Nooku - Multilingual for Joomla

Nooku Framework launch at Joomladays Netherlands

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:47:10 -0700

The Nooku team was at the Joomladays in the Netherlands last week, both as sponsors and as speakers. The Dutch Joomladays are traditionally one of the biggest Joomla events globally, and this year was no different. Organised by Guido Jansen, the driving force of Dutch community site, the event hosted some 300 attendees and over 20 speakers, spread over two days.

Free Software is about Freedom

The Nooku team gave three presentations. The first was a keynote by Johan Janssens, titled 'Why freedom makes a better business model'. Johan has gained quite some experience with the business side of free open source software, both free as in beer (as Lead Developer of Joomla 1.5, DOCman 1.3, and Nooku Framework) and free as in freedom (Nooku Content, the multilingual extension). The presentation discussed some of these experiences as well as existing open source business models such as 'the beekeeper'.

Nooku Content

The second presentation was about our multilingual extension, which always draws a crowd. We have renamed it to Nooku Content, because it's growing to be more than 'just' multilingual. The SEF URL and search engine optimisation features alone are a good reason to install Nooku Content, even on monolingual sites. As usual, Johan explained the basics first, followed by a demo by Mathias showing of some of the goodies.

Nooku Framework

The second day was very exciting, as it saw the launch of the new Nooku Framework -- "an alien life form that grows inside Joomla and makes it better", as one of our partners called it.

Apparently there were already some rumours going around, as someone came up to us when we arrived and asked us if it was true that you can create a complete working Joomla 1.5/MVC component using only a database table, a bit of html and a single line of code. Of course we told him to wait and see. So what do you think? Is it possible? Tweet using the #nooku hashtag.

Johan explained the features and the philosophies behind Nooku Framework, and the reason for building a new rapid application development platform for Joomla. After that, Mathias showed some live coding examples. The crowd was very enthusiastic -- many of them have already signed up for code access.

Doctor Joomla

Surprisingly, one of the most fun things was the Doctor Joomla sessions. The Nooku Team, as well as some of the other speakers and attending Joomla experts, where available in the afternoon to answer any question people had. This is the closest any Joomla user can get to so much expertise. People dropped by with questions ranging from newbie stuff, over template design, to development questions, and the Doctors made sure everyone got the most suitable expert to solve his issue.

We'd like to thank the organisation, everyone who attended our presentations, and the Nooku Partners who joined us for the event.

Impressions from Nooku Team at the Joomladay NL 2009.

Nooku TV - Anahita Social Engine for Joomla!

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:07:33 -0700

In the second episode of Nooku TV Pete Russell talks to web architect Rastin Mehr, of rmdstudio.com, about Anahita, a new social engine framework for Joomla. At its core Anahita is powered by our own Nooku Framework.

Rastin's experience with Nooku Framework took Anahita to unexpected levels :

rmd Studio discovers Nooku Framework
Subsequently entirely re-wrote Anahita (using Nooku) in six weeks
Far more fun!
Could not have built Anahita without Nooku Framework
Plugs into Joomla!
"Alien-life form inside Joomla! makes Joomla better and smarter and live longer..."
Nooku Framework is "the MVC core that Joomla always wanted"

More information about Anahita Social Engine can be found on Anahitapolis.com

Anahita Social Engine for Joomla from Nooku on Vimeo.

Nooku Code Jam in Hamburg

Mathias Verraes — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:03:00 -0700

Join us for the second Nooku Code Jam in Hamburg

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:40:45 -0700

Last month, the team at Delius, one of our Nooku partners, organised the first Nooku Code Jam in Ghent, Belgium. Among the visitors where Sascha and Steffan from YOOTheme, creators of the Zoo extension. The Nooku Framework must have made quite an impression. Not only are they looking into using it for their new extensions, they also agreed to organize a second Nooku Code Jam in Hamburg, Germany on June 27th.

If you are a developer, and just like us want to bring future-proof Web 2.0 development to Joomla, come and join us in Hamburg. Just contact us here with some information about yourself. The event takes place from 9:00 until 17:00 and the registration fee is 25 euro to cover our costs.

What can you expect?

