Blog - Joomlatools

Joomlatools releases DOCman Productivity Pack

2010-02-08T20:16:00.005+01:00

We're happy to announce the release of the DOCman Productivity Pack, consisting of three must-have add-ons for any serious DOCman user. These add-ons will help you with your workflow, speed up dealing with lots of files, and make your front-end a lot more usable for end users. The new Productivity Pack is now available in the Joomlatools Store now for only €11.97.

1. DOCman Populate

Populate let's you import thousands of files into DOCman with just a few clicks. Just set some defaults, upload the files over FTP, and let Populate turn them into new DOCman documents. Couldn't be easier!

Still too much trouble? Use the cron job feature to automate the whole process completely!

2. DOCman Thumbs

Thumbs will automatically generate thumbnails for your DOCman front-end. Not just for images: a whole range of document types, including PDF, are supported. (Depending on your server setup, you might need to install some additional libraries. See the README for more information).

3. DOCman Notify

You may want to keep a close eye on who uploads, edits or downloads documents on your site. Notify keeps you up to date with any of these actions you choose, by sending you notification emails full of relevant info.

All three add-ons have an intuitive and simple to use administration interface. They were completely refactored to make full use of the Joomla 1.5 native API.

You can get these three great add-ons for only €11.97 in the Joomlatools Store. It's the best way to boost your document management productivity today!

Joomlatools launches DOCman support portal

2010-01-28T16:57:00.006+01:00

We've said it before: one of the aspects that can make software truly shine, is great support. Finding better ways to give our users the support they deserve, has been one of our priorities for 2010. So far that's been going swimmingly:

Our professional support staff leaves no post unanswered in the DOCman 1.5 forum
Our response time for bugs is better than ever: we've already done two maintenance releases in 6 weeks (or 5, leaving out a week of holiday season)

Today we are taking the third step in our quest to serve you better: We're launching a shiny new support site for DOCman! Go and take a look at http://support.joomlatools.eu.

(And yes, the trained eye will notice the sweet looking CSS3 effects that our designer Tom put in there. If you're still using an old browser, upgrade to Firefox 3.6 or Chrome now for full bliss.)

How People See Joomla

2010-01-24T22:43:00.012+01:00

Sometimes a simple diagram says it better than a thousand words:

Update: This picture triggered a little game on Twitter. People are making their own versions of 'How people see Joomla'. Wanna play? Send your picture to @mathiasverraes or post in the comments.

The creations so far:

DOCman 1.5.2 released, add-ons coming soon

2010-01-20T16:37:00.004+01:00

Today we released the latest update of DOCman 1.5 to our customers. These are some of the most important changes:

PHP 5.3 compatibility. Depending on your server configuration, running DOCman on PHP 5.3 produced a couple of innocent yet annoying error messages.
Special characters in filenames. DOCman is now much better equiped to handle filenames with all kinds of strange characters in them.
Deleted users. When you delete a user, the documents that user owned now no longer generate errors.
Clear Thumbnails. This new item in the 'Clear data' panel allows you to remove the thumbnails for all documents. This useful in combination with the upcoming Thumbnail generation add-on.
... and a whole bunch of other fixes and improvements.

As usual, users who bought v1.5.x get free updates. To get you own copy, head over to the Joomlatools Store.

UPDATE: When upgrading, make sure you are using the special upgrade package called upgrade_docman_v1.5.x_to_v1.5.2.r1147.tar.gz, and not the normal package called docman_v1.5.2.r1147.tar.gz. Download links for both packages are in the email that is sent to all customers.

DOCman Productivity Pack

I'm very happy to announce that in the coming days, we are also releasing the DOCman Productivity Pack. This contains three must-have add-ons to DOCman that can really boost your workflow:

DOCman Populate: Batch import thousands of documents with a few clicks. Also supports crontabs for automated zero-interaction imports.
DOCman Thumbs: Automatically generate thumbnails for all your images and a whole range of other file formats in DOCman.
DOCman Notify: Get notification emails whenever documents are uploaded or edited

More on the DOCman Productivity pack later!

