Continuing our venture into small yet useful extensions for Joomla! (after the "enormous" K2!), today we're presenting "Latest Tweets", a sleek module to fetch your Twitter statuses on your Joomla! website, the easy way.

Just set your parameters and publish the module. You can even copy the module to multiple instances and fetch the latest tweets from different users on your website (e.g. in a multi-author environment).

The module is released under the GNU/GPL v2 license and you can see a demo here (frontpage, right column): dev.joomlaworks.gr/plugins

Download the module here.

Wanna discuss about the module with others? Join the related forum board here.

If you want more power over your Joomla! website or blog, have a look at our commercial plugin, SuperBlogger, available at just 7 Euros.

Enjoy one more release from JoomlaWorks!

UPDATE Nov. 4th: We've just released version 1.1 of the module which solves a nasty rendering bug in (guess where...) Internet Explorer. Just download the new version from the link above and install. It will automatically overwrite the old version, so no need to change your settings at all ;) Version 1.1 will also perform a little better compared to v1.0 and the MVC template of the module has been significantly simplified.

Today we're releasing a free (GPL) module and plugin combo to easily integrate ad slots coming from Google Ad Manager into any Joomla! 1.5 website. These 2 extensions make the process easy and above all, they do it the "proper" way.

So if your plan to use Google Ad Manager as your ad server for your Joomla! website (or if you're already using G.A.M.), install this module and plugin to make your life easier and deliver banners the right way. The module also includes an additional display filter so you won't have to select new menu items for your existing banners every time you switch on or off a new banner.

The plugin is used to add your Publisher ID globally for the website and the module is used to display the actual ad slots coming from Google Ad Manager. Make sure you have both published.

Download the extension here.

Wanna discuss about the extension with others? Join the related forum board here.

Enjoy one more release from JoomlaWorks!

AllVideos 3.1 has just been released.

This new version fixes compatibility with K2 in the backend (previously some wrong CSS/JS file paths were messing up the item page). It also adds better filtering for less error-prone plugin tags.

For more on the new 3.x series features, see here: http://forum.joomlaworks.gr/index.php?topic=9195.0

DEMO

See version 3 running in our development site: http://dev.joomlaworks.gr/plugins/allvideos-v3-with-superblogger.html

UPGRADE / INSTALLATION

You are advised to upgrade as soon as possible.

To upgrade from 2.x to 3.1:
Just note down your AllVideos settings, uninstall any previous 2.x version and then install v3.1. Enter the plugin parameters, re-apply your settings and publish it! Clear your Joomla! cache and voila!

To upgrade from 3.0 to 3.1:
Directly install v3.1, it will override the old files, maintaining your settings.

DOCUMENTATION

The documentation for AllVideos is available here: http://www.joomlaworks.gr/content/view/35/41/


Enjoy one more fine release from the folks at JoomlaWorks!

We're happy to announce the immediate release of K2 version 2.1. This new version includes among others bug fixes, core updates and performance improvements, with a few new features introduced. Version 2.1 is already used on our demo site with sh404SEF, so you can check it out: http://k2.joomlaworks.gr/demo-v2/

Upgrading
Download version 2.1 from k2.joomlaworks.gr. Detailed upgrade notes can be found here.

Changelog
Native sh404SEF support
- K2 now fully supports sh404SEF natively.
- Includes 2 parameters to further extend sh404SEF's URL re-writing.

mod_k2_tools
- Calendar: added "filter by category" option
- Archives: added "filter by category" option

mod_k2_content
- Sort items by best rating

mod_k2_content
- add an option to fetch items from children categories of SELECTED categories (so you don't have to re-check the module settings when creating new children categories in K2).

Frontend
- User URLs now include the user's name.
- Comments: do not let people post comments using email addresses and/or name from site users!
- Comments: If cache is enabled and auto-publish is on do not redirect/refresh but display this message: "Thank you. Your comment will be published shortly." Comment is published when the cache is refreshed automatically, at the preset time interval.
- Comments: If cache is disabled and auto-publish is on redirect/refresh to the same page with anchor link to the published comment.
- Fixed generated RSS feeds for menu items pointing to multiple or all categories within K2.
- Addressed "division by zero" error if user accidentally input 0 for leading/primary/secondary/links count in categories or menu items linking to categories.

Frontend editing
- Caching is disable in the frontend if users log in. Otherwise they can't see the add/edit buttons for content editing.
- Removed "closing" link surrounding the editing modal box to avoid accidental closing of the box and thus loss of unsaved work.
- Changed toolbar buttons to match the backend styling for more familiarity (thanks to Lyle for pointing this out).
- Reset button removed, cancel button added.
- Fixed tooltip boxes.