Nooku Code Jams are fun and informal events. The day starts with the grand tour of the framework. What does it do, what are the concepts and philosophies behind it, etc. Next we show you how to build a small but fully functional MVC component, using only a ridiculously small amount of lines of code.

After lunch, it's Nooku Workshop time. You get to make your hands dirty ! Depending on your experience with PHP and Joomla, you get to build your own component using what you've learned. Or if you're more experienced you can join the advanced workshop where we dive deep into the Nooku Framework API to learn how to build ultra powerful and extendible extensions.

Impressions from the first Nooku Code Jam in Gent, Belgium on 15th of May 2009.

Can't make it to Hamburg?

Don't worry, we're planning more Code Jams in the near future. In the mean time, if you want to get your hands dirty you can request code access by filling out our form. We're slowly letting in more people, especially if you have an interesting project coming up or if you feel you can contribute. You're not only getting the code, but also access to the mailing list and other resources. And all of that for free.

Want to help out?

Organize a Nooku Code Jam yourself? All you need is a venue that can hold about 15 - 25 people (and if possible an extra room for breakout sessions), wifi and a projector. Get in touch for more information.

Classicalmasterclasses Goes Live in Five Languages

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:02:16 -0700

Classicalmasterclasses.com, the new search portal for music masterclasses has gone online. Professors and institutions can register their courses and students can easily search them with different filters. The site has been built with Joomla and is powered by Nooku. To capture an international audience classes are offered in five languages: German, English, Italian, French and Spanish.

The site was built by one of our Swiss Nooku partners, Masterhomepage, who did the technical implementation. If you want to offer Nooku to your clients and help them sell their products and services in local languages around the world, sign-up to be a Nooku partner.

Nooku Framework MVC Mapped

Mathias Verraes — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:14:00 -0700

More and more developers are getting familiar with the Model-View-Controller design principle for web applications and especially for writing Joomla components. There are many tutorials available, but text is so... well, linear! So we decided to try something different. API documentation (coming soon!) is very useful, but a class inheritance tree doesn't really illustrate 'what to use where' or 'how does it all fit together'. So we mapped out the new Nooku Framework based on real world use and this is the result:

The map is far from complete. The Nooku Framework has tons of features to help you write extensions more quickly, more secure and more extensible. If you are developing extensions for Joomla, you will benefit greatly from this new framework. Be sure to check back regularly as we update the map with new features.

Nooku TV - Let the Joomla Celebrations Continue

Wed, 27 May 2009 03:55:25 -0700

In keeping with our love of Joomla, the world's best award winning CMS, Nooku TV launched today to herald some exciting news.

We are creating some of the most exciting software technologies possible for Joomla. If you want to learn more about what we are doing, see our work in action and learn about how other people use it be sure to tune in. We hope to have regular videocasts with developers, community members and experts such as our own Johan (Doctor Nooku) Janssens and Mathias Verraes.

In this premiere episode we interview Dutch Joomladay organiser Sander Potjer who provides an insight into the fortcoming Joomladays to be held in the Netherlands. Sander, also is an early adopter of the Nooku multi-lingual solution, which is used on the http://www.joomladays.nl/ site.

We will be presenting at three sessions at the Joomladays. We're lucky enough to be presenting along side some other great speakers. You probably think that given the amount of activity we've been having in our labs that we've run out of fresh things to show you. Think again! But to find out you're going to need to attend the show.

Without any further delay, let's get on with the show!

Joomladays NL 2009 from Nooku on Vimeo.

Sponsoring the Joomladays NL 2009

Johan Janssens — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:40:00 -0700

On June 12th and 13th you will be able to find us at the Dutch Joomladays in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands.

We very proud to announce that with the help of our Nooku partners (Delius and CRBM) we are sponsoring this years event. It's shows the way we have grown over the past year. We couldn't have gotten to where we are today without the support of all our partners. Seeing them produce beautiful multi-lingual websites built on Nooku, is what keeps us going.

Buckle up for a great ride because this year we are not doing one but three presentations and as you might have guessed Nooku will the star-attraction. So what are we talking about ?

1. On Friday I'll be giving a plenary session about open source business models titled : 'Why Freedom makes a better business model' If you're in any way working professionaly with open source applications, this will be a great talk to learn more about the business mechanics of FOSS.

