I have just pushed through a minor update to the Zen Grid Framework for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6. The main feature is fourteen new fonts have been added to the google font list. Who would have thought that Google would have put together such a useful service?

One of the stand outs for me (as you can see above) is the Muli font. I featured it in the screenshot of the Element template posted here and over at Ember and think it's an awesomely elegant sans serif font perfect for the Element's simple block based design.

I've got a few other favourites in the collection - what are yours?

Members can download the framework updates from the Zen Grid Framework download page and check the changelog for Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6 to see what was added.

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Work is progressing nicely on our June Joomla template release and while it is still a few days off launch I thought I would take some time out from coding it to show you what we have in store. The Element template is a colourful building block type design that will feature some subtle patterns fused with bold colours to create a versatile and flexible Joomla template for you to use in pretty much any situation.

You can see the full screenshot of the work in progress after the link. At this stage I'm hoping to have the Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6 template ready for download early next week which should bring us back closer to our desired release timeline for our monthly template releases.

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As promised yesterday, here is the next Joomla template from our back catalogue to be ported to Joomla 1.6. Newstream was released back in July 2010 and is an elegant magazine or media portal that has been used by Joomlabamboo club members for sites as diverse as traditional news portals, real estate sites, travel directory and even a food website.

You can check out the original demo of the Newstream template on our template showcase or club members can head straight to the download area and grab a copy.

Please note that two extensions featured on the demo - CaptifyContent and the JB BB Code plugin (For the twoline menu items) are yet to be ported to 1.6 but we hope they will be available in the next few days.

As a reminder you can check the status of any template by checking out the Version information page on the Joomlabamboo Knowledgebase and also follow JB Activity on twitter to keep apprised of all Joomla template and extension releases.

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While we wait for the Tienda ecommerce extension to make the leap to Joomla 1.6 I thought I would knock out a Joomla 1.6 port of the Simpleshop Joomla template. Even without the Tienda or K2 overrides it's an elegant and minimal Joomla template and may make a nice simple base to build your next Joomla 1.6 project on.

Club members can download the template from here or if you need a refresh of what Simpleshop looks like check out the Simpleshop demo.

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After finally getting our May Joomla template out the door last week, it's time for us to put our heads down and start focussing more on porting some of the Joomla templates from our back catalogue across to Joomla 1.6.

By far one of our most popular themes over the years has been Avanti and so I am very happy to announce that it is now available as a Joomla 1.6 Template and quickstart package.

The next templates to be ported across to Joomla 1.6 will be Simple Shop - without Tienda and Virtuemart support, Ecolift, Newstream, Cultivate and Powerplay. Eventually all of our Zen Grid framework based templates will make the leap so if the theme you need ported isn't on the list hold tight - or bug us in the comments to move your template up the list.

For now club members can download the Avanti files from the Avanti download page.

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I know I only just posted the notice regarding the availability of the Joomla 1.5 version of the Hub Joomla template but I'm happy to announce that the Joomla 1.6 version of the template and the quickstart are available now also.

Members can download both packages from the Hub download page.

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I had hoped to start this blog post with the news of the release of version2 of the Zen Grid Framework but alas that is not the case. Yesterday I released the Joomla 1.5 version of the Hub Joomla template (Joomla 1.6 version coming later today) which as you can see is a striking magazine styled template that comes with some beautiful large date formatting in the Joomla content as well as the k2 Joomla template that ships with the template.

Before I go on - you can check Hub's features, live preview, documentation or download options in the usual spots.

So why did we release the May template in June?

For those that don't know we follow a schedule of monthly Joomla template releases, that usually means we release a template within the month that the template is designed for. Hub is the first template that missed the targeted release month.

There are a few reasons why this happened but the main reason was that we were slightly over ambitious in what we wanted to do with the next incarnation of the Zen Grid Framework - our Joomla template framework. So it got to the point a few days ago, where we realised that while we had a killer Beta of version 2, it wasn't really stable enough for production. This lead us to the big decision to keep working on v2 and release Hub on v1.1 of the framework.

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This is just a quick note to let you know that the Joomla 1.6 template version of our April release - Pure is now available. Club members can download Pure from the Pure download page and if you haven't checked Pure out yet you can see it in action on the Joomlabamboo site showcase.

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The new fonts are: Swanky and Moo Moo, Over the Rainbow, Wallpoet, Damion Aclonica, News Cycle. Google has yet again bundled some quality fonts into the font directory. Members can grab the new version of the framework from the Zen Grid Framework download page.

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I'm very happy to announce the availability of the Joomla 1.6 version of our Joomla template framework - the Zen Grid Framework - and the Zen Default Starter Joomla template.

The Zen Default template is the starting point for our monthly template releases and is ideal for developers and designers who want to get a feel for how the framework operates and start working with a bare bones theme. A quickstart package will be available tomorrow and I will also put up the demo of the Zen Default once that has been finalised as well.

I'm hoping in the next few weeks to flesh out the starter theme catalogue some more with some blank-ish themes that are geared towards a blog, news portal, business, magazine and perhaps even a shop design - but I'll post some more on that later.

To download the framework or the starter theme club members can head on over to the Zen Grid Framework download page and start playing with the latest incarnation of the framework.

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Our Joomla template framework - the Zen Grid Framework - has just been updated to v1.1.15. This is a minor update but will probably quite useful to most people using the framework as we have now added all remaining fonts from the Google font library.

I was a little skeptical of how useful this service was going to be in the beginning, as the first fonts on offer were OK but really didn't warrant the extra work or overhead involved in implementing the font into your site. However the directory has of course grown and there are some quality fonts available now so I thought I would update all of the fonts for this release and also group the fonts into their respective categories.

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I'm happy to announce the availability of our Joomla template release for April. Pure is a simple, clean cut web design that is ideal for business but is flexible enough to cater to a lot of different uses. It comes with a K2 Joomla template, a multitude of bold colour options and is of course built on our flexible Joomla template framework - the Zen Grid Framework.

To find out more about the Pure Joomla template you can view the feature overview, cut straight to the demo, read the docs or if you are already a member head straight to the download area, or if you want to become a member you can sign up here.

Another small update on Joomla 1.6 compatibility.

We will have a Joomla 1.6 version of Pure available early next week and hope to knock off quite a few more of the recent template releases by next Friday. It's certainly been an interesting journey (and certainly much longer than anticipated) for us in terms of porting the Zen Grid Framework and our extensions across to 1.6 but my hope is that most of the work will be behind us and we can start releasing parrallel releases for both Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6 for the next template.

Don't forget that you can follow the JB Activity stream on twitter to keep up to date with releases, updates and anything else that relates to life at Joomlabamboo HQ.

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