J and Beyond, an International Joomla! Conference, is back for the third year.

For 3 days in May (18th -20th) Joomla! developers and site builders from over 30 countries will gather in Bad Nauheim, near Frankfurt, right in the heart of Europe.

The programme for J and Beyond is created by the participants through a public "Call for Papers" and this year for the first time we will be integrating the Joomla! Project Roadmap sessions.

J and Beyond is your opportunity to:

• Learn from others
• Present your ideas
• Plan for the future
• Meet the people behind the avatar
• AND most importantly - to have fun!

You can find out more by visiting http://jandbeyond.org.

Joomla Roadmap Meetings

The second Joomla Roadmap meeting will be taking place during J and Beyond 2012.

The purpose of this meeting is to get more people more intensely involved with the development of Joomla itself. While there will be room for on-the-fly topics, the main topics or features have been selected ahead of time based on suggestions from the community. You can find our more by clicking here.

Location

Bad Nauheim is right in the centre of Europe not far from Frankfurt (approx 35km). This historic spa town has become a world leading centre for medical care and recovery but is perhaps more famous for being the place where Elvis Presley was stationed during his time in the US Army. You can find our more by clicking here.

J and Beyond News in More Languages

• Italian
• French
• Hebrew
• Spanish
• Dutch
• Polish

Joomla today announces that its core files have been downloaded more than 30 million times from Joomla.org. Joomla now averages around 1 million downloads every month.

The Joomla community attributes the continued growth in the number of individuals, companies and organizations using the CMS to an aggressive development road map that included the release of Joomla 1.7 in July 2011. The CMS also began adhering to a six-month release cycle meaning more product enhancements being introduced more often. New features in the latest version included multi-database support, one-click version updating, predefined search options and language-specific font settings.

Another key factor in the growth in use of Joomla is that a significant number of government agencies have adopted Joomla, which powers about 3,100 government agencies’ Websites, blogs and intranets. Some features that have driven government adoption include one-click version updates, access control oversight, multilingual capabilities and the Joomla Platform that enables developers to build multipurpose, multi-device applications like mobile and cloud computing apps and enterprise business systems that can run independent from the core CMS. However, organizations using Joomla are not just isolated to government agencies. Recently, an industry research firm reported that Joomla powers at least 1.6 million Websites.

Moreover there has been an explosion in the number of Joomla extensions. More than 2,000 Joomla extensions have been introduced since March 2011. These extensions developed by Joomla’s community of thousands of developers provide added features not found in the core Joomla CMS. By providing compelling new features, these extensions drive Joomla’s widespread adoption in every imaginable industry, from nonprofits to some of the world’s largest financial institutions.

“It is an exciting time for Joomla given its strong position powering 2.7 percent of the Web, combined with its unique opportunity to influence the next wave of mobile and cloud Web development,” Paul Orwig, the new president and former treasurer of Open Source Matters, a nonprofit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project, said in a statement. “The platform split that enables Joomla to be used for developing mobile and cloud computing apps is a welcomed new wave of innovation for the Joomla community.”

As of the end of March 2011, Joomla was downloaded about 22 million times, meaning its adoption rate has grown about 40 percent over the last year. Joomla began keeping track of the number of CMS downloads in 2007. However, the Joomla CMS was first made available in 2005, which means the real number of downloads is presumably much higher.

With 2.7 percent of the Web running on Joomla, it is used for everything from small personal Websites and blogs to some of the largest enterprise, highest trafficked Websites and Intranets, including those operated by Citibank, eBay, General Electric, Harvard University, Ikea, McDonald’s, Sony, many large nations and more. Due to its power and elegance, the most inexperienced user to the most seasoned Web developer can use it.

The April issue of the Joomla Community Magazine is here!

Our stories this month:

Editor's Introduction

The Reel Deal, by Alice Grevet

Feature Stories

Worksy Makes Joomla User-Friendly for Non-Techies, by Ronni K. G. Christiansen
When in Rome, do as the Romans do, in Japan!, by Norito H.Yoshida
10 Joomla! Prejudices, by Angie Radtke
Best Ukrainian sites made on Joomla CMS. Part 2, by Denys Nosov

Project News

Leadership Highlights from March 2012, by Alice Grevet

Events

JoomlaDay in Iran, Algier, and The Netherlands, by Jacques Rentzke
2012 CMS Expo Learning and Business Conference, by Dianne Henning

Joomla! in Education

Joomla! GSoC 2012, by Jon Neubauer

Administrators

Joomla! Versions and Updates Explained, by Mark Dexter
Are You Sure You Want To Do It Yourself?, by Theo van der Zee
Customizing the Admin Menu, by Randy Carey

Designers

Award-winning Joomla web site featured by Apple in the new iPad campaign, by Victor Drover

Developers

New from Joomla! Press: Joomla! Programming, by Jacques Rentzke
J!Day Guatemala & J!Platform, by Guillermo Bravo
Check username availability with Ajax, by Nicola Galgano

Site builders

Website Case Study: Global Online Magazine, by Adam D'arcy

Business Matters

Maximizing Your Agency's Joomla! Expo Experience, by Luke Summerfield
Nine Points to Leverage when Selling a Joomla! 2.5 Upgrade, by Don Cranford
5 Vital Items to Consider When Raising Your Hourly Rate, by Gabe Wahhab

In our next issue

We want to publish your Joomla! story in the next JCM issue! So take a look at our Author Resources content to get a better idea of what we are looking for, and then register to become a JCM author and submit your Joomla! story!

The Joomla! project is proud to announce that our application has been accepted to be a mentoring organization for the 2012 Google Summer of Code™ program (GSoC). The GSoC helps support university level students who get the opportunity to work with mentors on a variety of coding projects that will all be contributed back to the student's mentoring organization.

This year's Joomla! GSoC application was led by Chad Windnagle (Primary Administrator), Andrea Tarr (Secondary Administrator), and Elin Waring. Key supporters and contributors to the application process include Michael Babker, Robert Deutz, Andrew Eddie, Louis Landry, Jacques Rentzke, and Matt Thomas.

After learning of Joomla!'s acceptance into GSoC, Chad had this to say:

I'm really proud of the community effort that got put forth to be successfully accepted into GSoC this year. When I first found out that we were working on the application, and we had a week to go, I was really worried we wouldn't make it in time. A lot of really great people have put their heads together to make this opportunity possible, and the project can't thank those folks enough.

We have gotten accepted into the Google program, but now the fun is just beginning. This is a major win, and now we have a whole summer to mentor students and run this program successfully. I hope when we reach the end of the summer we can all feel just as successful about Joomla!'s participation in GSoC as we do right now.

Those interested in serving as a mentor for a Joomla! 2012 GSoC student project may register here:
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2012/joomla

Here is the Frequently Asked Questions page for the 2012 GSoC:
http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2012/faqs