2. Also on Friday Mathias and myself will be talking about our beloved and much appraised Nooku extension. For those of you who don't know it yet, Nooku is a multi-lingual content manager for Joomla 1.5. Interested in how to setup a professional multi-lingual site with Joomla. This session will be for you.

3. Finally on Saturday spotlights will be on our new Nooku Framework. The framework brings future-proof Web 2.0 development to Joomla. In this session we'll show you how easy extensions development can be. Together we'll build a simple Joomla MVC extension in fewer lines of code than you ever imagined was possible.

We'll be around from Thursday evening and all through the event, so come and say hi or bombard us with your questions at the Doctor Joomla sessions.

See you all at the Joomladays ! For those of you staying at home, we will be twitting live from the event.

Nooku Framework - The API that speaks for itself

Thu, 21 May 2009 20:36:14 -0700

With raw coding talent and vision — such as Principal Architect of Joomla 1.5, Johan Janssens, Nooku has been born. And we don't apologise for keeping Nooku under wraps somewhat, as we believe it is going to create waves of excitement in the joomlasphere. After months of hard work we are revving up all engines as we are sticking to our promise of making Nooku technology available to more people.

Initially Nooku was launched as the extension that changed the way people manage multi-lingual websites with Joomla. In reality, there is a lot more below the hood. The true power is in the Nooku Framework that drives it. The framework brings future-proof Web 2.0 development to Joomla.

In effect this 'wolf-in-sheeps'-clothing' combines the development speed of Ruby on Rails, the flexibility of Symphony and the power of Zend Framework with the simplicity and usability of Joomla. We've created an API that is so intuitive it speaks for itself; it's smart enough to interpret, become resuable, extensible and replaceable. Imagine as a developer being able to achieve all this in a fraction of the lines of code you need today. Our Nooku Framework delivers this and much more!

The framework can be installed in Joomla as a plugin. It allows developers to build more powerful extensions, or even to develop standalone web applications. One of the first major third party Joomla extensions using the framework is Anahita Social Engine and of course our Nooku extension itself.

For more information visit our framework page, sign up for our newsletter , follow (@nooku) us on twitter or track us on Ohloh to stay up to date about the latest framework developments.

Nooku Framework announced

Johan Janssens — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:05:00 -0700

Raw coding talent and vision, that's what Nooku is about. It's creating a lot of excitement in the joomlasphere. After months of hard work we are revving up all engines.

Nooku was launched as the extension that changed the way people manage multi-lingual websites with Joomla. In reality, there is a lot more below the hood. The true power is in the Nooku Framework that drives it. Nooku brings multi-lingual power and future-proof Web 2.0 development to Joomla.

What if you combine the development speed of Ruby on Rails, the flexibility of Symfony, and the power of the Zend Framework, with the simplicity of the Joomla Framework? What if you have an API that is so intuitive it speaks for itself? What if every part of your code becomes reusable, extensible and replaceable? Imagine as a developer being able to achieve all this in a fraction of the lines of code you need today. Our Nooku framework delivers this and much more!

The Nooku Framework can be installed in Joomla as a plugin. It allows developers to build more powerful extensions, or even to develop standalone web applications. One of the first major third party Joomla extensions using the framework is Anahita Social Engine and of course the Nooku extension itself.

For more information visit our framework page on nooku.org or follow (@nooku) us on twitter to stay up to date about the latest framework developments.

Happy First Birthday, Nooku!

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 16:24:19 -0700

How time flies ... Nooku is one year old today! It has been an great year for Nooku with great and encouraging feedback. Our partner base grew to more then 20 partners in the past year. Their enthusiasm and commitment shows that a funded GPL model can be a great way to build highly advanced Joomla extensions.

Our agile development methodology has allowed us to release early and often. In the past 12 months we released 2 feature releases and a total of 10 maintenance releases. We counted more than 1500 code commits, closed over 100 tickets and saw a codebase increase of more then 40%. Nooku is slowly evolving into a real content manager, and is not just for publishing multi-lingual websites anymore. Mono-lingual websites can benefit from the workflow and search engine optimization features Nooku offers as well.

