Deciding on the final design for a Joomla template can sometimes be a challenge.

I can think of more than a handful of designs that had two, three or even four potentially "final" iterations, that would have made great templates but may never make the leap from PSD to Joomla template to your Joomla website.

There are a lot of factors that we take into consideration when deciding the type of template to release and I often hold back on releasing a design that is similar to a recent theme in the interest of keeping our catalogue fresh and diverse.

A sneak peek at the Corporate Lifestyle template.

In light of this, I'd like to give you a quick peek at the the Corporate Lifestyle template which will be available by the end of April.

This design has it's roots in the Lifestyle template from back in January and as you can see from the screenshot below it has a few things in common with the original - a large background slideshow, a black and bold navigation strip, subtle transparency shadow type effects on the navigation etc.

Whereas Lifestyle focussed on an arts / creative / business type websites, Corporate Lifestyle will focus squarely on users that need a striking business Joomla template, with a strong focus on typography, white space and of course that stunning full width slideshow.

Development for the theme is really starting to take shape now and I'm confident that it will be available for you to play with by the end of the month.

You can check the screenshot after the jump.

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Vintage is our new tumblr inspired Joomla template that features multiple colour schemes a simple tagging system for your content and an elegantly executed responsive design.

Vintage is aimed at those users that want a simple blog style template to showcase their ideas, thoughts and inspiration. Consider it your online Joomla notebook - ready to record your every thought.

Some links ...

Before we get started here are some crucial links for you to check out the Vintage template.

Live Demo | Features | Documentation | Downloads

Don't worry - it's flexible ...

The Vintage demo site shows a simple one column layout with site links, search and other modules you would normally see in the side bar, hidden in the hidden panel . But if that isn't quite your cup of tea, since this theme is built on the flexible zen grid framework you can have a more traditional two, three or four column layout.

A tonne of colour themes and variations under the bonnet ...

Vintage comes with some flexible options including 5 background variations, eight Colour highlights and eight different tag Colour schemes. The tags are automatically populated in the k2 Joomla template and you can also use them across module classes on the page. There are ten different tag module classes available. The images are delivered on the page using a sprite which means you can load as many of the Mage based module classes n the page without worrying about excess htt requests or an increased page weight.

{loadposition vintage}

Did I mention it's responsive?

Vintage is our seventh responsive Joomla Template and as you can see in the images below, it morphs and changes according to the width of the browser that you are viewing it in.

We like this approach to creating mobile ready Joomla templates because it means your site has an elegantly executed mobile design but you don't have to do any ectra work.

iPad Portrait

iPad Landscape

iPhone Landscape

iPhone Portrait

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Over night Jeff Channell posted some information regarding the privilege escalation vulnerability recently found in Joomla 2.5. If you haven't already updated, then it's advised that you upgrade to the latest version of Joomla via the Joomla update process as soon as possible.

A big thankyou ...

A big thanks goes out to Jeff for spotting and fixing this - the Joomla world is a safer place when Jeff is on the case.

How to update Joomla ...

If you are new to Joomla you can check out our doc for using the updater to update Joomla 2.5 or if you need a fresh copy of Joomla to download head on over to Joomla.org to grab a copy.

Joomlabamboo Quickstart packages updated to Joomla 2.5.3.

All of our quickstart packages for Joomla templates that are compatible with Joomla 2.5 have also been updated. In addition to this I have spent some time in our download area over the last few days and caught up on culling the old unsupported joomla packages and relabelling the packages where necessary.

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Yesterday I announced v2.2.0 of the Zen Grid Framework and the addition of a new option for treating your navigations on small screens. Another new feature added to the framework in this release (and most of the framework v2 Joomla templates) is the sticky nav.

A sticky nav?

You have probably seen this effect before and in fact it's something we implemented on both the Colourshift and the Lifestyle Joomla templates. The effect basically makes the menu "stick" to the top of the browser window after the user as scrolled down a nominated distance from the top of the page.

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One of the key features of the version 2 of the Zen Grid Joomla Template Framework is it's responsive / mobile friendly functionality. Used with the Zentools module, it is a powerful tool for preparing your website across a range of screen sizes including targetting iPad and iPhone displays, without having to worry too much about creating a separate template for mobile users.

Working with menus on small screens ...

One of the challenges of responsive design is determining the best method for treating navigation on small screens. As with most things it seems that there is not one definitive solution (well not yet anyway) and that different approaches may be required for different contexts.

I think Brad Frost's synopsis on responsive design patterns is the most thorough overview of the available solutions to date and after reading that post it became clear that we needed to add a new option to the mobile menu option in the framework.

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I often feel like I am part of some bizarre templating monarchical system where as soon as I release one template I immediately announce it's successor ... And so it is today after the release of the Epicure Joomla template yesterday I'm announcing (well just giving you a sneak peek) at the March template release called Vintage.

It is another David Vuu gem and as you can see from his dribbble shots it's a regal looking tumblr/polaroid/vintagey kind of design that we are aiming fairly and squarely at the Joomla blogging community. I'll post some more screenshots as we work through the build and flesh out the colour schemes but for now check out the Full screen and internal screenshots of the initial mock up.

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I'm happy to announce the availability of our latest responsive Joomla template. Epicure is an elegant template with subtle textures, refined typography and a stunning responsive slideshow.