Backend
- Managers do not see links to user profiles (due to permissions). Only admins and above can.
- Common date/time format for all lists, derived from language files.
- info page: check for modules installed
- info page: check for plugins installed & published
- info page: check for multibyte support as it's a requirement for both K2 and Joomla!
- item form >> extra fields: if type "link" is used and the user does not input a URL, we display just the link name only (thanks to Kenneth Crowder for pointing this out).
- Menu items >> linking to category/categories: Removed "catalog mode" option (as it comes from a category's options) and added option to "fetch items from children categories of selected categories". This clears up how one can use K2 to build catalogs as now you can create a "catalog" only if you have created some master category to assign as "catalog" root.
- Comments: added more info on the comments list, including a link to open the commented item in a modal box.
- Added K2 favicon for the component's backend menu link.

Other
- Fixed some SQL statements in the install package
- Updated the URL filters for title aliases in K2
- Fixed minor syntax related issues in the code (thanks to anyone reporting those)
- "Sanitized" K2's behaviour with some components like JomSocial, due to conflicting user forms. K2 and JomSocial (and any other component) will happily work together now :)
- Fixed some generated notices in the PHP code.
- Disable image download for SIG Pro frontend/backend (for coming version 2.0.5)
- Added support for the new AllVideos version 3.0+

What next?
More cool stuff are on the way for 2.2 which should arrive within the next couple of months, unless we have any immediate bugs that need to be addressed with a minor release.

Thanks to everyone using and supporting K2.

After almost a year of development (since Sept. 2008) we're happy to announce the first stable release of K2, the powerful content component for Joomla!. Download it, create some items and categories or import your Joomla! articles (to quickly fill the component with data) and start playing with K2's features. You will quickly realize how easy and enjoyable it is to work with K2!

Note: If you're new to K2, I suggest you have a look at the project website at k2.joomlaworks.gr for a quick intro.

So what's new in v2.0 stable?

First and foremost, the feature set is now complete and will remain the same for a long time to come. Any further extensions will be available as K2 plugins, utilizing our simple yet powerful plugin API system to extend both frontend and backend. When I say "the feature set is now complete", I mean that there will be no changes to the database tables, so if you were looking to get started for a PRO website built on top of K2, now is the time!

Having a complete set of features helped as focus on other important things like performance, templating/styling flexibility, extensibility, ease of use and frontend content management combined with ACL features.

I believe we've managed all three very successfully, here's why...

Performance
K2 is developed so that it fits the needs of a simple blog to a news portal with hundreds of thousands of articles, images, videos and users. At the moment, Joomla!'s article system cannot handle that as it's built on different principles. By putting to practice the experience we've gained from our sister company, Komrade, building high traffic websites with Joomla!, we gradually developed a content component that fulfill the gaps. This is how K2 was born.

So how is K2 better than Joomla! plus a few more components and plugins to add stuff like comments, tags, media features etc.? First of all, K2 is an integrated solution. Queries to the database are more efficient compared to having 3-4 component "exchanging" data with each other. Secondly, K2 uses an additional caching mechanism (compared to that provided by the Joomla! API), which makes it possible to "refresh" individual cached items when they're edited and not the entire cache (which is how Joomla! articles work now). That being said, when the cache is on, K2 plus a dozen of K2 modules retrieving and displaying items from various categories with various elements will normally occupy around 8-10 queries. If you did the same with more components and modules and plugins, the queries are far more, caching can be troublesome and the list goes on...

And since we're people of actions and not words, we will soon unveil 2 new websites (as Komrade) with over 50 and 200 thousand articles respectively. Yes, you read right. These are probably the biggest numbers "ever" in the Joomla! community.

Templating/styling flexibility
Another important factor when designing a website (of any magnitude) is the ability to be flexible when it comes to styling. Currently, you have to work your way around with various php and CSS tweaks to get what you want. To be more exact, imagine a website that features news, blogs, products, a knowledge base, comments, company presentations, downloads, listings, portfolios (and the list goes on). I'm not saying this is not possible currently with Joomla!, what I'm saying is that in order for someone to achieve perfection into such a task, they have to be skilled pros.

With K2, your template designer can provide different "sub templates" for news, blogs, products etc. So you have a full-featured page for your news and a minimal set of elements for your blog. All you have to do is create the related K2 menu items in Joomla! and select the sub-template of your choice. K2 will make sure to switch templates whenever your visitors browse through your site pages. Additionally, you don't have to worry about Itemid issues, causing one page to inherit view options of another! In this manner, K2 works like the Drupal CMS.

All that is going to be laid out in the video tutorials we will present soon to help everyone see and understand the benefits of building Joomla! websites with K2.

Extensibility
We have significantly improved the behaviour of extra fields in this latest stable release and now it's very easy to extend your item forms with additional fields that hold content of various types (text, lists, links etc.).

