Last year I wrote about how I'd been somewhat of a recluse when it came to getting out of the office and going to meet other Joomla folk at Joomladays or user groups, but since last year's Joomladay Sydney, that's changed a lot.

It was great to meet folks in real life that I'd only ever skyped or tweeted with and so I am very much looking forward to meeting them and also some new folks in a couple of weeks for Joomladay Sydney, on October 19th to 20th.

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Zen Grid Bridge based theme, there was one part of the process that I had a tiny blindspot with - Bootstrap.

The truth is that one of the biggest issues with porting old themes to Joomla 3 is bootstrap. I know there are some Joomla 3 templates that are completely bootstrap-less but that seems like a mis-step given that Joomla is built on a bootstrap foundation.

So after a fair amount of discussion ... I am happy to say that the Joomla 3 version of Corporate and Ascent are now bootstrap compatible.

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Updating your own website when you are a developer is akin to a plumber fixing a leaking tap - it never gets done. Well that's a broad generalisation but you get what I mean.

I've wanted to update the Joomlabamboo network of sites to Joomla 2.5 and then Joomla 3 for a very long time and I am happy to say that this blog is now running on Joomla 3.

Moving to J3 was literally done over the weekend just gone (fun times!) and would have been much faster had I not entertained the idea of a redesign as well. There are a few design tweaks here and there but compared with the ideas I had floating around during the migration process this is much more a realignment than a redesign.

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Each month I run a check through our download statistics to see which version of our joomla templates is getting downloaded the most. Interestingly our Joomla3 downloads have been consistently more popular than the Joomla 2.5 versions of the same themes. In fact Joomla 3 versions of our templates have been anywhere from 10% to 45% more popular than their Joomla 2.5 counterparts.

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T3-framework.org

As a step towards making the T3 framework a non-club specific Joomla template framework the T3 framework has been moved to it's very own domain.

The T3 Framework site will under go a bit of transformation in the next few months as we start to flesh out new documentation for site builders and developers, and start to share what is possible with this framework.

Moving towards an independent framework.

New name spaces.

The Joomlart team have also been working over time in making T3 a truly independant project and so in the next major release - v1.1 - all previously namespaced markup using the Ja- prefix will be removed.

A new Git Hub repo

All of the code for T3 can be found at the main T3 git repo over at Git Hub. If you spot a bug or have an idea for an improvement feel free to post an issue or if you have a fix submit a pull request. You can grab the latest packages for T3 via the tags page where currently the t3 v1.1 RC is available - replete with the awesome Mega Menu.

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In the post I was a little cheeky and said that I only had a ticket to give away but as it turns out I have three.

So thanks to all who responded on the blog post and via twitter ( and no an air fare doesn't come with the ticket :)) but we have three winners ...

Drum roll please ...

So a big congratulations to Rowan, Jinx (I'll see if I can find another one for you too) and Gidge.

Please get in touch with me via our contact form and I'll let you know what you need to do to grab the ticket. Looking forward to meeting you all soon.

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As a special offer to all members of the Melbourne Joomla Group (and their friends), the MJUG organising committee have just announced a special discount off the price of tickets for the Melbourne joomladay. Use the coupon code MJUG2013 when you book your conference tickets at http://melbourne.jooml…

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Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night ...

Some time ago I wrote about the end of life for our Joomla 1.5 range of products and sadly that time has come.

I actually feel quite emotional about letting Joomla 1.5 go, but I think this is only natural given that we have worked so closely with this codebase for the majority of the Joomlabamboo lifetime.

Sure Joomla has moved on since Joomla 1.5 was released in 2008 - transformed, evolved and improved - but Joomla 1.5 really has been like an old friend. It wasn't perfect but we knew it's secrets and we could easily forgive it's shortcomings.

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I wrote a little of my experience after we moved to SiteGround a while back and you can also check out our five reasons to choose SiteGround for your Joomla hosting as a littl background on why we choose SiteGround for our hosting needs.

Best of luck with the competition :)

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I'm quite excited about this event given that I'll get the chance to meet Brian Teeman and Peter van Westen in the flesh.

Skype is certainly a great tool for building friendship with people in distant parts of the world, but nothing beats sitting down and sharing a quiet brew or two, to really get to know someone - especially if that's on a ridiculously hot Melbourne January day.

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Even though I've been running an online business for almost five years now, I'm kind of new to the idea of Cyber Monday.

So it's kind of exciting to see the awesome number of deals available and not just only for Joomla users. Here are a collection of deals available from us, our friends and some of my favourite purveyors of online goods.

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On the weekend I was fortunate enough to attend the Sydney Joomla day. This was actually was the first day long Joomla event I've attended and it was from my perspective a hands down success. It's great to meet folk that I've only ever spoken to via twitter and to spend more time with some of the local Melbourne Joomla crew too.

Joomla is about people.

I've heard people say this before and I must admit, it always sounded like hyperbole. However this Joomla day really helped me to see that Joomla at it's core is about people.

Even though I communicate (via keyboard) every day with people on our forum, via email, skype and twitter, nothing beats talking face to face with other Joomla users and in particular users of your own product.

When you are knee deep in code or design, it's easy to forget that the end user is a complex human being with a myriad of intellectual and emotional processes that drive their experience. Sure enough some of that emotional complexity comes through in (some) users' forum posts or emails, but on the whole, we miss the majority of the non-verbal communication that happens when typing is the medium of communication.

Meeting face to face with users is key to understanding the impact that your product has on your users and really helps to place that work in a real world context. And I must say that I am genuinely humbled by the feedback I get from our users and love seeing how they put what we build into practice.

I was also completely chuffed to hear Andrew Eddie say that our templates "put him in touch with his inner Joomla." That sort of off the cuff and in the moment comment is priceless.

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