Why DOCman?

2010-01-16T18:12:00.002+01:00

Occasionally we receive questions from people asking why they should use DOCman instead of another document management or download extension for Joomla. We haven't done any feature-by-feature comparisons -- we'll leave that to other bloggers -- but below is a re-post of what I answered to a question on our forum.

Picking extensions

On the Joomla Extensions Directory, every category has 5 or 10 alternatives you can choose from. That's a benefit, but it can also make things more difficult. How to pick the right one? For me, it's always about flexibility, security, and support.

Fishing

Long before I started Joomlatools with Johan, I was building websites for customers. Remository and DOCman were the only choices back then. My customers asked for features that neither provided. But I looked at the code, and even though I was a pretty inexperienced developer back then, DOCman's code made sense. It wasn't long before I started making addons for DOCman to satisfy my customer's requirements. Some of those addons are still around: Autopopulate, AutoThumb... When I later became lead developer, adding even more ways to extend DOCman has always been my priority over adding features. Adding a feature is like giving someone a fish, adding flexibility is giving them a fishing pole.

Security

When open source software is used by many people, bugs and vulnerabilities get discovered more rapidly (Linus' Law). Despite the fact that DOCman is one of the most popular extensions for Joomla (and has been for years), it's been a very long time since any noteworthy vulnerability was discovered. Building a Joomla extension is easy. Building one that can resist hacking attempts is something that requires your full attention.

Lunch and Coffee

Finally, yes we started charging for DOCman recently. We realize that even though the price is only that of a lunch and a coffee, it might cause many people to switch to other solutions. But you get a lot for this money: We can now focus on DOCman, instead of always pushing it to the bottom of the todo list. You can see it in the speed and quality of replies to support questions in the forum: in fact we hired Krisstoffer, who used to be a voluntarily moderator on our forum, so we are now paying him to help people. You can also see it in the development: we released the 1.5.1 update only a week after releasing 1.5.0, whereas before, releases took us 6 months or more.

(Update: We just added a brand new support portal to serve DOCman users even better!)

In the end you have to decide for yourself what suits you. With it's ACL's, nested categories, theming etc, DOCman is very feature-rich choice, for a very competitive price. But be aware that features and price are not the only things that can make software great.

Security in third party addons

2010-01-12T08:40:00.007+01:00

Last week, two security reports caught our attention. Even though they are not directly about any of our products, they are relevant to our users. That is why we have opened a new forum to announce vulnerabilities. Please subscribe to the Joomlatools security RSS feed, or to the security forum (you need a forum account).

1. DOCman Seller

This extension allows you to sell documents through DOCman. So far the developer of this extension has not responded to this vulnerability report. As the extension's web page doesn't show any activity, we suspect it has been abandoned.

If you are using this extension, we advise you to uninstall it completely, until an update is released. The AEC extension might be a good alternative.

UPDATE: The entry on the extensions directory states that the component was updated to v2.2. However, the download link is broken, I couldn't find any information on Ossolution's site, and the site's support page appears to have been hacked.

UPDATE 2: In the meantime the links on the JED have been updated to point to Ossolution's new site. However, in the meantime Ossolution claims to have made a completely new version 2.5 of the extension, which no longer depends on DOCman. They refused to send us a copy, so we have no idea at all how secure it is.

2. Com_alfresco

We have investigated this report, and it does not concern the Joomla:Alfresco integration that was published through Joomlatools Labs over a year ago. We have been unable to find the developer of this extension, so we believe it might be a custom extension that is not available on the JED. If you have more information, please let us know.

If you have an Alfresco extension installed, you can identify it by opening /administrator/components/com_alfresco/manifest.xml. If it starts with the following header, you are using our secure extension. If it doesn't, you might be using the vulnerable extension.

