JOKR Solutions Blog

Resan till Indien var otroligt bra, vi träffade många intressanta företag och även en del nya vänner.

Om drygt en vecka bär det av till Pune, Indien för Indiasoft. Då kommer vi förhoppningsvis knyta nya kontakter men också träffa personer som vi tidigare bara har pratat med på Skype. Vi kommer även åka till Indore för att besöka ett av de företagen som vi har samarbetat med.

Ska bli riktigt kul!

Söker du kontakter i Indien - kontakta oss.

One of the headaches when building a website is configuration and make Joomla run great on the hosting provider server. Here in Sweden I got issues running websites on hosting providers servers that claims to be running fine with Joomla. The most common issue has been that “Safe_mode” has been set to “On” instead of “Off”.

When start building website and working with Joomla it´s easy to blame Joomla instead of the hosting provider.

Would it be possible to start and manage a Joomla certified system?
When buying digital products in the store it´s common to see “Compatible with Windows 7”. Could it be possible to make something similar for hosting providers that provide Joomla hosting/”one-click”-installations?

There are obviously requirements for running Joomla, PHP, MySQL, Safe_mode: Off etc but there should also be possible to include common needed server configurations like “GD-library 2” and present a certified list.

Hosting providers that fulfill the certified list could apply for using “Joomla! Friendly” (or whatever) banner on their site – stating that their hosting is certified for Joomla.

What could be won?

• Building and configure Joomla website should be easier on certified servers
• Sites should be more secure (777 chmod is not used by provider)
• Joomla gets a even better reputation to be easier to work with and to be secure
• Hopefully development could be easier (ex. implement and run Joomla core updates)

How would it work?
1. Joomla community produce a certified list
2. Hosting providers apply on joomla.org – gets accepted
3. Hosting providers that not fulfill the list will be told to remove banner

Inputs appreciated :)

An idea popped up in my in my mind about the possibility/need for adding virtual currency to the Joomla community. This is more of a concept - i´m not saying this is a way to go - this is just some thoughts. I´m not a developer my self so i have not seen to the technical requirements.

Background

Lots of developers sacrifice lots of time by creating useful extension for the Joomla community. Many of these extensions are free - often developers doesn´t get the appreciation that they deserve. People download the extension without a simple “thank you”.

The concept of virtual currency

My idea is to implement virtual currency - let call it Joomgold, Karma or whatever. The idea is to let Joomla users gain/trade/buy virtual currency. The main purpose with Joomgold is to encourage contribution to the Joomla community.

How it could work

In order to control the cash flow there is a need of a bank. In this concept, JED is the bank. Developers will receive Joomgold when their extension are published at JED - meaning that JED is able to issue Joomgold every time an extension is published at JED. The developers could then transfer Joomgold to regular users in order to get help with translation, bugs or ideas. Users could also be able to buy extension with the Joomgold.

A bullletlist of thoughts

• Joomgold would be “attached” to the profile at JED. Amount of Joomgold could be transfer automatically when extensions are published or manually transferred user to user.
• A market for the JED would let developers issue help for a certain amount of Joomgold, ie “I need my component to be translated for Swedish for this you will receive X Joomgold”. The market would be more like an open project tracker - users could search for job and earn Joomgold by contributing.
• In the JED profile for each user there would be “Gained income” - showing how much the users have earned in total - the user himself could see his own Balance
• Users should be able to spend their Joomgold on any Joomla project. Developers could sell their extension for a certain amount of Joomgold at their website
• JED could issue Joomgold each time an extension is published but also “extra” funds to the developer depending on popularity, downloads, updates etc.

Round up

So what do you think - waste of time, good, bad or what?
Also posted on all together as a whole

Mobile applications hits the roof, it´s almost true to say, that you can compare it with the start of the Internet. You can almost do everything with your phone using apps; use Facebook, use Twitter, play endless games, use the phone as a metal detector.. etc etc.

While surfing around at the Android market i fund an application called Joooid. Joooid is an app allowing the user to administrate the Joomla backend. Some of the features of Joooid right now is; publishing an article, uploading images and geotag your articles.

Joooid make me think about some questions;

• First of all, is there a need to administrate your Joomla site using your mobile?
• Which platforms would in that case be supported?
• Support for extension?
• Is there any alternatives?
• Should there be an official Joomla app?

The need to administrate your Joomla site using your mobile

I think it would be perfect, when you are traveling or just grabbing a coffee, at the airport or on the train and don´t have the energy to bring your computer, home in the couch while zapping in front of the TV or to posting rapidly fast news on your website.

Supported platforms

This of course, comes down to personal preferences. There are lots of fanboys out there not willing to accept other platforms then the favorite one. :)

Me, I think the supported platforms would be for Android and iPhone. Android is maybe more close to Joomla (a fairly open platform) and iPhone simply for it´s popularity. The supported platforms would of course depend on which resources is “available” (eg devs). Cross-platforms development is of course preferable.

Extensions

Some of the most popular extensions out there would be great to make support for, like K2, Akeeba backup, SOBI2 and Jomsocial. This is very much depending of the developers of these extensions in order to implement new features as the project progress.

The alternatives

There is always the possibility to simply use a mobile template for your backend. Maybe this is enough? It´s of course more simple, not having to rapid develop to be in phase with the extensions in your backend.

An official Joomla app

It would be nice to see if there is a interest for this kind of thing and if we together could gather devs to evaluate the alternatives and if it´s a GO - push it forward.

Wordpress has an official application – should Joomla have this or is it overrated? If some extensions should be supported, how would this be handled if the app is an official one? If the alternative with a mobile template is considered better – then it would be great to have a mobile template (for the backend) by default in the Joomla installation.

Round up – the way to go?

It would be nice to get some comments about this article and get some input from you, the community. I have been in contact with Stefano Norcia from Joooid and he will release the code for Joooid as GPL v3 and is keen to get help developing Joooid.

So what do you think?

Link JOOOID

Android for Wordpress

JOKR Solutions starts blogging.. information about mobile app for Joomla soon...