Joomla!

Team members

First off I'd like to note that our team members never met face-to-face, are from five locations in four countries and span 8 time zones. Skype, twitter and YuuGuu were our friends.

  • Steve Fisher is the Creative Director at Idea Marketand has been working with Joomla! from the very first version. As Creative Director, he guides the overall design aesthetic of everything that leaves Idea Market's doors. He is also the web standards and CSS go-to-guy and keeps Idea Market current with emerging trends. Steve provided creative leadership on the project and is primarily responsible for the user interface design and Web site styling. A few of his favourite things are running, fancy shirts and Ikea.
  • Amy Stephen is a longtime member of the Joomla! community and has helped in the forums, with the Communications Team, Bug Squad, Documentation Team, GHOP, GSoC, and with Joomla! 1.6 development. She has over 25 years experience in IT, much of which has little value now since card decks, Cobol, and back office Microsoft expertise are of no interest. She is lead developer on Tamka.org, a suite of GPL'd blogging extensions for Joomla!, and a freelance consultant providing Joomla! services. Amy headed up application development for the project and recruited unknowing victims to participate.
  • Arno Zijlstrais one of the original founders of the Joomla! project. Currently, he is a full time web developer and founder ofAlvaana Creative, with a passion for web-standards, accessibility, and making the user experience simple and beautiful. Arno has a long open source history, having contributed in Mambo, Simpleboard Forum, and Joomla!. Arno provided project guidance and support, the base framework and CSS for the template and the solution for the newsletter requirement.
  • Kevin Devine has been developing Web sites using Joomla! since 2006 when he accepted a full-time position withPICnet. Based in Washington, D.C, PICnet is a web development company serving non-profit organizations across the United States. He also devotes time to the Joomla! project by helping other members in the forum as well as with the Bug Squad and the Joomla! Security Strike Team. Kevin is author of UserMeta and helped provide Group capability for Tamka, both of which are in use by the Joomla! SxSW Contest Entry.
  • Tibor Tóth has worked as a full time IT Systems Integrator for corporate customers, developed e107 and Mambo Web sites before discovering Joomla! several years ago, the CMS he believed "had a future." Tibor is an active member of the Hungarian and Slovak Joomla! user communities and president of the Joomla!User Association Hungary. Tibor developed the Tamka Manager, which was used by this contest entry to simplify installation and upgrade processes for end users.

Features completed and time spent

general configuration = Figuring out the hosting environment (specifically,
accessing the DB), and installation, implementing backups, getting the team IDs,
moving the site from a development to production environment, and other system
administration tasks -15 hours

look and feel = 15 hours(much of this time was spent validating output,
ensuring standards compliance and deciding what Mark meant)

each feature individually = 27.15 hours

  • General information pages about the program
    This feature utilized Joomla! core.
    Time:3 hours(content development)
  • A calendar that lists upcoming events and class sessions
    This feature was implemented using the Events List component for Joomla.
    Time:4 hours(most of the time was reading through their documentation,
    creating content, and developing template overrides)
  • Supplemental downloadable materials for each session, including Word and PDF files, MP3 recordings, links to other Web sites, YouTube videos and other social media content.
    Ability to embed files, MP3 recordings, Video, etc., is "built in" to Tamka using Plugins.
    Documents can be uploaded, stored, and shared using Joomla!'s core Media Manager.
    Other social media content, such as Delicious links, embedded Flickr images, and Twitter streams are available in Tamka.
    Time:3 hours(primarily to create sample content to display capability)
  • A “community classifieds” section where program participants can post services offered, services needed, help needed and other opportunities or community resources.
    Time:2 hours(primarily to create sample content to display capability)
  • A discussion forum where users can continue talking about issues between class sessions.
    A scheduled feature of Tamka to enable groups and discussion forums was moved up so that it could be used in this project.
    Time:5 hours(Once feature was available in the Tamka code base, configuring it was nominal. Sample content and testing.)
  • Photo gallery pages where program participants and staff can post photos from class sessions and/or group projects.
    Time:2 hours (For Phoca, most time needed was for reading documentation and uploading, styling content)
  • Other social media content, such as Delicious links, embedded Flickr images, and Twitter streams are available in Tamka.
    Time:2 hours(Time req'd to sign up and provide content as JoomlaSxSW in Web services.)
  • Individual blogs for each program participant and staff member.
    This is a standard feature available in Tamka.
    Time:3 hours(For team members to submit articles, comments, test, etc.)
  • The ability for program participants to create groups to facilitate group project planning. These group pages should allow members to upload Word, PDF, and other common document formats for peer review and commenting, as well as collaboratively edited wiki-style pages. Groups, discussion forums, and ability to share documents was discussed above, and is now part of the Tamka extension set. The implementation does not provide wiki resources. Considered Mediawiki since it is industry standard and creating plugins for system integration with Joomla! is not difficult.
    Time: Addressed above or did not satisfy requirement
  • The ability to rate pages and posts using either a “+1” or “five star” rating system
    "Five star" rating of posts is part of Joomla! core and is enabled by setting a parameter.
    Time:none
  • Web-based contact forms for outside (anonymous) users to contact program
    staff for information about the program and/or submit an application.
    We decided to use the Alf Contact Form, instead of the standard Joomla! core component, to simplify styling needs
    Time:1 hour(Install, configure, test to ensure email working properly)
  • A directory of current program participants.
    We used a Tamka Module that lists Gravatars and basic member information but did not create a real directory of program participants
    Time:2 hours (Current Module had to be hacked to display Gravatars differently)
  • Banner advertising allowing local businesses to “sponsor” different sections of the site.
    Core Joomla! Banners satisfied contest requirements.
    Time:15 minutes

