3 December 2010

Nooku Server, Joomla on steroids

Nooku Server, Joomla on Steroids Our partners, from the first participants to latest newcomers, each have played a role in the growth of Nooku. Not only have they contributed to build our project; they embody the philosophy of Joomla and Open Source: to choose collaboration over competition, to choose innovation over commerce, and to contribute to the benefit of everyone.

Over the past 3 years the combined efforts of our partners allowed us to build innovative Open Source technology: First Nooku Content, for multilingual management, and later Nooku Framework, a new brain for Joomla. Today, together with the Belgian Police we are taking a next step.

The Belgian Police and Joomla

Belgium being the small country it is counts no less then 190 police zones. Each of those 190 police zones has it’s own website, running different (proprietary) systems. After the release of Joomla 1.5 in 2008 most zones took the plunge and migrated their sites to Joomla 1.5. At the moment 130 zones are using Joomla.

Until recently all of those installations where hosted separately on one dedicated server. To increase the usability, ease of maintenance and continued growth, the Belgian Police asked us to help them to build a multi-site platform. And off course we said yes !

Going multi-site with Joomla

Work on this platform started last April. People that attended the Joomladay 2010 in the Netherlands will remember the presentation I gave together with Marc Alen, Adjunct Secretaris, Vaste Commissie of the Local Belgium Police on the 5 year history behind the project. If you missed it and you understand Dutch you can watch the video here.

Two weeks ago I gave a presentation about the progress we made in the past 8 months at the Joomladay in Thailand and also did a small demo of the multi-site platform in action.

When we started this project we made one request : We asked the Belgian Police if we could open source the technology. The Belgian Police being big supporters of FOSS loved the idea !

At first we tried to approach the problem by implementing the multi-site through custom extensions. Very early on we figured out that this wasn’t possible. Changes to the Joomla core code where necessary to be able to make Joomla 1.5 run in a multi-site context. The good news is that we have been able to do this with almost 99% backwards compatibility.

Just this week we did the final tests. The platform is done. Technology is ready and the migration of the 130 sites to a new server is underway. It is time to give back !

Nooku Server, a multi-site distro of Joomla 1.5

Following in the footsteps of our friends of the Molajo Project we are happy to announce Nooku Server, a multi-site distribution based on Joomla 1.5. Nooku Server will be 99% compatible with all Joomla 1.5 extensions. We are also including Nooku Framework to make it easy for developers to get started building Nooku powered extensions.

The name of the Nooku game is called innovation, so we have decided to increase the minimal requirements a bit. Nooku Server will require :

  • PHP v5.2.6+ with MySQLi support
  • MySQL 5.0.4+
  • Mootools 1.2 with compatibility layer

That’s all right ? Not by far. Together with our community contributors we are working on a new administrator template and a new site template. And finaly we are also adding caching and performance improvements that are geared towards running high traffic sites. With Nooku Server you get Joomla on steroids !

For now, the Nooku Server Space on our developer portal will only be accessible to contributors. Once we have an installable package ready we will open the space for everyone. Interested in helping out don’t hesitate to send us a mail or post on our mailing list.

We will blog regulary on the progress we are making. So keep a close eye on twitter, facebook or subscribe to our RSS feed. Exciting times ahead !

Posted in Server and tagged as , ,

  • http://topsy.com/blog.nooku.org/2010/12/nooku-server-joomla-on-steroids/?utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention Nooku Server, Joomla on steroids « Nooku Blog — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by brian teeman, JoomlaWorks, Akarawuth Tamrareang, Jen Kramer , Nooku and others. Nooku said: Just blogged : Nooku Server, a multi-site distro of #Joomla 1.5. You need Joomla on steroids ? You got it ! http://bit.ly/eNuplA [...]

  • http://topsy.com/trackback?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.nooku.org%2F2010%2F12%2Fnooku-server-joomla-on-steroids%2F%23comment-106317513&utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention Nooku Server, Joomla on steroids « Nooku Blog — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by brian teeman, Nooku. Nooku said: No packaged build yet. Working on that. RT @brianteeman: RE: @nooku Looking forward to taking this for a test drive. http://disq.us/ts0fq [...]

  • http://brian.teeman.net Brian Teeman

    Looking forward to taking this for a test drive.

  • http://twitter.com/mblodau Martin Blodau

    *shameless self promotion incoming*

    One more reason to not miss the combination of Joomla! Night and Nooku Jam in Stockholm! http://www.joomlanight.se

  • http://topsy.com/trackback?url=http%3A%2F%2Fblog.nooku.org%2F2010%2F12%2Fnooku-server-joomla-on-steroids%2F%23more-706&utm_source=pingback&utm_campaign=L2 Tweets that mention Nooku Server, Joomla on steroids « Nooku Blog — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Nooku, sigsiu_net. sigsiu_net said: RT @Nooku: We are putting #Nooku Server (http://bit.ly/egm3NB) on a diet and are curious to find out which … http://sobi.it/TGy/ #jos [...]

  • http://blog.nooku.org/2010/12/putting-nooku-server-on-a-diet/ Putting Nooku Server on a diet « Nooku Blog

    [...] of Nooku Server is blazing ahead. Integration of the multi-site features has started. If all goes as planned we [...]

  • http://blog.bedre.no/webdevelopment/nooku-server-announced/ Nooku Server announced | Web development

    [...] the Nooku gang has released another beast into the wild: Nooku Server. Nooku Server, described as Joomla on Steroids, is a multi-site distribution of Joomla that has been developed by Nooku in collaboration with the [...]

