After a year of planning and a few months of coding, we're ready to show you what Nexus
will look like and why I belleve it's going to change your mind about Joomla and the learning
curve of site creation and maintenance but don't just read what I'm telling you, watch the video
for yourself!

Hi everyone, welcome to Node-0!

We're hard at work buiding J! Edify, and bringing it to you in late January.

Here is a video of a prototype in action:



Then there is the matter of Nexus, which is actually much more exciting than J! Edify. You can read more about it here.

Wow! 2010 has been one action packed ride! It feels more like 3 years than 1! Yet it was 12 months ago that I set out to teach people how to use Joomla, thinking that solid education-oriented help from the host-level was all that was needed to increase the
adoption of this world class yet still hard to use, website platform. Boy was I wrong! Joomla didn't need a training package, it needed help and fast! Now remember, there are plenty of other CMS's for a startup web host to embrace, why not just pick one of them, why go through the trouble of upgrading Joomla!?. The answer is potential, Joomla has potential that simply doesn't exist on any other CMS save Wordpress, and as easy as WP is to use, there are core technological problems with it that Joomla! does not suffer from.   Joomla! needed a facelift, and it needed to go back to school to learn social skills, in practical terms that means some serious interactivity upgrades. The problem with making those upgrades happen was that nobody seemed to be concerned about the state of Joomla! (in terms of interactivity) at the start of 2010, nobody except the users, who were largely left to fend for themselves. R&D wasn't happenning and there simply wasn't the public-support for maintenence, neither by donations nor by pitching into the project. Things have changed a bit in the ensuing 10 months since then, we've gotten a shiny new ACL (Thank you Joomla! project!). However, to make Joomla! a force of nature on the web (and why not?), we're going to need some serious advances, just like the re-invention of Firefox from 3 to 4, big changes are coming in 2011 for Joomla!

In February of 2010, I decided to use a hosting platform to perform and fund R&D into an accelerated evolution of Joomla! A hosting platform is the perfect place to have the necessary control of the server side environment, and is the only viable way to be forced close to the users of the platform (something which doesn't always happen with open source developers). My reasoning was that to know what to improve and to be constantly motivated by my users, I needed to be on the front lines all day every day, far beyond what a web designer or backend admin endures after project delivery. Remember, once the project has been delivered, the web designer is free to collect payment and hit the road (usually to the nearest pub to drown thier frustrations), and back-end admins can work sporadically, then drift off for long periods to forget about their disappointing experiences with a customer's demands, lack of development budget, and Joomla's powerful but relatively un-interactive backend systems. It became clear that the only way to move Joomla forward at the speed of business, was to handcuff myself to the customer, to be rendered responsible for the uncomfortable things like training and constant support, providing service at rates that would make any web-project based business owner order another round of drinks.

In order to change Joomla from a "techie friendly" platform to an "unskilled-user or layperson-friendly" one would require constant attention, I'm pleased to announce, that coming up in January, Node-0 has some really exciting news. Things will be changing in Joomla-land, and if you pitch in to help us, the process of creating a website untethered to proprietary shackles like Flash i.e. www.wix.com or vendor lock in like Squarespace will become something not only easy, but fun!  This then is the mission of Node-0 for 2011, to make building a Joomla! website and filling it with your content, not only easy, but a fun experience.

How will we do it?

Who is going to pay for the programmer hours?

Perhaps most importantly, how can a commericial
entity be a responsible open source steward?

In general, my answer is via:

• The introduction of a new "measured commercial to GPL" software approach
• The introduction of 'J! Edify' (The first contextually aware & graphic reference system for Joomla)
• The announcement of the Nexus component suite for Joomla 1.6

What is J-Edify?

J-Edify, is a re-imagining of the documentation system for not only Joomla, but potentially ANY extension which lives in Joomla.
It is a useful and powerful way to catalyze the rapid education of the Joomla user-base. It will accomplish more than this of course.

So stay tuned to www.node-0.com, www.Joomla-ology.com and the Los Angeles Joomla Meetup for our upcoming January announcements.

Happy Holidays!