• Module translation improvements. We have further optimized the way Nooku Content deals with syncing of module translations and improved Nooku Content’s module translation workflow. Modules are no longer listed in the items overview and are also no longer taken into account for the statistics.
• Improved compatibility with K2. We have done extensive testing with K2 and fixed a number of smaller issues related to translating a K2 powered Joomla site. We are happy to announce that we now fully support K2.

Together with the release of Nooku Content 0.6.7 we are also releasing Nooku Framework 0.6.7 which includes a number of smaller fixes. Nooku Framework is available through our Nooku Developer Portal, for a direct link to the 0.6.7 SVN go here.

Nooku Content is only available to our partners. By supporting us, you helps us to build quality open source software. In return you get a great extension, personalized support, and a voice in the development. If you want to learn more, discover our Partnership Program.

• Better language syncing. We have made a number of changes to the way Nooku Content handles it’s language syncing especially during installation of extensions. Nooku Content is now smart enough to sync modules that are installed as part of the installation of a packaged extension. For example, DOCman, or K2, etc ..
• Better error handling. We re-worked our error handling to throw nice and meaning-full error messages when something goes wrong, for example when a language cannot be found.

If you want to see Nooku Content in action, you can find our team this weekend at the J and Beyond conference We are sponsoring the event and are also doing a Nooku Framework workshop on Tuesday.

Nooku Content is only available to our partners. By supporting us, you helps us to build quality open source software. In return you get a great extension, personalized support, and a voice in the development. If you want to learn more, discover our Partnership Program.

We have a tradition of showing something new each year at the Dutch Joomladays, so Johan and myself were very proud to officially announce our Developer Portal and present our very first State of Nooku.

The Year of You

The room was too small for the State of Nooku presentation at JD10NL

2010 is the year of you, the community! With the upcoming 0.7 beta releases, we feel Nooku Framework is growing up significantly. It’s not feature-complete — that’s why it’s not a 1.0 release yet. But the features we do have are getting very stable, making it a perfect choice for your next project.

2010 is the year of the Nooku Community, and we’ve announced new resources to help you build Nooku-powered extensions. The Nooku Developer Portal is the first place to go: you can find the code, the bug tracker and activity streams. The spaces for Components, Examples and Tools give room to developers to experiment, play and contribute. We’ve made the mailing list public, as well as the community-maintained wiki.

Contributions

We’re seeing some very cool contributions from the community: Christian is building an extended version of the com_harbour example component, Torkil is working on versioning, Stian wrote an amazing auto-updater for the framework, Steven did a proof of concept for a webhooks component, and the list goes on. And let’s not forget everybody who submitted bug reports and patches, edited the wiki, and helped newcomers on the mailing list.

• Better metadata handlingWe have made a number of changes to the metadata handling in Nooku. Metadata can now also be managed from the frontend. Metadata for articles is also kept in sync with the content table to allow for full compatibility with mod_related_items, this wasn’t the case previously.
• Smarter language switcherThe frontend language switcher has been made more intelligent. It will now only show the languages that are available for a certain page. The decision on what languages to show is based on the published and access state of the menu items. For example, if you have a menu item in three languages (en, nl, de) and unpublish the item in ‘de’ then the switcher will only show 2 languages, en and nl. Previously it also showed ‘de’.

Both these new features are a result of the result of feedback we received on our first Nooku Demo Day in the Netherlands and are a great way to demonstrate the power of our partner model and the important of their feedback.

Nooku Content Basics

First up was One-Company’s René Kreijveld, who demoed Nooku Content’s basic multilingual features:

• Working with front-end and back-end translations
• Using the side-by-side article editor
• Translating content directly in your component
• Keeping track of all the content in your site, whether from core or 3pd extensions, using the items manager
• Adapting your template design based on the language of the site
• Enabling translations for third party extensions with a couple of clicks

Advanced Nooku use

After that, Johan explained some of the more advanced features:

• SEO,  how to add proper metadata for menu items and articles to create performant clean SEF URL’s without id’s, …
• Caching, how Nooku Content adds extra caching for some of  Joomla’s bottlenecks, making your site measurably faster

As someone pointed out, these features alone make Nooku Content worth installing on monolingual sites as well.

One of the questions we get a lot, is whether Nooku Content is already stable. In fact, both the 0.5 and 0.6 releases are stable, and so will the 0.7 be. This is a different approach from the classic development cycle, where software isn’t stable until v1.0.  The 0.x releases are not feature-complete, but what is in there is production ready and actively maintained.

Over lunch, an interesting discussion took place about different uses and workflows for multilingual sites, which gave the Nooku Content team some excellent feedback. As many of the attendees were there to figure out how Nooku Content could help their business, René explained how he charged for deploying Nooku Content on customers’ sites. That in turn brought the topic to the pros and cons of a funded GPL model.

