July 14, 2008 marks the beginning of year three of Packt's friendly competition between world class free software communities for who earns bragging rights to the much coveted 2008 Best Overall Open Source CMS. Not only is this recognition a great way to encourage, support, and reward the incredible efforts of free software communities, but, there is also a nice cash award shared with those projects fortunate enough to win.

The time for the Joomla! community to act is now!

Head over to Packt and nominate Joomla! for the Best Overall Open Source CMS Award and for the Best PHP Open Source CMS. While you are there, check out the new Open Source CMS Most Valuable Player award. Nominate someone who has worked hard to make Joomla! better and has made it easier and more fun for others to get involved.

Help get the word out. Fire up those blogs. Post it on forums. Share it in your newsletters. E-mail your friends. Activate your RSS feeds because nominations begin today and continue until August 25th, 2008. Let's bring home the Best Overall Open Source CMS award for Joomla! in 2008!

Show your support by voting for Joomla! today!

The Joomla! community is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Joomla! 1.5.4 [Naiki]. This is a normal maintenance release which includes a few low to moderate security issues, many bug fixes, and several very nice improvements. It has been a little over ten weeks since Joomla! 1.5.3 was released on April 24, 2008. The Development Working Group's goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla! community containing the latest bug fixes and minor enhancements.

Instructions 

• New installation
• Upgrade from an existing Joomla! 1.5 version
• Migration from Joomla! 1.0.x

Download Joomla! 1.5.4 and update packages

Want to test drive Joomla!? Try the online demo. Documentation is available for beginners.

Release Notes

Big Fixes:

• Major Cache overhaul, including unit testing for quality assurance
  
• Router issues related to extending the router
• Menu ordering issues when nested menus were used
• Several Search component fixes, including the removal of HTML tags as possible search results
• Menu permissions issues
• Unpublished menu item issues, including fatal errors and allowing an unpublished menu item to be selected as default
• Banners can handle Flash items
• Polls and Latest and Most Popular articles listed in the Administrator now support GMT dates
• Page titles now follow more consistent rules (see Page Title Parameters for more information)
• Several OpenID improvements
  

Security Fixes: 

• LDAP security fix to prevent unauthorized access to administration
• Added security to file caching to prevent unauthorized access to cached pages
• User Redirect Spam fix
• htaccess global variable security fix when SEF is enabled (See .htaccess Security Fix)

Additions/Changes:

• OnBeforeContentSave and onAfterContentSave Event Triggers added (See Content Trigger Additions for more information)
  • Ability to abort a save by returning false in the onBeforeContentSave trigger
• Added JA_Purity template (See JA_Purity Template for more information)
• Help screens updated (See Help Screens for more information)
• Supports installing site and admin languages in one package (See Language Installation Improvements for more information)
• All line endings changed to \n instead of a mix of \r\n and \n

The Joomla! Community Portal is a new web site for the Joomla! community. There you will find a constant source of information about the activities powering the Joomla! project, learn about Joomla! Events worldwide, and see if there is a Joomla! User Group nearby. A new, monthly Joomla! Community Magazine promises an interesting overview of project activities, community accomplishments, and learning material.

Those who regularly contribute to Joomla! will tell you the best way to get more out of the project is to participate actively. In doing so, you learn. Your contributions help shape the project. You build a support network. You find business opportunities. You start to see the bigger picture and recognize the value of the Joomla! community. It is not always easy to know how to get started as a project contributor. The Joomla! Community Portal makes opportunities for involvement more visible for those interested.

At Joomla!, there are always a wide variety of activities underway. The Joomla! Core Team, Documentation Working Group, Joomla! Extension Directory editors, Forum Moderators, Translation Working Group, and Development Working Group's blogs and RSS feeds will help you keep up with everything that is happening.

The Joomla! Events Team helps coordinate activities all over the world and shares information about Joomla! Days, Expo's and Trade Shows, and other community meetings. Attending events is an excellent way to meet members of the community, find opportunities to collaborate, and have fun.

Review the Joomla! Event Calender to find an event of interest to you.

Joomla! User Groups are a great way to build a local Joomla! support network. On the Joomla! Community Portal, a list of groups and contact information is available to make locating a group easier. If there is no Joomla! User Group in your area, consider starting one.

The Joomla! Community Magazine promises to be a must read each month. Community members will take turns sharing cool Joomla! 1.5 Web sites, Joomla! 1.5 GPL'd extensions, event information, involvement opportunities, and articles about local communities. A section on learning contains great material for introductory learners, professional Web site integrators, and talented developers. The project section of the magazine will keep you up to date on release information, working group profiles, and the latest project information.

We look forward to seeing you at the Joomla! Community Portal.