<name>Alfresco</name>
<author>Joomlatools</author>
<copyright>Copyright (C) 2008 Joomlatools. All rights reserved.</copyright>
<creationdate>December 2008</creationdate>
<license>http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.html GNU/GPL</license>
<authoremail>info@joomlatools.org</authoremail>
<authorurl>www.joomlatools.org</authorurl>
<version>1.0.0</version>
<description>This component displays an Alfresco repository using CMIS</description>

DOCman Secret: Link documents in articles

2009-12-22T16:41:00.005+01:00

Did you know that you can easily insert documents into articles using DOCman 1.5? It's an awesome feature that few people know about.

Here is how you do it:

When writing an article, click the "DOClink" button below the editor
You will get a popup to navigate through your documents
Select a document, and click 'OK'
Done! Your article now has a direct link to your document
You can also link to categories, or add some fancy extra's like an icon or the filesize.

Can't find the button? Go to the Joomla's Plugin Manager and enable the DOClink plugin.

Watch our video or discover DOClink yourself!

Watch the DOClink video.

DOCman 1.5.1 maintenance update released

2009-12-16T18:38:00.003+01:00

One week after the release of DOCman 1.5, we are thrilled to announce the 1.5.1 maintenance update. This version fixes a number of medium and low level bugs that were discovered after the release.

For me, it's been the most fun release process I've ever had, thanks to an amazing team: with Krisstoffer and Shayne covering support on the forum, Tom and I had our hands free to work on fixing issues and preparing the update. This great new workflow turned out to be very smooth, resulting in our fastest release cycle ever. All software has bugs, but we believe quality shows in how they are handled.

Best DOCman ever

If you have been waiting to buy DOCman, now's a great time: the wrinkles have been smoothed, and it's better than ever! Not only do you get one of the best Joomla extensions, you're also supporting open source development. And all that for the price of a lunch and a coffee.

Already bought DOCman 1.5? You don't have to pay again for the update. Check your email for info on how to update.

More information:

Nooku Buzz in Barcelona

2009-12-12T03:47:00.001+01:00

I managed to have a quick chat with Johan Janssens, co-founder and principal architect of Joomla! 1.5, after presenting his first talk about Joomla!, in Barcelona today.

Albeit a brief chat, it seems the sessions are going really well and the community in Spain is quite strong. A funny aside, there were a few 'nervous' individuals in the audience, no doubt wondering what Johan might say about the current state of play.

You can see the thrust of his first presentation below. If you read the slides closely, you will notice the quote I derived from a pub only last night has already travelled the globe!!!

View more documents from Johan Janssens.

Later he will be presenting about the Nooku Framework project and the various magical innovations coming soon to the Joomlasphere.

Ever the intrepid traveller, Johan, he sends his best wishes to everyone here and hopes we are keeping our spirits up during some challenging times.

He says Buena Suerte to all :)

Addendum:

Since the initial post, Johan has conducted his Nooku Framework presentation. By all accounts this was quite a hit with loads of developers keen to get involved with the Nooku way of doing things — coding intelligence, coding efficiency, coding speed in a fun and friendly supportive dev environment.

Essentially, make more of your time with a more-powerful friend — Nooku.

Johan's most powerful example was through Ninjaboard, developed by Daniel Chapman and his crew. There were plenty of oohs and ahs, when Johan demonstrated an 80% reduction in code in the Ninjaboard refactoring using Nooku Framework.

Then Johan touched on how Nooku tightens up security due to it requiring less code to achieve the same end through reusability and inherent usability. "Write less code to lower the risk of vulnerabilities," Johan said. Provide advanced automatic security features out of the box."

Slideshare below:

View more documents from Nooku.

Note : Since this blog was first published on AllTogetherAsAWhole.org, we have invited 50 more developers to join in the fun at Nooku Framework.