You can see the Epicure demo, read about it's features, check out the extensive documentation or go straight to the download area to grab yourself a copy. Epicure is available as a combined download for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5 and also comes with Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5 quickstart packages.

Six responsive Joomla templates and counting.

We are committed to creating cutting edge (nice alliteration!) responsive designs for Joomla and it is my hope that in the next few weeks we should have a few of our older themes ported across to version 2 of the Zen Grid Framework and also sporting marvellous mediaqueries that make for mobile friendly (couldn't help myself) Joomla templates.

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Earlier this week I released the Lifestyle Joomla template - a new responsive Joomla template. If you haven't seen the demo yet be sure to check it out, and if you want to find out more you can read the feature overview and documentation page.

If your subscription ran out in between January 1st and 8th February then you are entitled to get a copy of this template. Please contact us and we will let you know how you can get access to the file.

An inspiring Joomla template for February

We are gradually clawing our way back to having more timely Joomla template releases and it's my hope that the next template called Inspiration will be released in February. You can see some screenshots of Inspiration that I dribbbled earlier today below and it is shaping up to be quite a striking and versatile theme. Looking forward to showing you more.

Active slideshow thumbnail

Some subtle 3D aspects ...

Bottom of the slideshow ...

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Colour Shift is a clean, crisp and colourful Joomla template that uses media queries to deliver a responsive design that scales to suit your visitor's screen size. Colour Shift joins our growing catalogue of other Responsive Joomla templates (Platform and Responsive).

Crucial info ...

If you haven't seen it yet you can see it in on the live demo. Otherwise you can see a list of the features, read through the documentation or download the template now.

We were late again ...

You may have also noticed that this is slightly late (well quite a bit late), so in keeping with our policy of supplying you with any joomla templates that you were entitled to during the term of your subscription but were not released during your subscription, if your subscription ran out between the 1st December and the 14th January then please drop us a line via the contact form and we will supply you with the Colour Shift files.

January Joomla Template

Work is well underway for the January Joomla template and we are aiming at releasing it by the end of this month. The next design is another stunning offering from David Vuu that I'm sure you will agree is simply beautiful. You can see a full screenshot on David's Dribble profile.

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To end the year off on a bright note the December Joomla template release is going to be a very colourful number. The Colour Shift theme - or Shift as a working title - has been on the drawing board since September 2010.

It's one of those designs that I have toyed with off on and on over the last 12 or so months - just waiting and hoping something might come of it. Thankfully though I managed to find some time recently to refine it and the screenshots below show the end result.

We are aiming to get this one out the door by December 31st so please keep an eye out during the end of year break (if you are taking one) for the release.

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Well after a considerable delay, I'm very happy to announce the availability of the November template.

But it's December?

I described in the Bamboo state of the union post some of the reasons for the delay in the release of this theme and I hope to be able to elaborate some more next week once we clear the decks of some other outstanding things on the todo list.

Subscription expired in between now and November 1st?

If your subscription expired in between the 1st of November and the 22nd December then you are entitled to a copy of this template. Please make contact with us via the contact form and we will give you the files for this Joomla template.

Download, documentation and demo

In the meantime if you are a member already go on over and download Platform. And if you haven't seen it yet - check out the Platform demo site. For the run down on how to use Platform please ensure you read the Platform documentation.

Overview

Platform is a responsive Joomla template that features the new zentools module, that in the case that you missed the announcement, is a mult-tasking responsive module for for Joomla that is capable of creating some simply amazing galleries, slider, carousels, slideshows and more.

Screenshots

You can see a selection of screenshots below that highlight the way that this theme will morph / respond to your screensize.

{loadposition platform}

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I've just released a raft of updates for our template Framework and some of our popular Joomla Extensions. Please note that information related to potential security vulnerabilities on some of our extensions is below.

An update to the Zen Grid Framework

The framework release fixes a number of issues that have popped up since the release of our Responsive Joomla template a few weeks ago. You can read the full run down of the changes in the Zen Grid Framework 2 changelog.

JCE JB Type Plugin available for JCE v2

Last night I also released the JCE JB Type plugin v2.0 (compatible with JCE v2.x) that puts the ease of our typography plugin right inside the JCE Joomla content editor. I want to send a very special thanks to Ryan Demmer for putting this JCE plugin together for us.

Unified Extensions

The JB Type plugin, jTweet and jFlickr modules have also had small although significant updates. They are all now available as a unified package which means you know longer have to worry about which version of the extension to download. The packages will install on Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7.

Security releases

A few days ago I notified the VEL Team that a number of our extensions had potential security issues. The issues related to missing no direct acces statements that could in some server configurations lead to a full server path disclosure. All users of the following modules are advised to update to the latest version in order to cover any potential issues: JB Slideshow3, CaptifyContent, Microblog and Bamboo Box.

This vulnerability is only evident on servers that have display_errors set to on and when a user attempts to access one of the admin interface elements directly. If in doubt then please ensure that you update to the latets version.

If you are a user of Slideshow, Microblog or Bamboo Box and your subscription has run out then please contact me via the contact form and I will send you a copy of the lkatets version with the fixes.

Users of the captifyContent module can download the latest version for free form the captifyContent download page.

Details

• Captify Content - All versions prior to v1.0.1 of the unified package.
• Microblog - Joomla 1.7 only. Versions prior to v1.10.3
• JB Slideshow - Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7 versions prior to v3.5.1
• Bamboo Box - J1.5 all versions prior to 1.2.2

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