Quest for support improvement
In our quest to improve the delivery of our support, we are delighted to announce some support changes for the betterment of you, our dearest customers.
No more Zend Framework, yay!
The next iteration of JomSocial will finally do away with Zend Framework. A while ago, we decided to "supplement" our underlying development framework with an extensive, well supported php framework to speed up development process. Joomla! at that time, have not yet launch their Joomla-Platform initiative.
Although Zend framework does gives us a bit more features as opposed to core Joomla framework, it does have quite a few downside. Firstly, it is a huge library and took a while do be installed. Our installer had to download them separately with each install, which does fail at times. Secondly, coding style of ZF is also different than Joomla!, causing mixed coding style within our internal code. Finally, although we manage to minimize it, it does have some impact to JomSocial app in term of performance.
Looking into the future, 2013 Development Timeline
With yesterday’s announcement of our new social networking service, JomSocial Hosted, we have promised you to release 2013 Development Timeline. This timeline, we hoped would help you understand and be prepared with our 2013 course of action.
We realize our dear users are generally still in the dark on our plans for JomSocial and the new social networking service, JomSocial Hosted. Allow us to clarify and show you what’s in store for the next one year.
Read more: Looking into the future, 2013 Development Timeline
Introducing JomSocial Hosted
After the release of version 2.4, we are forced to think hard about the future of JomSocial. Our designers and developers always have tons of new ideas but being a component that run within Joomla! templates forces us to scale down a lot of those ideas. Quite a number of highly interactive features have to be put on hold, delayed or worse, cancelled due to the restriction that we have to face.
JomSocial, a massive overhaul
For the past 4 months, the JomSocial Team has been on a tight schedule to refactor JomSocial from ground up. The inclusion of Bootstrap in Joomla 3.0 offers us an opportunity (and excuse) to redesign JomSocial in its entirety. To be compatible with Bootstrap, all existing template structure has to be discarded, CSS has to be scrapped and all Ajax calls have to be renamed, re-done, cleaned of older elements.
By using Bootstrap, we can be sure of mobile compatibility from day one by utilising responsive design that would adapt the display according to your screen’s resolution. Of course, it would mean that the template will show optimized styling for your iPhone, iPad and desktop monitors. This is a massive endeavour and requires our full dedication to port everything from JomSocial into the new structure. At the end of the day, we are pretty satisfied of the outcome and are hoping to be able to start opening the new JomSocial for testing in two weeks time.
Allow me to show you what we have come up with.
Bidding Farewell
Hi everyone,
Just to inform you guys that this blog post will be about my departure from JomSocial. Like every journey on a roller coaster ride, my journey here has come to an end. Here at JomSocial I have learnt so many things that I never knew I could before, like meeting new people everyday, discussing about JomSocial with our clients, discussing promos and deals with the Joomla! community and the list goes on!
To the entire JomSocial Team, thank you for much for working with me!
To the customers, just to let you guys know that I have read each and everyone of your comments on Facebook and on this blog. Seeing positive comments and support towards JomSocial has always been a great encouragement. As for the negative ones, we're always grateful for them as they aid us in our strive to improve for the better.
Don't forget too lookout for the new JomSocial "3.0". It's going to be a smashing release and I hope you guys will enjoy the new JomSocial. Also do check out Offiria.com if a hosted social network geared for the enterprise is what you are looking for.
All the best!
Jacqueline
Shaper Crux : Joomla Gaming Template by JoomShaper
Do you always wish for a JomSocial compatible template specially for gaming community? Guess what, guys? JoomShaper has released a Joomla gaming template that has one unique advantage: It specially supports e-commerce functionality for Joomla!
Introducing Shaper Crux, the latest template from JoomShaper. It is ready to help you to start your gamers' shopping paradise right now. Besides E-commerce and social community, the template can also be used for Game review, Online Game Shop, Game Portal, Gaming forum and Gaming blog websites.
Read more: Shaper Crux : Joomla Gaming Template by JoomShaper
Introducing OFFIRIA, a private secure Social Network for your office. 50 trial accounts up for grabs.
Building a social network application isn't new to us. Our team has had extensive experience with JomSocial, a leading social platform based on the Joomla CMS, winning multiple awards years in a row. The magical thing about building applications is that you can be surprised as to how people implement its usage - it is after all, a tool, and how you choose to use it is unnumbered in manner. It is through some of you we learnt that the social aspect of the internet that we have grown so accustomed to is craved by the workplace as well.
That lead us to explore the idea further.
And so Offiria was born, at its core a social platform, built to extend and optimized the work environment.
Introducing UploadnSell, a FREE service
Want to sell your ebooks, files, downloads and digital products online, but it’s too much hassle sometimes? You always have to go through many steps and procedures just to get your money right? Uploading files on other places does not secure your payment online? Worried that you might be scammed? Want to make sure your product won’t be re-downloaded many times after being sold?
Shiny New Templates, JF Corporate (JoomForest) & Shaper Social (JoomShaper) updated to JS 2.6
JF Corporate
JF Corporate is a Free Professional JomSocial template for corporate and portfolio purposes that has been just released by JoomForest. It's very clean and neat, suitable for presenting your services or previous works to the clients.
Our 3rd CMSExpo Award: Get 20% Discount Site Wide!
CMSExpo has recently ended and JomSocial, for the 3rd consecutive year has won the "The Best Joomla App - Social" at CMSA Spolight Awards! Whew! We're very happy that JomSocial has once again won this award.
Read more: Our 3rd CMSExpo Award: Get 20% Discount Site Wide!
