Something caught my eye on JoomlaFeed today - a new extension called Joomla Credits has come out that automatically creates a list of plugins, modules and components installed on a site and allows you to publish them on the front end.

I really like the idea of sharing with the public which extensions actually come together to make a site - in fact its something we've done on WhyJoomla? since the blog launched, but the component is still a little raw to fit the need... basically, it lists whatever's installed; so if you've installed something on your site and don't use it on the front end, people will still know you have it installed - which may be mis-leading when considering an extension list lets people know what makes your site come together... 

...So,  though Joomla Credits get credit for a good effort, I wouldn't use it publicly on sites; my suggestion is for site developers to use it as a quick reference point to keep track of what's installed - link to it on the front end but make the link admin-viewable only.  Honestly, it doesn't take more than a couple of minutes to type up a public page with hyperlinks to each module on J!ED anyway :) - hey, you could even use Joomla Credits to quickly grab the necessary info th bung into the page!

Steve Reichgut from Axtaweb talks briefly about some aspects of working with the Joomla community at large to ensure your extension reaches a maximum audience whilst encouraging feedback and community interaction.  He also talks about why using the new 1.5 API makes things easier for developers.

This video was shot @ the Bay Area Joomla User Group - hosted by Google. 

Something I've always felt limited by with Content Management Systems - Joomla included, is having to create navigation through menu systems... you know, sometime a 'page' is something more than just a bunch of media about one topic - often i find myself wanting to add some depth to content pages with additional navigation that's embedded into the content.

A little while back I discovered a nifty extension called Tabs and Slides (from the goodfellows over @ Joomla Works) - its a plugin which affords you this groovy functionality and lets you style the embedded links with CSS, which is always smart. :) 

Check out what it does:

Lovely stuff eh?  Note: this plugin also lets you keep your SEO a little tidier as crawlers like Google will see all the content on this page; so you don't have to worry about people hitting up your site and arriving at a non-primary page and then having to back-track through conventional navigation.... Also, with this method you can also introduce menus - adding copy above the menu itself like 'choose a type of chicken from the selections below.'

Like most Joomla! users, you may be somewhat frustrated with using JoomlaBoard - the standard discussion forum which has been available since the Mambo days.  Despite being pretty simple to use, JB never really developed from an admin stand-point; its clunky to customize - both re: styling and removing/editing functions & menus, and hasn't really offered new features in quite some time.

Well, I was happy to discover Fireboard today - what first caught my eye was that the port over from Joomlaboard requires just one click!  I popped it on a live site running JB and yes, it really was that simple - install it as a component, then import the JB database into Fireboard's dB tables et voila!

There are already some improvements over Joomlaboard and Fireboard promises more soon - notably, there are some cool display panels a la SMF showing users latest posts, forum stats and so on.

Check out their fully functioning demo and see why its worth switching to Fireboard today!

You might have noticed seeing preview pop-ups of web links on a lot of 'web 2.0' sites in the past few months... Many of them are powered by a service called Snap .

Snap's free and can really make browsing a lot quicker - especially for sites where people are navigating through sites with focus on what they look like, rather than what they're saying... I could see Snap really help out anyone who blogs about other people's photos on Flickr or whatever other online sources, for example.

You should be able to simply use Snap by copying a tag from snap.com into your J! template, but there's also a nifty new plugin which allows you to change the display settings whenever you want plus avoid site navigation being previewed...  We've installed this great Joomla plugin on whyjoomla - pass your cursor over an external link to see what the hype's about, then head over to J!ED and download the plugin for yourself :)

One of the most active projects in the world of rapid-application development with php recently has been Jake - a new bridge between cakephp and joomla.

Some hard-core php peops claim that cake is much more delicious than Ruby on Rails and can do a whole bunch of whizbang madness very easily.... so this comes as really exciting news to the Joomla community methinks.

At the moment, it seems that there is lots of work within the cake community to make CMS' using it, so as bugs get worked out with this new bridge I expect to see more cakers embracing Joomla and working on projects that could really add some neat functionality to the CMS. 

I'm still investigating the usefullness of Fabrik beyond custom contact and other simple forms with database recording and table-display btw...

Is anyone reading this familiar with Cake?  What are your thoughts? 

Funny how the same day I blog about Joomla being perfect for sites not requiring custom application functionality I stumble upon a fantastic new component that may well challenge that viewpoint!  

Going back a couple of years, there was a great forms component that allowed you to create forms and custom elements for them without any code... that got built upon and then seemingly abandoned by pollen8 out of the UK and a little while back I remember their website being upgraded with a mention of mosform changing names soon and getting way better...

Its now called Fabrik and could well provide some cool functionality for making more dynamic use of databasing with Joomla sites... I'm off to install it on our dev server and will report back with more info soon...

One major thing to keep in mind when developing websites that allow people to meet and stay in touch with each other is that its got to be easy - at base, your site should make finding people quick and fast.

Incase you've missed it, there's a pretty cool component that makes Community Builder an even more attractive feature of Joomla sites: its called Community Builder Advanced Search (go figure) and will let site users filter searches by any field defined in CB - including custom fields... so long as they are published to a user's profile.

Honestly, this functionality should be included in the CB core, but hey, those poor chaps already have a lot on their shoulders - its good to see other developers stepping in and lending a hand (we'll let Nant keep working on getting us audio and video support for CB profiles in the meantime! ;) )

One major problem with using a WYSIWYG editor (like JCE ) with Joomla has been the lack of a decent HTML editor - for us who love controlling the structure of our HTML, or even use special code for formatting once in a while, there is now a great solution to this dilemma:

EditArea is a great new plugin for JCE that adds a clean color-coded HTML editor which can simply be accessed at the touch of a button!  I love it! :)

Add it to all yor sites, trust me, you're life will be so much easier - especially if you're used to HTMLArea or Jedit etc... 

(BTW, the plugin is basically a port of Christophe Dolivet's excellent EditArea HTML editor.) 

Community Builder is an excellent extension for Joomla - it basically extends the user profiling system on your site and allows you to let your site users interact with each other through personal profiles, member lists etc..

A fresh install of the component and special login module offers you most of the functionality you might want but there are three simple configurations I would highly suggest:

1. spend a few moments crafting unique messages in the registration tab of the component - this will help you form a personal connection between your users and the site. At the bottom of the form, there's a field to enter a 'URL for first login visit' - I suggest creating a custom 'thanks for signing up' page to add warm-fuzziness to the user experience ;)
2. establish a jump page in the cb_login module so once people login, they are taken to a welcome message, or listing of new content etc...
3.  the default ordering of tabs in the CB component isn't very intuitive - make sure to float the registration information tab down to the bottom so when people hit the 'edit my profile' link on your site, it will take them to the tab you want them to edit most (example shown above from joomlajobs.net )