In addition to our avatar competition I would like to introduce the site of the year competition.

This one is pretty self explanatory and basically involves you nominating your "best" site that you developed in the last 12 months using a Joomlabamboo template.

Once again the Joomlabamboo panel will decide on the winner and we will use such varied criteria as:

• elegance of implementation
• creativity of implementation
• level of detail
• and also whim ...

The prize for this competition will be a twelve month developer subscription valued at $195 USD. To enter all you need to do is reply to this post with a link to the site and we will do the rest.

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Last year we had a little bit of end of financial year fun and gave away some free memberships to users who had the "best" avatar (as judged by our esteemed voting panel). This year I thought I would up the ante somewhat and give away developer memberships as prizes (worth $195 USD) for the best avatar.

Current, previous and free subscribers can enter the competition. You basically just need to update your profile with a new avatar of yourself that is either ...

• fun
• funny
• interesting
• strange
• or all of the above.

The avatar must also be of yourself and not one that is currently used in your profile.

Once again our panel of experts will judge the winner/s and they will be announced on the 30th June, 2011 Australian time - so make sure that you get your avatar in well before then.

If you want to enter the competition simply add a comment to this post and add your image as well as your username and we will do the rest.

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I know that the whole one page parallax design meme is getting a little old and that there are certainly some great examples of the style implemented in live websites, but I really like the implementation here by Cultural Solutions.

Apart from the subtle and yet powerful way they have implemented the parallax I love the textures and judicious use of css3. This is certainly one of my favourite designs for the year.

There is a screenshot after the jump but it doesn't really do it justice - so make sure you check out the live site as well.

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When we moved the blog into its own domain we faced a few technical issues that I had hoped that I could solve without changing comment systems - but alas it wasn't to be. So I have just rolled out a new comment system - well new to the blog anyway.

The Disqus commenting system offers a lot more functionality than is provided in the core K2 commenting system but there is one major drawback for us - and that is that we have lost all of the existing comments. We still have them in the database but its not possible (as far as I know) to port the K2 comments across to Disqus so given some of the usability issues we were seeing I think this is a necessary sacrifice for the life of the blog.

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If you missed the announcement that Joomla 1.5.23 was released today then we recommend grabbing the update from the mothership or if you have installed Admin Tools simply head on to the admin tools page in your site's admin and go through the update process from there. A few updates ago I wrote this blog post regarding the various update options for Joomla that new users may find useful. Because this is a security update we recommend all users update their Joomla 1.5 installations.

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While it might seem strange to feature a site that specialises in using Drupal on this blog, I just cant go past the way this site has been implemented. I love the textures used in this design and the way that they have implemented that css "now you see me now you don't" trick, not to mention the pure scale of the design concept - awesome work.

This is certainly one of my favourite designs from the last few months - check out the full length view after the jump or check out the Phase2 site for your self.

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I'm very happy to announce that Joomlabamboo is now an official sponsor of the Joomladay in India. The lineup of speakers looks very interesting with some International guests scattered amongst the local contingent.

There are so many events on the cards this year and it while it would be great to attend all of them this is one that I am going to unfortunately have to miss. I'm fairly envious of my European and North American colleagues who can travel almost on a whim, but any travel from "downunder" and with the added complexity of having a busy family life makes any travel a serious undertaking. I'll certainly be looking forward to any videos or live streaming of the event.

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I know everyone is using Instagram these days to post old school photos to the web but I personally prefer the Hipstamatic app. Thankfully it also hooks up with Tumblr which really is a beautiful and easy way to connect and publish content. I know that the purpose of Tumblr is a little different to Joomla but wouldn't it be amazing if controlling your Joomla site was as easy as it is in Tumblr. And of course wouldnt it also be great if you could connect and create content from other apps on your phone, desktop or mobile device.

Anyway - checkout my contribution to the growing tumblogs over at Bamboolicious or check out some of the Hipstamatic shots from the last week or so.

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Earlier this week the latest edition of the Joomla community magazine was published and along with it Kyle Ledbetter's and my personal favourite joomla templates for 2010. It was a hard task choosing 5 Joomla templates each from the last year but when I look over the list I think I would stick to the five I chose.

What I love about the Joomla template community is that the level of competition between the various template makers is always very high. The templates on the list are really great examples of design in the first place but they also represent a push in functionality that helps to keep expanding the reach of Joomla. I think this creative edge is a key factor in confirming Joomla's position as one of the best options for online content management and creating web based applications.

So if you haven't already check out the article and let us know which is your favourite joomla template released form the last 12 months.

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Last year I posted a few items about my Joomla template toolkit and other development tools I use to get things done. A few things have changed in the last six months in terms of how I go about creating and deploying templates and so I thought a few days in to the new year it might be a good time to revisit my must have apps for template development.

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One of the side projects I've been working on for the last six weeks or so is a little redesign of the Joomlabamboo site as well as a new documentation or knowledge base for our Joomla templates and Joomla extensions. I've just taken another swing through the knowledgebase and although there is still a little way to go, it's progressing quite nicely. I'm hoping that we may launch early in the new year even if it's just a soft launch while we iron out the kinks and take feedback on usability etc.

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• This means that if you are a current member and renew using the coupon
  jbrenewal + bamboochristmas you receive 36% off the renewal cost.

• Or if your membership has expired and you are a previous member you can use
  jbrenewal2 + bamboochristmas and receive a 28% discount across all subscriptions.

If your subscription is still current and not due to run out for a few months yet then renewing now simply adds the new subscription time onto your old subscription.

• If you are new to Joomlabamboo then you can use the
  bamboochristmas by itself and receive 20% off the price of all of our subscriptions.

Please note that the coupon will only be available until the 24th December, so you have a little over a week to take advantage of these savings.Also to take advantage of both coupons you need to enter the first coupon code, hit apply and then enter the second coupon code and the discount will be automatically deducted from the subscription amount.

If you happen to have subscribed in the past few days - since the 10th - please let me know and Ill extend your subscription by 20%. I always feel a little sad for people that miss out on coupons by a day or so.

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