Anahita Social Engine for Joomla

Johan wouldn’t be Johan if he didn’t have a couple of surprises in store: he demoed Anahita Social Engine, with Rastin Mehr giving some pointers over Skype. Anahita is Rmd Studio’s new Joomla application for building your own community sites.

It’s not just a Facebook-clone; it’s a modular system that you can mold into a Twitter-, MySpace-, Youtube- or Facebook-style site, or into something completely new — as Rastin calls it: ‘Social Anything‘. It’s built on top of the Nooku Framework, the brand new rapid application development framework that powers the Nooku Content extension — we will reveal more information about the Nooku Framework soon.

The aim for the day is to get to know each other and offcourse Nooku, all of this in a relaxing atmosphere. We will demonstrate how easy it is to setup multi-lingual websites with Nooku Content, answers questions and learn from each others challenges.

• Who: Professional Joomla integrators
• Where: One-Company offices in Ochten (bij Tiel), The Netherlands
• When: Thursday 26 March, starting at 10.00 am.

Lunch, coffee, thee and drinks are offered for € 10,00 p.p.

We have only 10 seats available so register fast if you are planning to attend.

Preliminary program:

10.00: Arrival at One-Company (Industrieweg 18, Ochten)
10.30: Opening by René Liebrand
10.35: Nooku Content showcase by René Kreijveld
11.00: Nooku Content ins & outs by Johan Janssens
12.30: Lunch
13.15: Nooku 0.7 exclusive preview by Johan Janssens
14.45: A drink, and hopefully everyone can get home before the traffic jams.

The number of seats is limited, we can only host 10 people. Be quick to register !

You can register here : http://www.joomlaprofessionals.nl/nooku-demo-dag.html

How does it work? Just as always, you publish an article or add content to your website, in your local language. With the click of a button, your content is emailed to translators who will send back the translated files in the required languages of choice.

We think that’s pretty cool: it will help allow customers and readers to have more multi-lingual conversations, just like the real world. Let us know if you want to integrate other web services with Nooku Content, so website developers and content managers can make really great websites!

Added Features

• A new language switcher layout introduced.
• Fixed token issues in some browsers.

Tested extensions

1. Comments : Jom Comment Pro
2. Events : Event List
3. Files : Rokdownloads, DOCman
4. Forms : CK Form, RSForms Pro
5. Forums : Fireboard
6. Images : Morfeo Gallery
7. Lists : Simplelists
8. Video : Denvideo

This list is not exclusive but is based on the feedback from our partners on the extensions they are actually using for their clients. Don’t see your Joomla extension on this list?  Contact us and we will help you get up and running with Nooku.

Great looking URL’s

Until now, the choices were limited for Search Engine Friendly URL’s. By default Joomla URL’s have id’s in them, which makes them messy, and hard to remember. Adding third party SEF extensions to your Joomla! 1.5 site often comes with unacceptable performance losses. With Nooku Content 0.6, you can now have clean URL’s out of the box. No id information, no noise and no performance loss.

Metadata where it belongs

Your articles deserve a description and keywords, but so does every other page on your site. Global metadata, that gets repeated on every page, won’t cut it — search engines expect more than that! That’s why Nooku Content 0.6 now allows you to add metadata for each menu item in your site, and deals with article metadata in more transparent and flexible way.

Translate everything

Google has localized versions for most countries. For example, Google.fr will give higher priority to sites written in French. That’s why it’s important to translate not just your content, but also your metadata descriptions and keywords, and your URL’s. With Nooku Content 0.6 everything on your page is now translatable. No exceptions.

Works without worries

Nooku Content is designed to be invisible most of the time. You don’t need to spend hours setting it up, reading documentation, or teaching your employees how to use it. All the complexity that comes with traditional multi-lingual applications, is handled smoothly in the background. When you do see Nooku Content, it’s integrated in the familiar Joomla user interface. Even though Nooku Content  installs like any regular extension, it feels like it’s always been a part of Joomla.

With the addition of these new features Nooku Content is slowly evolving into a multi-lingual content manager and will not only be off interest to people who are publishing multi-lingual websites. People who are publishing uni-lingual websites will also benefit from the new search engine optimization features in Nooku Content 0.6 and the already great workflow optimizations that Nooku Content 0.5 already offers.

Do you need a professional multi-lingual solution for your project? Get in touch with one of our partners, or consider becoming a partner yourself.

Doing 0.5.x releases while taking our time to work on 0.6, is a great way to offer stability to our users. By being very conservative about making changes in 0.5.x releases, they can be sure that their current Nooku sites stay stable and secure. And at the same time it gives the Nooku development team the freedom to make any crazy new change we want, without having to worry about breaking existing Nooku sites.

Stick around, we’ll be announcing some exciting new features in Nooku Content 0.6, that will make setting up multilingual, search engine optimised Joomla sites easier than ever before!