DOCman 1.5 FAQ

2009-12-10T16:26:00.015+01:00

We've had some great feedback in our first 24 hours of releasing DOCman 1.5, and also some confusion. We've tried to answer all your questions in the FAQ below. UPDATE: The latest version of this FAQ is available here: DOCman Pre-sales FAQ

Where can I ask pre-sales questions?
In the dedicated forum: http://forum.joomlatools.eu/viewforum.php?f=51

Why do I have to pay to download DOCman?
DOCman has been free of charge since it's conception in 2003 until December 2009. With one million downloads a year, many sites depend on DOCman to keep their data secure. This is a big responsibility for Joomlatools. By charging for DOCman, we can assign more resources to make sure DOCman remains the most stable, preformant and safe document manager for Joomla.

What if I don't want to pay for DOCman?
DOCman 1.4 will always be available free of charge. DOCman 1.4 runs on both Joomla 1.0.x and 1.5.x. However, no new features will be added to 1.4, and only security issues and high level bugs will be fixed.

What is the license for DOCman?
DOCman 1.5 is released as Free Software under the GNU GPLv2.

How can DOCman be Free Software / GPL if I have to pay for it?
"Free Software" is about freedom, not about price. Free Software gives you a number of rights, most importantly to use the software as you wish. See http://commercialgpl.com for a (very short) introduction to commercial Free Software.

When I purchase DOCman, can I use it on multiple domains?
Yes. DOCman is released under the GPL license, which means you can install it on as many sites or servers as you wish.

Do I have to pay again when a new version is released?
When you purchase DOCman 1.5.x, you will automatically get all maintenance releases (1.5.y, 1.5.z...) free of charge. You will be notified by email, including a link to download the update. However, feature releases (1.6, 1.7...) are not included in the deal and have to be bought separately.

Can I try DOCman before I buy it?
Yes, there is a demo site. There's no trial version. However, as DOCman 1.4 is free of charge, you can download and install it, and buy DOCman 1.5 if you decide it suits your needs.

How long is a download link valid?
Links to a dedicated download location will be sent immediately after your purchase. Download link expire 1 month after purchase and can be downloaded 3 times.

I can not use paypal, are there other options?
At the moment paypal is the only option, we are looking into adding more possibilities.

Where can I get support for DOCman 1.5 ?
You can get free community support in the official forum: http://forum.joomlatools.eu.

Can I upgrade from DOCman 1.4 or 1.3?
Yes, follow the instructions in the included README file. http://www.joomlatools.eu/products/docman/read-me.html

What are the requirements for DOCman 1.5?
You need the latest Joomla 1.5.x and PHP 5.2 or higher. Please make sure you have these before installing DOCman 1.5.

I am using Joomla 1.0.x, can I use DOCman?
You can use DOCman 1.4 with Joomla 1.0.x. DOCman 1.5 is not compatible with Joomla 1.0.x.

Will DOCman run on Joomla 1.6?
At the moment Joomla 1.6 is still in development. When Joomla 1.6 reaches beta stage, we will start working on a compatible version of DOCman. Our goal is to release this at the same time as Joomla 1.6 stable.

Where can I submit feature requests?
In our UserVoice tracker

Where can I submit bugs?
In the forum
Where are DOClink, the modules and the search plugin?
These addons are now installed automatically when you install DOCman 1.5.

How about AutoPopulate, AutoThumb, Blogtheme?
Updated versions of these addons will be released in the near future.

Will my 3PD or custom themes and extensions work with DOCman 1.5?
Some existing themes and addons will need the legacy plugin to be enabled. It should be fairly easy to migrate them to native 1.5. There is a guide to migrate themes.

Why is the Joomla extensions directory not updated?
We have contacted the JED team. They are usually very busy, so please allow some time.

What is DOCman's versioning scheme?
1.4, 1.5, 1.6... are feature releases. They add new things, and they are mostly backwards compatible. This means that upgrading from one feature release to the next will be fairly easy, and 3PD addons such as themes, translations, utilities, ... will work with little to no modifications.
1.5.0, 1.5.1, 1.5.2... are maintenance releases. They consist only of bug fixes and security fixes, are 100% backwards compatible.