Extensions

Number of lines of custom Javascript and PHP

A custom Joomla! Template was created for the contest entry. It was a typical Joomla! template with JDoc statements to insert Component and Module output. Very minimal lines of PHP code were used for this purpose. A template override was created for the Event List Module displayed on the home page. The Template Override has less than 30 lines of code.

No custom PHP code was written specific to this entry. However, we did move up development of a planned "Groups" extension for Tamka in order to have that capability available for this project. Integrating this new functionality into the Tamka architecture required a great deal of change to the Tamka router, ACL, andcom_content Blog View extensions.

No additional Javascript coding was required.

User access

All Administrative features, such as Article, Gallery, Event and Comment management, spam protection, Ping, Twitter, and Email notification, etc., processes are configurable in the backend Administrator. Standard Joomla! ACL groups are used to manage those processes.

If enabled by the Site Administrator, members are automatically provided a blog for posting content simply by signing up. Members can provide a personal profile,specify privacy preferences, and share links for social networking presence, amongst other items. Administrators can easily customize the User Profile, as
needed.

Members can submit user-generated content, such as Articles, Image Galleries, Podcasts, Videos, and Web links, from the frontend interface when logged on. Site Administrators can decide if content to be automatically published upon submission, or to held for potential editing and released by a publisher. Interaction between members is possible using Comments and by enabling Voting on Articles and in Galleries. A "Groups" Component enables members to create discussion forums from the frontend to engage other community members in topics of interest.

Please describe the approach your project team took.

• Video will be uploaded to Vimeo in the Joomla! SxSW Group
http://www.vimeo.com/groups/joomlasxsw
• The team tweeted updates during the process and frequently called out for
direction and ideas from the community.
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=JoomlaSxSW
• Blogs were shared on the Joomla! community Web site
http://community.joomla.org/swsx-blog/

What feature was the easiest/fastest to implement?

The specifications for the home page were a natural fit for Joomla!'s Frontpage component.

What feature was the hardest/most time consuming to implement?

Modifying Tamka's router, ACL, templating, and com_content Blogs Component for the new Blogs Component was the bigggest challenge. In the last few minutes of the competition, a change made introduced an error that prevents the full Article from being presented for many Blog posts.

What feature surprised you (e.g. took substantially less or substantially more time than expected)?

We were very pleased with the Event List and Phoca Gallery extensions, how easily that work fit into the overall look and feel, and with the rich array of functionality available out of the box. Kudo's to those Joomla! developers.

What feature are you most proud of?

The team is most proud of the professional, clean, and elegant look of the Website. When this package is installed all over the world, we are confident Web site members will find it easy to join, submit content, interact with one another, sign up for events, and share galleries. We are also certain Web site Administrators will be proud of communities they help manage. The consideration our designer put
into thinking about workflow and presentation impressed team members and "wow'ed" the Joomla! community. It was motivating to participate knowing the user interface held such respect and consideration for future users.