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