirect to one domain, properly. Including the www. or non-www version of your main domain name.

When I read that a third Joomla! Community has been created, I couldn't help but wonder "why?". I think I know the answer, but it's not a good one. I understand that some people were not pleased with how things went down at DutchJoomla. I also know that those same people feel too "different" from JoomlaCommunity to join them instead.

I wish you the best of luck on your new duplication effort. Sure, more could be achieved if you all cooperated and bundled your forces. But where is the fun in that? You're right, you need three different forums for one language group. After all, your differences are so big you'll never get along.  It's not like you have something in common. A common passion for something for example. Like Joomla!

Personally. I don't agree with how everything is done inside JoomlaCommunity, either. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to start my own BelgiumJoomla! forum - I could do that, but there would be no point in doing so. Why would I want to do the same work someone else is already doing? Because I can?

You might try to justify the need for another forum, but let's face it. This is not the best way to handle things inside the dutch Joomla! Community. I've had some experience with communities "forking". What you end up with is two communities working at 60% instead of one strong community working at 100%.  Think about it, it's not like there are millions of Dutch Joomla! users.

Do yourself a favor, and arrange a meeting. See if the water is really as deep as you might think it is.  See what you can do to avoid duplicating efforts. You might think you're doing the Dutch Joomla! users a favor, but maybe, just maybe, you aren't.

We all love Joomla! and we all want to promote it in the Netherlands and Belgium. So, why don't we collaborate instead of compete? Just think about it, okay?

Kind Regards,

STeven Zeegers, a dutch speaking Joomla! user.

Every industry has it's own awards - some have so many you'd lose track of them. Here, at Joomlareporter, we thought the Joomla! Community could use a new award. Say hello to the "JEA! 2011" and start nominating your favorites today.

While everyone was very excited when Joomla! 1.7 launched, not everyone shared the "everything is great!" enthousiasm. Me being one of them. While I saw the value of 1.7 in most parts, there were parts of the CMS that just annoyed me. One of the things that annoyed me, is the article editor screen. There are so many options and extra's there that could easily confuse the end user. Or me! 

When I expressed how I felt about the editor screen, a twitter bird told me that I could easily fix the problem I was having with Joomla! 1.7 - and many other problems.

Last week, I've been working on quite a few sites.  As usual there were some problems to iron out, but nothing spectacular enough to blog about. Certainly not as spectacular as a certain post on Nooku Framework, anyway...

So, for a change I'm going to share my work experience I had.  It might not offer a direct solution to your problems, but maybe it could give you some ideas?

Akeeba developer Nicholas Dionysopoulos announced on Twitter today that the alpha version of Akeeba Subscriptions is available immediately.  This new version features a drastical change, as the component no longer relies on the Nooku Framework, which is said to suffer from stability problems.  To solve this, the developer wrote his own "framework on a framework", extending Joomla!'s framework so it would suit the extentions' needs.

The new version can be downloaded from the website immediately.  Please be advised that it's still in Alpha and that things might go wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong, with servers exploding and houses burning down. Maybe we're exaggerating, but follow the developers' advice and don't use this component on live websites. Installation or upgrade instructions can be found in the fine manual.

Since a few hours, a new website is up at www.joomla-security.com .  This website promises it'll bring something "completely new" to the Joomla! game. Our sources claim it to be work of "real professionals".  Because we believe that a Joomla! website can never be secure enough, we think this is a site you should be watching.

To stay up to date, you can follow them on twitter: @securejoomla

But guys, one piece of advice: Change that domain name in the footer. Seriously. We've been there, and it's not worth it ;-)

Source: The Twitterverse

Earlier today, Sigsiu.net announced the immediate availability of Sobipro 1.0.  Sobipro is a popular and flexible CCK, which allows you to easily build all sorts of directories.  From Business Directories to listings of your product's reselllers, if you can think of it you can build it in Sobipro.

Sobipro is free to download and use.  For a small fee you can extend Sobipro's functionality, e.g with easy to use  Google Maps fields or download fields, templates, modules and much more.  

You can download Sobipro on this page. Not sure what Sobipro can do for you?  Then visit the demo portal, with links to multiple demo's.

About Sobipro

• Developer: Sigsiu.net
• Sort of extension: CCK
• Fee: Non-Commercial