Additionally, we have completed the K2 plugin API which gives a whole new meaning to extensibility: you can write simple Joomla! plugins that extend the item, category and user forms, providing more freedom compared to the "extra fields" feature. You can create a K2 plugin that adds a new "media manager" tool for images, or one that makes it easy to cross-link an item with others (in the case of a catalog), or one that adds maps to your items, or one that extends the user form with fields like hobbies, personal info and other stuff important (to you and your visitors).

JoomlaWorks will be releasing a set of free K2 plugins which we've already developed for other commercial projects and which we hope you'll find interesting for your K2 web projects.

Ease of use
Don't get me wrong here, Joomla! is an amazing CMS thanks to the people who built it. It has been a role model in terms of user interface for many other CMSs and it's success is primary related to this (and templating).

With K2, we did not reinvent the wheel. All backend functionality is based on the same principles followed in Joomla!'s core articles, further improved. Every feature you and your site managers will need are included within one component and they are easily accessible. It just feels and acts familiar to you from the content listings to the data forms. Try it out and you'll see.

Frontend content management with ACL features
In this stable release, we have "fine tuned" the frontend editing features of K2. And the process is very easy.

You create "user groups" in K2 with specific permissions over content and in all or specific categories. You create a "base" user group and all new signups get added into that group. This base user group can have comment privileges only, for example. Then you create another group for contributors and give them different privileges, e.g. add new items in specific categories with auto-publishing disabled. A third group can act as content moderators, the people who evaluate the items submitted by others and choose to publish these items on the site or not. Overall, the ACL system is very simple yet powerful and the frontend editing capabilities allows you to create more "content contributing" groups without giving access to your Joomla! backend.

What more?

- K2 v2.0 stable is SEO friendly as it constructs true internationalized URLs and additionally you can set your own character replacements. Is Spanish your native language, for example? Then your item URLs can be in Spanish too!
- Smart image processing: When you upload an "item image", K2 will process it and produce 6 copies of the image in various dimensions for use in leading, primary and other item groups, in blogs, in search results etc. Furthermore it will keep a copy of the original, in case you decide to make copies of your article without re-uploading.
- Forget Itemid hell! Your visitors will jump from one area to the other without seeing funky stuff! The layout options you define on each category stick with content in this category. Furthermore, you can have child categories inherit their parent category's layout settings, so you can easily create e.g. a catalog tree with complex visual settings in just a couple of minutes.

What next?

Now that K2 stable is out, we will focus on documentation and video tutorials to educate people on the possibilities of the component and the overall benefits for professionals (and not only).

In the meantime, we will see more and more template designers embrace K2, partly because it's simple to do so and partly because they can actually bundle K2 builds to release with sample data, instead of bundling entire Joomla! distributions. Aside that, the integrated features provide added value to their work.

So far the biggest template designers in the Joomla! community have shown their support on K2, namely RocketTheme (templates and extensions), JoomlaPraise, JoomlaBamboo, JoomlaShack and we hear more are coming! The features and templates in K2 are now fixed and it will be very easy for template designers to finally "get their hands dirty" with K2 and without the fear to have to update their overrides from release to release.

So what will the newer versions include? First of all, make sure that the component is 100% functional in the way it's supposed to function and secondly improve the extensibility features and the overall "frontend functionality". It's not to hard to have K2 act as a forum even now, but we need to make the whole experience more integrated.

Other stuff on our to-do list include:
- a new ajax based commenting system with an independent (to K2) caching layer
- extend K2's social features
- improve image management tools
- build a more efficient image cache mechanism, targeted for websites with thousands of images
- develop an external migrator component to help transition Joomla! core articles to K2 in a more professional and SEO-friendly manner
- engage your community to participate more actively in your website, from reporting bad comments to creating richer profile pages (a la Facebook) with cross-user interaction
- native integration with our commenting services like "Disqus" or "Intense Debate" or the forthcoming "Echo" from JS-Kit
- release plugins to extend K2's functionality :)

We're excited to announce the prerelease of K2 version 2.0.0.

Download it now at: http://joomlaworks.googlecode.com/files/K2-2.0.0_PRERELEASE_j15_UNZIP_FIRST.zip

K2 has been re-written from scratch and it's now PHP 4 and 5 compatible, fully translatable via Joom!Fish, includes its own K2 plugin system to further extend the extra field features, user ACL, simple com_content import tool and a lot more.

