Ive spoken in the past about the power of twitter for helping to connect members of the Joomla community and today's post is a guest posting from K2Joom's Simon Wells - someone I met on Twitter. Simon is what's probably best described as a Joomla and K2 fanatic and so it's no wonder that he created his K2Joom site to showcase the power of K2 as a content construction component for Joomla. I recently asked him to list his ten favourite things about K2 (via twitter) and here is his response.

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Since I started putting more life into the Joomlabamboo blog I have gained a new admiration for all of the amazing Joomla blogs that Ive followed over the last few years. There are a wealth of blogs out there that talk about Joomla and sometimes its hard to know which ones to follow. I'm a bit lazy with my RSS reader and tend not to check them as often as perhaps I should, as I tend to read blogs when I feel like it, or I have time or at least when I see it tweeted and need a distraction from work.

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At first glance to a new user the code in a Joomla template is a little complex and perhaps even daunting. This is a simple step by step aimed at explaining how easy it is to add a new module position to your Joomla template.

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Last week I posted two lists regarding our Joomla template workflow and our template toolkit as well as our top choices for Joomla extensions. Today I thought I would highlight the apps we use to get things done within the JB Team. The workflow involved in running an online business and co-ordinating even a small team of people can get a little tedious and perhaps even tiresome if you dont have the right processes in place and while our system isnt yet perfect this list is an idea of whats working for us now.

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At the start of this week I posted a list of applications I use almost religiously for my Joomla template development. During a recent skype chat with Jeremy Wilken aka @gnomeontherun he told me that he was writing his own response to my question and would soon be delivering his killer Joomla template bag of tricks using only PC based tools. Well its online now and if you are a PC user - or just interested - I highly recommend you check out his application suggestions.

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A common question we get on the Joomlabamboo forum is how to update my Joomla extensions without losing all of their settings. Some smart extension developers actually use the inbuilt Joomla method which allows an extension to install on top of the existing files on the site. The method is a simple change to the extension's xml file which adds the syntax method="upgrade" to the install declaration in the module xml file.

We are in the process of updating all of our Joomla modules and plugins to use this method but for the time being the following step by step will explain how to update Joomla modules and plugins via ftp.

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The other day I posted some screenshots for our March Joomla Template, tentatively called Pixel8. Today Im going to give you a sneak peak of the K2 template that we are going to ship with the template.

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Yesterday I posted about my Joomla template toolkit and so I thought I would put together a list of Joomla extensions that I think are essential to developing a Joomla site. I know there have been plenty of posts like this made in the past and I always enjoy reading other people's personal favourite Joomla extensions for using when developing Joomla sites, so I thought I would add my 2 cents to the discussion.

The following is a list of components, modules and (cough) Joomla admin templates that I think are crucial for putting together a foundation for your next Joomla site. It doesnt include any specific slideshow, rotator or any other fancy content display extensions since their use varies depending on the type of site you are putting together, but moreover the extensions in the list below are used to augment the Joomla core ... in other words, I install these components before doing anything else.

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Over the last few years Ive been asked about the tools I use to create the Joomla templates here at Joomlabamboo, and the following is a small collection of apps that I use daily for all aspects of our web development. Im a huge mac fan so some of these apps are only available for mac users and Id be keen to hear from pc users what they use instead. This is by no means a definitive list of apps for web development but working with these apps is second nature now and I think Id have to come across an app that blew my mind to change up this work flow.

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I thought Id post a quick preview for the March Joomla Template codenamed Pixel Eight. It's another stunning design from David Vuu who you met back in January with Avanti and via our interview with him and I hope you like the look of it as much as we do. Development is coming along well and it features a brand new K2 theme and we are considering adding JomSocial support to it too.

Check out the screenshot below for a full preview.

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As many of you know the Avanti template was the first Joomla template that we rolled out with our new snapshot system in replace of our older quickstarts. It's been a month and while the adoption has been received generally well there have been some users that have trouble with the new system. In view of this we have released two new quickstarts for Avanti - one for a standard Joomla install and another for Joomla + k2.

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