The Joomla Project is proud to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6 beta 2 (download). IMPORTANT NOTE: This is a beta version and is not intended to run any type of production site. It is intended to be used for evaluation purposes only.

Since the Joomla 1.6 beta 1 we have fixed approximately 140 issues. Much of this progress is directly related to the stepped up efforts of the Joomla! Bug Squad. Thanks for all your hard work in bringing us one increment closer to stable!

Read more about Joomla 1.6 Beta 2 release here.

Yo-ho-ho, guys! Yup dreams come true and today we are so glad to surprise you with this amazing and outstanding event – Release of the Free 7-in-1 Joomla Template from TemplateMonster. To cut a long story short – this template contains customized design themes for all major holidays (including Christmas, St. Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s, 4th of July, Halloween and Thanksgiving). PSD files for all customizations are also included. So this basically means you get 7 Joomla templates in 1 pack – all for free!

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Default Theme

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Christmas theme

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Halloween Theme

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4th of July

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St. Patrick’s

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St. Valentine’s

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Thanksgiving Theme

Feel free to download this free Joomla template and apply it to your website.

Recently, Open Source Matters received an unsolicited proposal for the management of http://demo.joomla.org. After consideration and consultation with the Community Oversight Committee, the OSM board the Community Oversight Committee determined that, in the interest of fairness, others should also be invited to submit proposals.

Open Source Matters is requesting proposals for the management of the Joomla! demo site (http://demo.joomla.org). The existing Joomla!® demo site has been highly successful, with an average of 25,000 registrations monthly. OSM reasonably expects the number of registrations to increase with more prominent displays of the links to the site on the joomla.org family of websites. The joomla.org sites now receive approximately 5 million visits per month.

This is an open and competitive process. Responses to this RFP (“proposals”) received after December 9, 2009 will not be considered.

Well it is not a secret that Joomla is very user-friendly and flexible software. It is hard to surprise you with the fact that Joomla can contain Flash elements. The point is that you can do that by yourself or just buy some of our awesome Joomla 1.5 templates. Of course if you think that you can handle this situation we have some advices for you.

Well there are two ways that might help you to implement Flash environment to your Joomla website. First create your Flash animations in Anim-FX, and make sure the *.swf and *.txt files are in the base html directory. Do not make the mistake of uploading them into the images or images/flash directory. Also the flash does not work if loaded into the template directory. Both files must be in the html directory where the index.php file is located.

Install Flash Modules available on the internet for Joomla users

There are 2 Joomla Flash Modules and they both seem to work fairly well but one seems to have some problems with the File Path Parameter.

This is also the one that runs a Java Script for the flash as an option which seems to eliminate some IE 7 anomalies when you click on the flash window. The Modules are then controlled through Joomlas Administrator window and can be assigned to different places in the website to appear and not appear as desired.The Modules can also be assigned to different locations on the page left, right, top, header, etc… More information you can find here…

Are you ready to enjoy original Joomla websites? I think you do and here is the next topic – food and beverage websites for your autumn inspiration or just for fun. We have gathered few nice websites powered by Joomla and hope that you’ll estimate our efforts. So let’s start!

Sweet Ihop’s website has very gentle and smooth background with attractive color scheme. I’m charmed with their logo – admit that this is very nice logo and of course their products are something really sweet.

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Pizza anyone? Marco’s Pizza Joomla website has quite original design with awesome header. I don’t know why they have put vineyards there but it is very creative solution. And I must say about their navigation – it is very obvious as for me.

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Metro’s Joomla is a real masterpiece with classical dark background, awesome images and of course superb colors. I must claim that I was pretty surprised because of layout – it has many original details.

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I like Sabor’s website because they have tried to create nice design with a speck of business style. I can tell you that they have reached a certain success in this. Original color solution is really worth to be seen.

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Ok, this is a Sobieski site and please note: by reading this you confirm that you are at least 18 years old and that you are aware of the drinking responsibility. As for the website I can tell you for sure that their products as so good as their design (it was not an advertisement). Background is very creative and everything is just great .

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Our last example is very sweet and it’s performed in a white clean style with sophisticated details. White background, nice images in the header and superb navigation – these are the main reason why we have placed WD chocolate in our showcase.

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So everybody love colleges and universities? Even if you haven’t any life experience with these educational organizations I’m sure that many do love to watch college comedies and laugh at those simple jokes and captions in the web. Anyway Joomla becomes integral part of many nice things and today we want to show you how Joomla conquered colleges .

Good old Oklahoma strikes us with very modern Joomla design. Our fathers – founders must be proud of OSU because they have showed their best trying to present their University online. I like that they have used dynamic gallery as a background and nice interactive elements.

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CEPSR Clean Room sounds like some secret military project in Area 51 but this is just  Columbia University’s project. I’m sure that you’ve noticed that this Joomla has really strict design. But I think that this is a best decision for such kind website. Cute background and original header are worth to put this design in our collection.

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Oh yeah, those faces in the header are the best symbol of really cool college life. As for the Howard’s (reminds Harry Potter’s school) Joomla website I can claim that they have done a really nice job. Amazing background, original logo, superb navigation – these features impress me most of all.

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Green Joomla website of Mount Carmel College of Nursing makes me wonder do they have really nurses-designers? Because their design is really elegant and remarkable though that this college hasn’t any relation to web design. Dynamic gallery in the header is one of the best details in this Joomla website.

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Clean and strict Newbold’s Joomla design is performed in a original manner because as you can see they have used simple white background and classical header.

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That’s a real college community’s website! I remember when I was in college – we can only dream about such things but now everything is possible. It is interesting that these guys have decided to make such original header – I haven’t seen before anything similar.

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Our last exhibit is a pure and clean Joomla that has constraining and sophisticated style. Basically this website is not a masterpiece of web design but it has its own charisma and I think that sometimes this is very important especially when you want to present very serious organization like UNC.

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