VERSION 2 FEATURES

nested-level categories (no section/categories problems here!) comments with ReCaptcha anti-spam integration tags item image (useful for articles/catalogs) created in 6 different width values so you can have leading, primary, secondary and link items, modules and articles all using a different image width, thus truly flexible for modern news portals and more improved support for image galleries and videos attachments with download tracking user profile pages (fully extensible) user groups with specific access to specific categories of content - ACL features all the way for true multi-author environments. You can even create a default user group and have all new users added into this group upon their registration. refined extra fields UI, now it's easier to understand what you need to input when creating such extra (custom) fields to extend the item form. Ajax-based frontend editing Module acting as "user toobar" (mod_k2_login) - user sees related info about their account and depending on ACL permissions, links to add/edit content Everything is fully translatable with Joom!Fish (content elements will ship with the proper release for v2 in a few days). The same module includes a user login form so you can fully replace Joomla! login module. Module for comments can fetch the latest X comments from all or specified categories, with many layout options included as standard Module for comments can fetch the top commenters in your site Module for content can now fetch the X items from all or specified categories, with many layout options included as standard Module "tools" gathers the features you will mostly set only once in your site like a K2 breadcrumbs bar, archive list by months, category list (a la menu), category drop-down, blog-style calendar, tag cloud... Most can have their output filtered per all or specified categories 2 plugins enable the underlying syncing of K2 with Joomla's users, plus they extend the user registration/edit forms of Joomla! to add the profile fields for each user as supported by K2 Search plugin for K2 included so you can have Joomla! searching in K2 as well Joom!Fish plugin to work magic on translating extra fields without any modifications to Joom!Fish!
K2 v2 is based on thousands of code lines and almost a year into development.

WHAT NEXT?

A proper release is scheduled in the coming days and it will additionally include:
sample data for K2 showcasing all features completed CSS stylings one installer for everything (component will install along with 4 modules and 4 plugins) slightly improved migrator an example K2 plugin so that developers can see the potential in using the K2 plugin system to extend the item, category and user forms.
We encourage you to try out this pre-release as it's fully functional and wait a few days until the proper v2.0.0 release is available.

We will be working hard with the devoted people on the newly formed K2 team to deliver high quality documentation very soon.

More soon ;)

Anthony at JoomlaBamboo has done it again! Elevate2, the JoomlaBamboo June 2009 template release, features a lovely minimalistic design aimed for creative people. It's also an ideal template for blogging and we're happy that Anthony has chosen SuperBlogger for that!

I quote an excerpt from the official release at JoomlaBamboo:
"Following our popular Elevate template comes Elevate2. Artists, healers, alternative service providers (in fact, anyone seeking a simple, uncluttered interface) will be drawn to this beautiful template.

Elevate2 is a tableless Joomla 1.5 template that makes it easy to manage, grow and internationalise your shop, blog, portal or gallery. It comes with a custom template for the amazing new blogging plugin by JoomlaWorks called SuperBlogger, a reworked version of our jTweet module and two new modules. The prettySlider gallery module will have your images sliding and fading in no time, while the captifyContent module will display site sections and categories like nothing before.

Subtle, smoky backgrounds and hinted borders unite with 46(!) module positions to create a serene yet powerful package to delight your target audience."

Visit the Elevate2 demo site.

RocketTheme have just launched their June 09 template, called Refraction, the first "SuperBlogger enhanced" template for Joomla! 1.5!

Refraction is a template to inspire and amaze. Utilising transparent overlays over professional and artistic background images produces staggering results, all matched with the perfect colour combination. Its easy to radically change the design with just an image and colour.

See a demo of Refraction using SuperBlogger here!

Kudos to Andy and his team!

We're happy to announce our newest baby, SuperBlogger!

SuperBlogger is a powerful plugin adding blogging functionality to Joomla! 1.5 articles. The plugin integrates popular services like Disqus.com (for comments) and Twitter, along with commonly used blogging tools like tagging, rating, bookmarking and social media sharing. Add to that MVC template overrides and the ability to process images server-side and and you got a real Wordpress contender, if not better in some areas!

SuperBlogger's features can easily be set in the plugin's parameters, so you can choose which elements you want to make use of in your Joomla! website.

Learn more about SuperBlogger!

I'm happy to be presenting K2 at the coming Joomla!Days in the Netherlands (Nieuwegein, 12th & 13th of June, 2009).

The presentation will feature the new stable release of K2 (v1.1), for which we have been working around 9 months to deliver.

Aside K2, I will be giving a presentation for building high performance Joomla! websites. I quote the Joomla!Days.nl website:

"Prepare your Joomla! website for prime time! Learn the how's and why's of developing and deploying a Joomla! website ready for high user traffic. From optimizing your template development and server-side coding to hosting the website yourself and more. The presentation will feature live case-studies for two of the highest traffic Joomla! websites ever built."

I'll be joining many other experts at Nieuwegein, like Arno Zijlstra, Brian Teeman, Johan Janssens, Mathias Verraes and Wilco Jansen.

Learn more about Joomla!Days NL at www.joomladays.nl - the entire list of speakers is available here.

See the video trailer below...