And there is more to come: for the next versions we are focusing on advanced user and translator permissions, article versioning and user interface changes to make your life as a content editor even easier. Our goal is to make Nooku the de-facto extension every professional Joomla site should have installed. The coming year we are boosting things up even more, and we'll be sticking to our promise of making the technology available to more people.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our partners for being so supportive to our project. Without their vision and support we wouldn't be where we are today: on the verge of a Nooku Framework technology explosion. We are extremely excited about the work done in the last 12 months. It's the tip of the iceberg of what's to come.

Nooku 0.6.2 released

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:05:45 -0700

We are pleased to announce the release of version 0.6.2. This version is mostly a bug fix release to address a number of issues that where reported by our partners. A few smaller features where also added :

Better metadata handling

We have made a number of changes to the metadata handling in Nooku. Metadata can now also be managed from the frontend. Metadata for articles is also kept in sync with the content table to allow for full compatibility with mod_related_items, this wasn't the case previously.
Smarter language switcher

The frontend language switcher has been made more intelligent. It will now only show the languages that are available for a certain page. The decision on what languages to show is based on the published and access state of the menu items. For example, if you have a menu item in three languages (en, nl, de) and unpublish the item in 'de' then the switcher will only show 2 languages, en and nl. Previously it also showed 'de'.

Both these new features are a result of the result of feedback we received on our first Nooku Demo Day in the Netherlands and are a great way to demonstrate the power of our partner model and the important of their feedback.

Nooku Demo Day Report

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 13:37:27 -0700

Yesterday, Nooku developers Johan Janssens and Mathias Verraes were invited to the first Nooku Demo Day in the Netherlands. One-Company, a Nooku partner, organized the event for their customers and other interested parties. On the menu: Nooku Multilingual, Anahita Social Engine and the Nooku Framework.

Nooku Basics

First up was One-Company's René Kreijveld, who demoed Nooku's basic multilingual features:

Working with front-end and back-end translations
Using the side-by-side article editor
Translating content directly in your component
Keeping track of all the content in your site, whether from core or 3pd extensions, using the items manager
Adapting your template design based on the language of the site
Enabling translations for third party extensions with a couple of clicks

Advanced Nooku use

After that, Johan explained some of the more advanced features:

SEO, how to add proper metadata for menu items and articles to create performant clean SEF URL's without id's, ...
Caching, how Nooku adds extra caching for some of Joomla's bottlenecks, making your site measurably faster

As someone pointed out, these features alone make Nooku worth installing on monolingual sites as well.

One of the questions we get a lot, is whether Nooku is already stable. In fact, both the 0.5 and 0.6 releases are stable, and so will the 0.7 be. This is a different approach from the classic development cycle, where software isn't stable until v1.0. The 0.x releases are not feature-complete, but what is in there is production ready and actively maintained.

Over lunch, an interesting discussion took place about different uses and workflows for multilingual sites, which gave the Nooku team some excellent feedback. As many of the attendees were there to figure out how Nooku could help their business, René explained how he charged for deploying Nooku on customers' sites. That in turn brought the topic to the pros and cons of a funded GPL model.

Anahita Social Engine for Joomla

Johan wouldn't be Johan if he didn't have a couple of surprises in store: he demoed Anahita Social Engine, with Rastin Mehr giving some pointers over Skype. Anahita is Rmd Studio's new Joomla application for building your own community sites.

It's not just a Facebook-clone; it's a modular system that you can mold into a Twitter-, MySpace-, Youtube- or Facebook-style site, or into something completely new -- as Rastin calls it: 'Social Anything'. It's built on top of the Nooku Framework, the brand new rapid application development framework that powers the Nooku extension -- we will reveal more information about the Nooku Framework soon.

Nooku Demo Day on 26th of March in the Netherlands

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 10:10:26 -0700

One-Company, one of our Dutch partners, is organizing a first Nooku Demo Day in the Netherlands on the 26th of March.

The aim for the day is to get to know each other and offcourse Nooku, all of this in a relaxing atmosphere. We will demonstrate how easy it is to setup multi-lingual websites with Nooku, answers questions and learn from each others challenges.

Who: Professional Joomla integrators
Where: One-Company offices in Ochten (bij Tiel), The Netherlands
When: Thursday 26 March, starting at 10.00 am.

