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| Joomla! |
Joomla! is a free and open source content management system (CMS) for publishing content on the World Wide Web and intranets. It comprises a model–view–controller (MVC) Web application framework that can also be used independently.
Joomla! is written in PHP, uses object-oriented programming (OOP) techniques and software design patterns, stores data in a MySQL database, and includes features such as page caching, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, search, and support for language internationalization.
Within its first year of release, Joomla had been downloaded 2.5 million times. Between March 2007 and February 2011 there had been more than 21 million downloads. There are over 7,400 free and commercial extensions available from the official Joomla! Extension Directory and more available from other sources.
Joomla! was the result of a fork of Mambo on August 17, 2005. At that time, the Mambo name was trademarked by Miro International Pvt Ltd. who formed a non-profit foundation with the stated purpose to fund the project and protect it from lawsuits. The Joomla development team claimed that many of the provisions of the foundation structure went against previous agreements made by the elected Mambo Steering Committee, lacked the necessary consultation with key stake-holders and included provisions that violated core open source values.
The Joomla development team created a web site called OpenSourceMatters.org to distribute information to users, developers, web designers and the community in general. Project leader Andrew Eddie wrote a letter which appeared on the announcements section of the public forum at mamboserver.com.
A little more than one thousand people had joined the OpenSourceMatters.org web site within a day, most posting words of encouragement and support, and the web site received the Slashdot effect as a result. Miro CEO Peter Lamont gave a public response to the development team in an article titled "The Mambo Open Source Controversy - 20 Questions With Miro". This event created controversy within the free software community about the definition of "open source". Forums at many other open source projects were active with postings for and against the actions of both sides.
In the two weeks following Eddie's announcement, teams were re-organized, and the community continued to grow. Eben Moglen and the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) assisted the Joomla! core team beginning in August 2005, as indicated by Moglen's blog entry from that date and a related OSM announcement. The SFLC continue to provide legal guidance to the Joomla! project.
On August 18, 2005, Andrew Eddie called for community input on suggested names for the project. The core team indicated that it would make the final decision for the project name based on community input. The core team eventually chose a name that was not on the list of suggested names provided by the community.
On September 1, 2005 the new name, “Joomla!,” was announced. It is the anglicised spelling of the Swahili word jumla meaning “all together” or “as a whole.”
On September 6, 2005, the development team called for logo submissions from the community and invited the community to vote on the logo preferred; the team announced the community's decision on September 22, 2005. Following the logo selection, brand guidelines, a brand manual, and a set of logo resources were then published on October 2, 2005 for the community's use.
Joomla won the Packt Publishing Open Source Content Management System Award in both 2006 and 2007.
On October 27, 2008, PACKT Publishing announced Johan Janssens the "Most Valued Person" (MVP) for his work as one of the lead developers of the 1.5 Joomla! Framework and Architecture. In 2009 Louis Landry received the "Most Valued Person" award for his role as Joomla! architect and development coordinator.
Joomla (Joomla! 1.0.0) was released on September 16, 2005. It was a re-branded release of Mambo 4.5.2.3 which, itself, was combined with other bug and moderate-level security fixes.
Joomla! version 1.5 was released on January 22, 2008, the most recent release (April 4, 2011) being 1.5.23.
Joomla 1.6.0 was released on January 10, 2011. This version adds a full access control list functionality plus, user-defined category hierarchy, and admin interface improvements.
Joomla 1.7.0 is planned for release six months after 1.6.0 in July 2011.
Joomla can be installed manually from source code on a system running a web server which supports PHP applications, from a package management system or using a TurnKey Joomla appliance which comprises the application and its dependencies as a ready-to-use system.
There are numerous web hosting companies who provide a control panel which automates the deployment of a basic Joomla web site.
Joomla can also be installed via the Microsoft Web Platform Installer which installs the software on Windows and IIS. The Web PI will automatically detect any missing dependencies such as PHP or MySQL then install and configure them before installing Joomla.