JoomlaXTC releases 2 New JomSocial-compatible Templates : Fashion Life & Tribune Times
One of our awesome partners has released 2 new stylish templates that have high integrability with JomSocial.
1. FASHION LIFE
Read more: JoomlaXTC releases 2 New JomSocial-compatible Templates : Fashion Life & Tribune Times
Joomlart's JA Social template is updated for JomSocial 2.6.1
We've just received good news from Joomlart that they have made JA Social compatible with JomSocial 2.6. Check out the latest screenshot:
Find out more about it here.
JomSocial Translation Project
Putrajaya Hot Air Balloon Festival, Malaysia. Photo by Kevin Poh.
This is an open secret. We have an international translation project hosted at Transifex.org. The project, though has been mooted for over a year can only be announced today as we were pretty much occupied with development of the newest JomSocial 2.6.
Transifex is an online translation service that allows people to collaborate and contribute towards localization of their favorite open source projects. You may find this tool indispensable in your quest for freedom of information in your community, to let information flow across language barriers and to reach out onto more international users that may fit your niche.
Visit our Transifex Translation Group
We already have quite a number of translation teams in the JomSocial Transifex group. Sorted by percentage of completion, Danish and Swedish Team emerge at the top for having translated all 7000+ strings, inclusive of backend, applications and modules for JomSocial.
JomSocial sponsoring Joomla! Day New England
Get free ticket to Joomla Day New England! Just comment on what you like the most about the new JomSocial 2.6 and you can stand a change to win FREE tickets to the event!
With the awesome response that we received on Joomla Day France, we are doing the same thing for Joomla Day New England(JDNE)! JDNE is of the biggest and oldest Joomla! events in the world and we are proud to be a part of this event!
As always, JDNE will be filled with interesting talks, awesome panels and great networking opportunities. This year, the even will focus on mobile, templating, e-commerce, content construction kits (CCKs), and migrating Joomla 1.5 to 2.5.
Don't forget to enter the content by leaving a comment about what you like the most about the new JomSocial 2.6.
Do check out Joomla! Day New England's website!
JomSocial 2.6, a global overview of features
The most awaited JomSocial 2.6 has been released. This newest iteration has gone through almost 4 months of Alpha, Beta and RC (Release Candidate) testing phases. The first official Alpha was released on the first week of 2012 and has gone through 10 releases to break our record of having the longest ever beta tasting phase in any JomSocial version. It is also in a very wide margin, the most downloaded JomSocial ever with over 11,000 cumulative downloads during its testing phase.
We are confident, yes we are, that JomSocial 2.6 is now ready for public consumption. It will take your community to new heights, with a number of highly interactive, yet scalable features at your disposal.
Let us put JomSocial 2.6 on the operating table and peek at what it has to offer. [View the official changelog]
Preparing your community for JomSocial 2.6
We are currently preparing for the release of JomSocial 2.6 in the next few hours. For the time being, I am reposting some quick notes that were first published a few months ago during the release of JomSocial 2.4. This guide holds much relevance to most if not all upgrade attempts for a Joomla website, hence the need for a round of reminder to ensure that such major upgrade will be smooth and safe.
Upgrading JomSocial has always been a simple matter of uninstalling the older JomSocial version and then installing the shiny, new and polished JomSocial 2.6.
But hold your horses, dear friends! A responsible community manager will always follow a strict standard operating procedure before a major update is done to the website. The following steps form basic guidelines that we abide religiously while upgrading any site of ours. You may tweak it to suit your needs, requirements and system configuration.
JomSocial sponsoring Joomla! Day France 2012
Yes, folks. This year JomSocial will be part of Joomla! Day France!
Joomla! Day France will be on the 24th and the 25th of March held at Strasbourg,France.
5 free JomSocial Professional will be won on the 25th of March during Ryan Ozymek’s session! Don’t miss a chance to find out about our 2.6 release. What’s more for all the audiences present during the prize giving session will be given a coupon code that will enable them to have 20% discount for new purchases of JomSocial. The coupon code will be valid from 25th till 31st of March 2012.
Do check out our web article on the Joomla!Day France website! Special thanks to Thierry for translating it into French.
Also, take a look at the video for Joomla!Day France.
JomSocial 2.6, performance is our top priority
The release of JomSocial 2.6 has been rescheduled to be on 26th of March 2012, Monday.
This decision has been made as we found out that certain parts of JomSocial 2.6 should be much faster than it currently is.
Balancing performance and features is always a delicate matter, most especially in an organic community deployed using JomSocial because we have to consider a multitude of possible system setups and configurations that JomSocial runs on. There are a lot of cases whereby requested features are simply way to advance to be handled by a shared or VPS environment. Apart from performance, scalability is also high in the equation.
It goes without saying that in JomSocial, no feature will be added at the cost of performance slowdown.
Download JomSocial 2.6 Release Candidate Three for free!
With almost 10,000 cumulative downloads of JomSocial 2.6 Alpha, Beta and Release Candidate versions, the next generation JomSocial 2.6 is poised to be our biggest unveiling of the best social networking platform available on Joomla.
We are proud to announce the immediate availability of JomSocial 2.6 Release Candidate Three, slotted to be the last Release Candidate version of JomSocial 2.6 before we go stable! This release is the closest you can get to an actual stable version. Last week’s release of JomSocial RC2 saw us committing around 140 issues discovered since RC1, and today’s release of JomSocial 2.6 RC Three eradicates a further 60 bugs with 20 new enhancements.
Read more: Download JomSocial 2.6 Release Candidate Three for free!