Lunch, coffee, thee and drinks are offered for € 10,00 p.p.

We have only 10 seats available so register fast if you are planning to attend.

Preliminary program:

10.00: Arrival at One-Company (Industrieweg 18, Ochten)
10.30: Opening by René Liebrand
10.35: Nooku showcase by René Kreijveld
11.00: Nooku ins & outs by Johan Janssens
12.30: Lunch
13.15: Nooku 0.7 exclusive preview by Johan Janssens
14.45: A drink, and hopefully everyone can get home before the traffic jams.

The number of seats is limited, we can only host 10 people. Be quick to register !

You can register here : http://www.joomlaprofessionals.nl/nooku-demo-dag.html

Nooku 0.6 : pushing Joomla to its limits

Johan Janssens — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:59:00 -0800

Two weeks ago we released Nooku 0.6 at the first Joomladay in Switzerland. The new 0.6 version focuses completely on SEO. With Nooku 0.5 we already had the basic translations features implemented, with the new 0.6 version we are pushing the envelope even further.

Today, if you want to create a multi-lingual search engine optimized Joomla website you need to install a multi-tude of different extensions (multi-lingual, search engine friendly URLs, metadata, etc...) . Nooku 0.6 solves all that out of the box... and makes it all translatable. Neat huh !

Alias validation

One of the features I'm personally very proud of is the new alias validation. Simply put Nooku 0.6 prevents duplicated aliases for all content items (articles, weblinks, categories, sections, banners, etc...). It is also capable of correctly converting (transliterating) a title into an alias on the fly for almost any language.

Nooku 0.6 needed alias validation to allow us to remove the numeric information from the URL's. For example, if two article aliases are identical Joomla will not know what article to show if you remove the numeric information (the article id). Other SEF extensions solve this by storing the URL in the database, this approach requires extra queries and greatly reduces the performances of your site, in some case up to more then 25%.

In our solution the alias validation happens on the fly in the actual edit screen you are working in. Just like with the translation there are no extra plugins to install, or settings to set, it just works. It seems a very trivial feature but we are really pushing Joomla 1.5 to it's limits on this one.

To give you an idea, the validation is a combination of an ajax driven (mootools) server-side form validation solution in combination with a new and more powerful event system we created as part of the Nooku Framework. Like everything we build we try it to be extendible and reusable. By abstracting the alias validation from it's implementation we allow third party developers to easily use it in their own extensions with only a couple of lines of code. The same also applies for the new metadata support we added to the menu manager, but that's a story for another blog post.

Johan Janssens recognised as CMS "Most Valued Person"

Mathias Verraes — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:29:00 -0700

I'm sure Packt Publishing needs no introduction. They published nine books on Joomla so far, donate portions of their sales back to Joomla, and organize yearly open source awards. Joomla has taken home a bunch of these awards in the past (is anyone keeping track?). This week the 2008 winners will be announced.

Joomla 1.5's Lead Architect

This year, a new category was added: "Open Source CMS Most Valued Person". I'm pleased to announce that our own Johan Janssens was selected for his work on Joomla by his community peers. Johan is one of the co-founders of Joomla, and has led the development of Joomla 1.5. Thanks to his efforts, Joomla has moved away from the spaghetti code it inherited from Mambo, and now has a super-flexible, object-oriented framework.

With almost 3500 commits (aka code changes or additions in the code repository), Johan has written more Joomla than anyone else, and it's gonna take a while before anyone catches up. He's also a top 10 poster in the official Joomla forums, spoke at numerous events, helped set up structures like the working groups and OSM, and led the development working group

That's why I'm extremely proud to be working alongside Johan on Nooku. He always has great ideas, knows more about software architecture than anyone I've ever met, and he's always happy to share his knowledge.

It's just the beginning

What can you expect from Johan in the future? Let me just say this: if you paid close attention, you already figured out that Nooku is not going to be 'just' a multilingual extension for Joomla, and it's even going to be very useful for mono-lingual sites. You've come to expect great things from Johan, and we're not settling for anything less. Stick around for some surprises about the upcoming Nooku 0.6.