What is included in the package?
When installing DOCman 1.5, the following extensions are installed automatically as well:

DOClink: plugin to insert documents in articles)
DOCman search: integrate searching for documents with Joomla's core search
Standard Buttons: plugin with the default buttons for the DOCman frontend (download, view, details, checkin/out, publish, approve, update)
Latest downloads module
Most downloaded module
Category documents module: shows docs from one category
Lister module: Show a list of popular/latest documents.
Admin modules (displayed in the DOCman control panel)

There's no need to unzip the package, the addons are installed automatically.

DOCman 1.5 Stable is now available!

2009-12-09T13:46:00.011+01:00

Today we are very excited to announce the release of DOCman v1.5, which you can buy in the new Joomlatools store!

Conceived in 2003, and sporting thousands of downloads each month, DOCman has established itself as the premiere document management tool for Joomla. The new release is the culmination in years of experience in security. Keeping your documents safe has always been the primary concern — one we will never take lightly. Marc Alen, Adjunct Secretary of the Belgian Police Force agrees:

"We run 140 DOCman installations, one for each police zone's public website, and even more installations on our intranets. Security is imperative — and for years, DOCman is delivering that for us."

Native Joomla 1.5

We've been collecting user feedback for a while, and we've implemented the most demanded feature: being able to run DOCman in Joomla 1.5 without legacy mode.
The primary focus for this release has been stability, performance and security. Not only did we squeeze out another 10% in performance improvement, and 20% in memory usage; thanks to our extensive testing, you can rest assured this is the safest way to store and distribute your documents using Joomla. DOClink, the search plugin and the modules are now installed automatically along with DOCman. And as an added bonus, the new DOCman release was given a brand new front end theme.

GPL freedom

You can buy the new DOCman 1.5 for €11.97 in the Joomlatools store. Charging a little for DOCman will help us invest in development and better support. Does this change anything? No, DOCman is still Free Software (as in Freedom) released under the GPL, just like Joomla. You still get the freedom to use DOCman as you wish. By buying DOCman, you support open source development. For everybody else, DOCman 1.4 is still available and will always be free of charge.

We'd like to thank everybody who had a hand in making this possible. We're looking forward to hear your feedback on this great new release, and with your support, DOCman can keep going on this amazing journey!

DOCman 1.5 RC2, and a new surprise...

2009-11-29T19:23:00.008+01:00

We're very excited about today's release of DOCman 1.5 RC2 to our internal testers group. This is the final release candidate before we ship the stable version. Unfortunately, due to our decision to include a brand new theme, we are postponing the release until December ~~8th~~ 9th, but it's going to be worth the wait!

As we explained in our presentation on the Italian Joomla Day , apart from Joomla 1.5 native compatibility, we focused this release on stability, performance and security. Your data is important, and you count on DOCman to protect it!

Instead of adding all kinds of crazy features, messing with the database schema and what not, we decided to take a conservative approach. We only change what we consider important for everybody, and every change is carefully tested, both by our team and a number of testers.

Performance

DOCman 1.4 was a huge step ahead in performance compared to v1.3. When all the big roadblocks have been cleared, it's hard to find ways to improve it even more. That's why we're all the more happy to say that we squeezed out a bit more. DOCman sites will run faster than ever before.

Brand new frontend theme

Good websites are not just about keeping confidential documents secure, and serving them with great performance. We all want our websites to look great as well! We're very happy to announce that Tom designed a shiny new default front-end theme for DOCman 1.5. Besides looking beautiful, it was developed to be fit smoothly into almost any Joomla template.

Testers and translators

We'd like to thank everybody who offered to help out with testing, we really appreciate it. We received a lot of requests, giving us reason to believe that DOCman is more popular than ever. We couldn't accept everybody, but not to worry, the wait is almost over.

DOCman Presentation Joomladay Italy

2009-11-21T11:45:00.006+01:00

The Future of DOCman, Joomladay Italy 2009

View more presentations from Nooku Team.