  • http://cmsexpo.net/ CMS Expo

    Congratulations!

  • http://johan.janssens.me Johan Janssens

    Thnx, if you have a moment please also fill in our little survey : http://blog.nooku.org/2010/12/.../

  • http://blog.nooku.org/2010/12/project-deployment-with-assembla/ Project Deployment with Assembla « Nooku Blog

    [...] FTP Tool is far simpler and is currently what we use on our Belgium Police project. For this project SSH is the only method of access to the staging and production servers. [...]

  • http://blog.nooku.org/2010/12/mysql-query-cache/ MySQL Query Cache « Nooku Blog

    [...] bigger projects performance is key. With Nooku Server we are working on optimizing the Joomla 1.5 core queries to improve the query cache hit rate. If [...]

  • http://blog.nooku.org/2011/01/happy-nooku-year/ Happy Nooku Year ! « Nooku Blog

    [...] of the things I’m looking most forward to is the release of Nooku Server 0.7, with a Joomla 1.5 dieted core, Nooku Framework and a bunch of great features we are really putting [...]

  • http://blog.nooku.org/2011/01/creating-a-diet-for-nooku-server/ Creating a diet for Nooku Server « Nooku Blog

    [...] little over a month ago we announced our plans for Nooku Server, a multi-site Joomla 1.5 distribution. Before starting to integrate new features in Nooku Server we [...]

  • webheadsuk

    I love the idea off this and i cant wait to give this one a try!

    Nooku & Malajo, are these going to end up being forks of Joomla?

  • http://johan.janssens.me Johan Janssens

    Both are distributions not forks. I wrote a blog post about the difference a while ago : http://johan.janssens.me/post/...

  • http://blog.anahitapolis.com/2011/01/anahita-social-engine-1-5-birth-release-now-available-for-download/ Anahita™ Social Engine 1.5 Birth release now available for download « Anahitapolis Blog

    [...] the upcoming releases of Anahita™ Social Engine we have a keen eye on the Nooku Server as the webplatform of choice for the Anahita™ Social Engine which will provide us many new [...]

  • http://blog.nooku.org/2011/01/nooku-server-loses-40-weight/ Nooku Server loses 40% weight « Nooku Blog

    [...] December we announced our plans for Nooku Server, a multi-site and multi-lingual distribution of Joomla 1.5. With the help of our community we [...]

  • http://blog.blueforce.ch/2011/02/nooku-server-ein-schritt-in-die-richtige-richtung/ Nooku Server – Ein Schritt in die richtige Richtung? | Rogers Blog

    [...] letzt noch fehlende Elemente wie Multisite-Tauglichkeit und Mehrsprachigkeit und schon hat man Nooku Server. Wem das jetzt etwas zu schnell gegangen ist, kann hier die genauen Angaben zu Nooku Server in [...]

  • http://www.facebook.com/haribabumscit Haribabu Dayalan

    wow its very faster, very nice concept…

  • http://www.facebook.com/haribabumscit Haribabu Dayalan

    wow its very faster, very nice concept…

  • http://twitter.com/webjive Eric Caldwell

    WOW, I would love to use this as our new platform since all we do is develop Joomla sites!! Please, keep the development swift and on track. We have some great business ideas for Nooku Server and would love to get sites up on it.

  • http://johan.janssens.me Johan Janssens

    Thanks Eric. Business ideas for Nooku Server are great, contributions to Nooku are better. First ask yourself what you can do for Nooku, before asking Nooku what it should do for you.

  • http://twitter.com/webjive Eric Caldwell

    If I were a dev, I’d definitely help in that role. Right now, I think the only way we can help is to test, test, test?

  • http://johan.janssens.me Johan Janssens

    Appreciated. Not everyone is a developer. So yes test please and let us know how you like it.

  • http://twitter.com/webjive Eric Caldwell

    Will test the snot out of it! Where do I report findings?

  • http://twitter.com/webjive Eric Caldwell

    Hmmm. right out of the box, won’t install :( Installed a couple hundred of these so, I’ll press on with debug.

  • http://johan.janssens.me Johan Janssens

    Eric, the best place to report issues is using our mailing list. You can sign-up here : http://www.nooku.org/framework/request.html

  • http://twitter.com/webjive Eric Caldwell

    Done! Thx.

  • http://blog.nooku.org/2011/05/nooku-development-at-warpspeed/ Nooku Development at Warpspeed « Nooku Blog

    [...] even 6 months ago we announced our plans for Nooku Server, a multi-site distribution of Joomla 1.5. We created a diet for Nooku Server and defined a roadmap. [...]

  • http://twitter.com/alebak Alejandro Arroyave

    Why Mootools and not jQuery + jQuery UI?

  • http://johan.janssens.me Johan Janssens

    Nooku Server is a distro of Joomla 1.5. Joomla already uses Mootools at it’s core. We did make changes to make Mootools run in no-conflict which allows to use any other javascript library without any problems.

  • http://twitter.com/alebak Alejandro Arroyave

    Yes! I know! I developed extensions with Mootools, jQuery and even with Ext JS.

    I have other question: Can I to develop a full project using Nooku Server but without the frontend? For example an ERP

  • http://johan.janssens.me Johan Janssens

    Yes ! Definitely. Nooku Server is aimed at developing web apps. Not necessarily websites. You can just remove the whole site application (the frontend). 

  • http://blog.nooku.org/2012/01/onward-to-2012/ Onward to 2012 « Nooku Blog

    [...] Server. We saw the birth of Nooku Server, a multi-site web application platform. Based on lightened core of Joomla 1.5 and optimised for [...]

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