Nooku : new versioning and branching strategy

Johan Janssens — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:08:00 -0700

One of the questions we received over the last few weeks is how stable Nooku is for production use. A good question that isn’t easy to answer.

At the moment when we move to a new milestone we create an unstable trunk. Bugs reported by our partners are getting fixed but the fixes are only released in a new milestone release which by the fact that it introduces new features also introduces new bugs.

To give our partners the opportunity to use Nooku on production sites we decided to change our versioning and branching strategy.

An agile release strategy

We have introduced the concept of unstable release branches. In practice this means that the actual development work is done in the release branches. When the work in the release branch is completed it is merged back with the trunk.

This approach allow us to fix bugs immediately in the separate release branches and roll out new builds on the spot. Partners will be able to choose to integrate the stable version or test the unstable version that is in active developed.

We also started to roll out builds of both the stable an unstable versions on a daily basis (nightly builds). Partners don't need to wait any longer until the end of a milestone cycle to obtain a new package.

A new versioning schema

The new agile release strategy is also be reflected in Nooku's new versioning schema. The versioning schema now follows the x.x.x format, in the same way as Joomla! does.

We started by renaming Milestone 10 to version 0.5.0, and the planned Milestone 11 will then become 0.6.0 and so on. This change allows us to do very agile maintenance or bug fix updates of the release branches. For example we just released 0.5.2 yesterday to fix a few minor bugs and are now collecting bug reports for 0.5.3.

Each minor release is focussed around one or two large features. For the upcoming minor releases of Nooku we have identified (based on the feedback of the partners) three large features yet to be implemented for Nooku 1.0. More on those in a next blog post.

This change in strategy will allow our partners to start implementing Nooku knowing that we can provide support and bug fixes on a minor release basis.

For those of you who are interested to read up on svn branching strategies can check out this excellent blog post.

Keeping Nooku Easy

Mathias Verraes — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 04:10:00 -0700

Last week, we finished our 10th milestone release of Nooku, the new translation manager for Joomla! 1.5. Just like with the prevoius releases, some of our partners are already using Nooku on their production sites. More on that soon on our Buzz page. This gives us the necessary feedback about 'real world usage' to make Nooku even better. There are still a couple of features we want to implement before we feel we are ready to release a beta version to a wider group of people, so you'll have to be a little more patient (or consider signing up to be a Nooku partner yourself and help us fund development!).

Ease of use

One of the features we've been working on is ease of use. We feel that managing a multilingual site shouldn't be any harder than managing a plain Joomla! site. First and foremost, we try to introduce as few technical terms as possible. As a developer, you're used to all kinds of concepts that are like Chinese to someone without a background in IT. Of course you need some terms, but whenever possible we try to limit them to words people are already familiar with from Joomla! and other software.

Making choices

Someone I demo'd Nooku to, remarked that 'it has so few features'. But options are not features. Half the time, when an application presents a user with a choice, you need a page of documentation to explain what that option does, and how it will affect your site. Five screens of configuration options might appear to give you a lot of control. In reality, only people who work with the software a lot (or who simply have too much time on their hands), will be able to use all those options.

Joomla! 1.5 already sets a good example on how to deal with this problem. By separating options into a Basic section and a hidden Advanced section, users know they don't need to worry about every single option. The advanced options have their recommended setting, and you only have to touch them if you want to achieve something special.

Getting rid of options

Nooku goes one step further. Whenever a choice needs to be made, we ask ourselves: 'Is this something the user has to decide?' Most of the time, the system has all the information it needs. So if the system is intelligent and analyzes its environment, it can make a better informed decision than an average user could. We're not compromising the power of the system: the choice is made dynamically, but by the system instead of the user. This is what the configuration screen currently looks like in Nooku:

Nooku First Look Video

Peter Russell — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:47:00 -0700

We've had a massive response to Nooku over the past weeks. Hardly surprising given that multi-lingual support in Joomla! is considered one of the top five "must-haves" by the community and business users. I took the opportunity to do a small demonstration of Nooku in action with Joomla! 1.5 in the form of a videocast. Don't mind the facial hair (I was trying to grow a beard but failed miserably). One outcome of this exercise, particularly in a marketing sense is that the viral nature of the web proved its worth, yet again. Although the video was put out well below the radar, only initially available on iTunes : it's been picked up in a variety of newsfeeds and most recently republished on YouTube.