Key points:

DOCman was a key driver for innovation in Joomla 1.5.
For DOCman 1.5, keeping your documents secure is our primary concern
DOCman 2.0 will be build from the ground up using a new and more powerful architecture

DOCman 1.5 RC1 released to testers & translators

2009-10-29T16:13:00.004+01:00

Although DOCman has been around for six years (yes, longer than Joomla), it's only since March 2007 that we are keeping track of downloads. The number is impressive nonetheless: We're nearing 1.5 million downloads! That makes DOCman one of the most popular extensions on the forge. Soon you'll be able to get your hands on the stable release.

So it is with great pride that we can announce that DOCman 1.5 RC1 is released to our tester's group. The new DOCman is fully compatible with Joomla 1.5 in native mode. Our main focus for this Release Candidate -- apart from the usual care that goes into making sure your data is secure -- was the languages. There are about 30 languages available for DOCman, and a lot of effort went into cleaning them up and converting them to UTF-8. For the non-techies: getting them to display correctly, no matter what character set or language you use.

Don't compete, collaborate!

Even with all the combined knowledge of the whole Joomlatools team, we still only speak about 5 languages, so we'll need your help testing the translations. If you have translated DOCman before, ~~or you are an avid DOCman user,~~ you can join in. Send us an email, with some info about your native language, and how experienced you are with DOCman and software testing in general. Update: we are not accepting new testers at the moment, only translators.

We believe DOCman is still the most reliable and secure document solution for Joomla. All the help we've been getting from community members proves that in open source, collaboration will beat blind competition any day.

Finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank one such contributor. Harri (aka Tassu on the forum) has spend a lot of his time helping people as a moderator, on the DOCman forum as well as on various forums for Joomla and extensions. Due to professional circumstances, Harri is taking it a notch down, but he will still be around in the Joomlasphere.

DOCman 1.5 Internal Beta released

2009-09-30T15:15:00.004+02:00

Today we are releasing an internal beta of the upcoming DOCman 1.5. DOCman 1.5 runs fully native, there's no need to enable legacy mode anymore.

There was quite a demand for this feature after our announcement in January, but work on Nooku Content and Nooku Framework kept us from tackling it. The good news is that we are back on track and getting ready to give DOCman the bright future it deserves.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank our community contributors Brett Hooker and Adam McHugh from Roarz who stepped up to help out and contributed to making DOCman 1.5 run native. Thanks guys!

Keep your documents safe

So what else is new? Well, nothing! We are aware that a lot of sites (and even more intranets) depend on DOCman for managing often huge amounts of documents. We wanted to make sure that upgrading existing DOCman 1.4 installations is as smooth and painless as possible, without having to mess with migration scripts, database changes and untested new features. So when we finish the stable release, you'll be flying in no time: same time-tested codebase, same familiar user interface, same rigid security. Your documents are in good hands.

DOCman 1.5 Internal Beta is being tested right now by a small group of experienced DOCman users. We won't release it until we're absolutely sure it's working as expected, to make sure your data will be safe. That's why it's an internal release, and that's why you can't get it yet. Don't ask. ;-)

Nooku Framework released on Sourceforge

2009-08-22T15:34:00.004+02:00

We are delighted to announce that our Nooku Framework has been publicly released — made available at Sourceforge.net

The framework - which was announced last May - empowers Joomla! 1.5 to new levels and is designed to provide third-party developers with Joomla's missing MVC.

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.

We're hiring!

2009-07-08T21:04:00.002+02:00

Nooku's on the hunt for a talented junior/intermediate PHP developer with all the skills to fill a 2-3 month contract working on custom Nooku Framework/Joomla! projects. Ideally you'll have a solid background in PHP, associated technologies as well as some familiarity with Joomla.

Nooku Code Jam in Hamburg

2009-06-10T07:03:00.004+02:00

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 organise a second Nooku Code Jam in Hamburg, Germany on June 27th.

Nooku Framework MVC Mapped

2009-06-02T23:14:00.011+02:00

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.

Sponsoring the Joomladays NL 2009

2009-05-26T03:40:00.008+02:00

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 announced

2009-05-22T05:05:00.006+02:00

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.

