I cant count the number of times a design has changed in the week before a Joomla template release here at joomla Bamboo. It's almost like a part of my creative process, that the design doesn't really bed itself down until we start doing the coding.

As a short note that's pretty much what happened late last week for the impending Shop Front template release using the new Tienda component from Dioscouri. It means that the template will be delayed a few days but I think the wait is going to be worth it.

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Im happy to announce that our very popular Avanti template is now Zen Grid Framework compatible. We released Avanti back in January 2010 and since its been a most popular template by far we thought we would bump it to the top of the queue for the first of the recent templates to get ported to the new framework. If you are new to the Zen Grid framework you can read more about it here, or check out the knowledgebase here and of course view the Avanti template in all its glory via our template showcase.

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It's been some time since we released a Joomla template specifically focussed around a shop / ecommerce solution but with the release of Tienda from the fine folk over at Dioscouri design we thought it was about time. Im really excited by the possibilities of creating a solid, easily managed and themeable shop component and our early exploration of the Tienda code appears to suggest that Tienda is certainly going to tick all of the boxes when it comes to Joomla commerce.

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In the last week or two the Bamboo team have made a gigantic leap into the future by shifting to using a subversion repository for all of our template and extension development. And while I can hear some of you saying "well what took you so long" it is an idea that I've toyed with over the last few years but it always felt like overkill. Ive always viewed subversion as a tool for large teams and given that up until the start of last year it was really just me working on the code I didn't think it had any relevance to my workflow. In hindsight however I think I would have made the switch to using a subversion repository long ago.

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There are a few more columns that I will be putting into play in the table but for the time being its ready to be used as a reference for both our club templates as well as our free and club Joomla extensions.

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Next template to get ported will be Avanti followed quickly by Pixel Eight. The new version of Simple Shop is now available in the club member download area and requires the Zen Grid framework to be installed.

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With the release of Folio Life and the Zen Grid framework yesterday Im happy to announce the release of two starter themes that act as blank default templates for the Zen Grid Framework. We will be following today's post with some tips and tutorials on how to go about editing them and making your own Zen Grid compatible Joomla template but for now I just wanted to let club members that they are ready to be downloaded.

These themes are very minimal and not really finished but are good skeleton templates or starting points for working with the framework. there are a number of other simple but more fleshed out themes in the works so stay tuned for them.

Logged in members can find them in the Zen Grid Framework download area.

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Im very happy to announce the immediate availability of our April Joomla template called Folio Life as well as the first release of our Zen Grid framework. (The quickstart will follow shortly). The new framework is a complete revisioning of the Joomla template admin and provides a slick UI in which to control the features that we crammed into it. Please make sure you read the KB before diving in so you can get a better understanding of what;s involved and also check out the key features below.

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Over the last month subscribers to the Joomla Blogger newsletter have had the opportunity to get 10% off all of our subscriptions. That coupon is due to run out on the 31st March so I thought I would make that publicly available to the readers of the blog. To claim your discount simply use the coupon "jblogger6454" on the subscription page to get 10% off your new or renewed subscription.

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Over the last fortnight we have been furiously recreating our Zen Grid Joomla template framework, adding some great new features as well as completely re-engineering the template backend. Ive attached some screenshots of the template administrator and will post some more about the new features in the next day or so, but for today I wanted to highlight the changes to the admin UI.

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It's been a couple of weeks since my last post and I thought I'd climb back into the blogging chair and give you all a sneak peak at the Joomla template that is coming in April. I have been playing with the second installment of the ever popular Grid template but it's not quite ready to go into production yet. So in the meantime we have started development of a grungy magazine style template that is tentatively called Folio Life. Check out the screenshot below.

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Ive just finished doing a handover on an old site I developed for someone a few years ago and had to start at the very start. Well not quite the turn the computer on kind of start but close enough. It got me thinking to what are the first five things you talk to a new Joomla user about? How do you break the ice for people that are completely new to the CMS concept or even just completely new to editing websites via a browser and not frontpage, dreamweaver or some other old school technology?

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