We plan to do several more videocasts / screencasts as Nooku and related products emerge from our coding laboratories. Click here for the high-resolution (Quicktime version).

Nooku - Amazing feedback!

Johan Janssens — Fri, 09 May 2008 00:49:00 -0700

It has been almost three weeks since we launched the Nooku website. In the days after the release we received some very good feedback from the international Joomla! community. Even our friends over at the Drupal internationalisation group took notice.

We knew from the initial feedback we got from our funding partners that a lot of people where waiting for a true multi-lingual solution for Joomla! 1.5. What we didn't knew was that you are with so many ! Since the release of the site and the announcement of the partner program we have received many emails from companies interested in the partnership program.

The number one question people send us is without any doubt : 'When will Nooku be released publically ?'. As we already wrote in our FAQ's for the time being Nooku will only be available to our partner / funders, while we're perfecting our baby.

With Nooku we not only aim to create the leading mulit-language solution for Joomla! 1.5, we also want to demonstrate that a funded business model can be a great way to create GPL'ed solutions for Joomla! in true spirit of the GPL licence.

If our effort is successful, Nooku will be Joomla!'s first truly open-funded GPL extension. It's our hope that this approach can serve as a example business model to the Joomla! community as to how companies can work together to achieve a common goal. After all isn't that what Joomla! is all about ?

Dutch Joomladays Impressions

Mathias Verraes — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 16:11:00 -0700

We really did intend to do some live blogging from the event, but honestly we were just too busy! Two days with 250 attendees each, that's a lot of interesting people to meet. Everybody was asking us about SITEman and Nooku, and I don't think I ever talked that much in 48 hours in my entire life. Luckily I brought my laptop so I could demo Nooku (as they say, a picture says more than a thousand words). Some people had already discovered nooku.org, which only has a small splash page at the moment, so naturally they wanted to know what it is we're so excited about.

There were too many interesting presentations, so picking the ones to attend was very hard. I particularly liked James Vasile's talk about the GPL, how it is becoming a business necessity to embrace open source, if you want to be able to compete. It sounded maybe a tad too optimistic to my ears, but then again he's much better situated to know about the future of open source, than us mere mortals.

TYPO3

I also attended a session on TYPO3. I was hoping to learn some more about the new framework they're developing, called FLOW3, but the talk was more a sort of basic introduction. The back-end looked pretty crowded, complex and unfriendly to me, but it has some impressive features: you can remove each single element from the back-end, to create a very focused UI for each user group. Eg authors would only see features relevant to writing articles, etc. The built-in multi-site feature is also very powerful: you can share parts of the contents of one site with other sites. Definitely worth looking into for a future Joomla! version.

I could spend all evening blogging about the event... well, you just had to be there. If you did attend and like me, you felt that some of the sessions were too short to cover everything (like Johan's talk about the application layer in J!1.5), meet us at one of the upcoming BootCamps. While chatting with some of our fellow Belgians at the event, there was also some mention of organizing our own Joomla! event in Belgium. Any thoughts on that?

Nooku - a screenshot mashup

Johan Janssens — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 10:22:00 -0700

Our Secret Project - A second hint !

Johan Janssens — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:46:00 -0800

It's already 10 days since we gave out a first hint about the secret project we are working on. Comments people posted ranged from : a statistics extension for Joomla! 1.5, to a Basecamp-like extension that could be used as a help desk or ticket management ...

Is it either of those ? Not even close! What are we working on then ? Well, we're going to hold out on that a little longer.

However today we are glad to announce the name of the extension we have put our heart and soul into over the last 6 months. Without any further ado ... our new baby will be called :

'Nooku'

The name 'Nooku' was chosen to reflect to idea behind this project and it follows the spirit of the Joomla! name, which is derived from the Swahili word “Jumla”.

Any more ideas already ?

Our Secret Project - A first hint !

Johan Janssens — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 18:50:00 -0800

We have been hinting towards it in a few blog posts already and received a couple of mails from curious people who wanted to learn more ... well without further adue here are two screenshots from the 'secret project' we are working on.

Any ideas already ?