DOCman 1.4.0 Stable released

2009-02-14T11:28:00.024+01:00

I'm happy to announce that as of today, DOCman 1.4.0 Stable (the Valentine's Day Edition) is available for download. I'm also very proud that this week, DOCman has crossed the one million downloads mark on Joomlacode (since March 2007)!

In more good news, MjazTools AutoPopulate (a utility to quickly import many files into DOCman), and AutoThumb (a plugin that generates thumbnails for images in DOCman) are now official Joomlatools plugins. They can be found through the download link below. Notify and BlogTheme will follow soon.

Before installing DOCman or upgrading from older versions (1.3, 1.4 beta and 1.4 RC), please see the included readme file for more information. If you need help, visit the forum, or read the FAQ.

To make sure you are using an unmodified package of DOCman, always download from our official download location at http://www.joomlatools.eu/products/docman/downloads.html.

We also put a new donations page online. We appreciate your contributions!

DOCman Valentine Release

2009-02-05T21:22:00.015+01:00

Looking for a special Valentine's gift for your beloved Joomla site? Look no further! Treat your site to the stable version of DOCman! Yep, we're happy to announce that DOCman 1.4.0 Stable will be publicly available on February 14. This is a bug fix release, so no new features have been added.

To make sure things are going smoothly, we are looking for a couple of beta testers. If you have some experience with testing applications, have access to a couple of different server environments where you can try DOCman, have a couple of browsers installed and know how to write a proper bug report, please mail me at mathias ~at~ joomlatools · eu.

Finally, as you might know we are working in the background on the next version of DOCman, with native J!1.5 support. But we are also working on something special, that will help you get the most out of your DOCman installation. Stick around or subscribe to our RSS feed http://feeds.joomlatools.eu/site/blog (please note that we are now at joomlatools.eu instead of .org)

About DOCman

DOCman is one of the oldest and most popular Joomla extensions available. It gives you full control over your documents, whether you want to offer them to visitors, registered users, intranet users or paying customers. The powerful group permission feature lets you choose which users can access certain documents. The 1.4 release is free of charge, but, more importantly, it's Free (as in Freedom): The GPL license gives you the right to use it on as many sites as you wish, for whatever purpose, see the source code, and modify it to your needs.

SEO Bootcamp report

2009-01-24T17:07:00.006+01:00

How do I know our bootcamps are doing great? Other people are publishing reports before we get a chance to do so: See Joomlacommunity.eu and Web-effect.nl. Our co-organizers Jira.nl took some pictures, and so did the attendees. You could even follow the event live on Twitter! The presentations are available from Jira and on Slideshare.

With all the attention our SEO Bootcamp is getting, there's not much left for me to do. These are the main points to remember:

SEO is not voodoo. We are always trying to understand Google, but in fact it's Google who is trying to understand humans. When a site has great content and is well-organized, it's in Google's best interest to direct users there.
You can be your own SEO expert. Tools like Website Grader help you to understand how SEO works and what you can do to improve it.
SEO is only 20% of the whole picture. SEM or Search Engine Marketing is much more effective. As Google bases it's pagerank partly on popularity, being present on the internet will get you more traffic.

... and yes, as usual the Bootcamp ended in a restaurant with Johan Janssens telling stories about the early Mambo days... ;-)

Best JED response ever

2009-01-18T21:13:00.005+01:00

I don't usually repost stuff on this blog (we have the "What we've been reading"-feed for that in the sidebar). But this is so well written, that I feel everyone who ever used GPL software should read it: Best JED response ever (hat tip to ninjatheme for the find).

Speaking as a developer of GPL software myself: when faced with (however few) users who demand your full undivided attention because they feel you owe it to them, it can be very tempting to relicense your software under a more restrictive proprietary license.
Dear user: If you care about Free Software (as in Freedom), allow GPL developers to make a living. If we can't build viable GPL-based business models, open source software will never amount to more than mere hobby projects.

From the Free Software Foundation website:

Free software is software that gives you the user the freedom to share, study and modify it. We call this free software because the user is free.