WOX (World of XOOPS) Newsletter # 8 - World of Xoops (WOX) - XOOPS News

World of Xoops (WOX): WOX (World of XOOPS) Newsletter # 8

Posted by: MambaOn 2008/5/1 9:00:00 25609 reads

Another month, and another issue of the WOX (World of XOOPS) Newsletter (see here previous versions). We appreciate your comments, feedback, and improvement suggestions, as we want WOX to be the best publication for XOOPS Users. There are several very exciting things that happened in April, and we hope that May will be the same, if not better!

The biggest breaking news of April was, of course, the fact that Onokazu, the Founder of XOOPS, will be joining our newly created XOOPS Advisory Board. Please help us to welcome the "Father of XOOPS" back with us!!!

The second exciting news is that we are establishing the XOOPS Innovation Award - for people who create something very unique and innovative for XOOPS.

And the third exciting news is that XOOPS Dev Forge is open for business. We thank all people who helped us to re-install and test it.

In this issue:

New XOOPS developments
AWARDS/Recognitions
XOOPSer of the Month
XOOPS Innovation Awards
New Modules
New Hacks
Security Issues/Alerts
YAXS - Sites Using Xoops!
Tutorials/Add-ons
New/Updated Themes
News from around the World
Xoops International Support Sites
How to contribute

We continue to execute on our Plans for 2008, and we believe that we are making progress - in some areas faster than others, in some slower. But it's exciting to see XOOPS members jumping in and helping where they can. The latest example was after installing the Zetagenesis theme. There were some improvements needed based on users' comments, and Aph3x took the initiative and corrected the theme without even being asked!!!! Now, that's what we call a team spirit!!

We'll need all the help from the whole XOOPS Community to make the 2008 Plans reality. But we are confident that together, we'll be able to make it. Remember - XOOPS is powered by YOU!!!!

New XOOPS developments:

Return of the Jedi (Onokazu)
International Support Team Formed
Catzwolf joining the XOOPS Developement Team
dev.xoops.org is open for developers
XOOPS changes its theme to Zetagenesis
Calling for XOOPS Developers

Current Releases

XOOPS 2.0.18.1 Released
XOOPS 2.2.6 RC released
XOOPS 2.3 is being worked on - check out the Alpha 2 code
XOOPS goes PHP5
Xoops documentation for developer

AWARDS/Recognitions

We continue with more recognitions:

XOOPS Listed as top Open Source CMS by ONDD

Showing again that XOOPS is finally gaining the recognition around the world, that it deserves. We are confident that with release 2.3 and then 3.0 XOOPS will secure a permanent place among top Content Management Systems (CSM).

We are also happy that XOOPS with 6,463,337 downloads is the most downloaded CMS on SourceForge.

XOOPSer of the Month

This month we would like to recognize Simon Roberts (Wishcraft), one of our new members of the XOOPS Development Team, and a very energetic and innovative programmer. Some of his recent additions are: x-Cake 1.1 , x-Torrent 1.32 and X-Soap 2.3

Where are you from, and where do you live now?
I am from Sydney, Australia, I live with my partner in Sydney still.

How long have you been programming?
I have been programming since the age of 8, my first computer was a commodore vic 20 which was a 32k eprom home computer, I moved over to IBM in the 386 days where I started to program in Turbo C++ from Borland. I later moved over to Visual basic which was my staple language for sometime. Around 4 years ago I started exploring web design and HTML Parsers and decided to learn PHP. I started by looking around for a library to learn with and decided to explorer xoops after building a few simple pages.

What is your expertise?
Programming from a young age, and working in various industries, not all the time in the computer, My expertise is years of experience. I have not really wanted to sit in a learning institute and get a degree as most of the people I have met from University (at least fresh mans) have little experience and not much skill and are generally really prudent about what there course was. I find this being a bit of an anarchist and activist annoying, as well as enjoying music and culture. What got you to XOOPS? I was doing a contract with a client #1 Computing that never paid their development bill due to there dodgiest mentality, but they where using xoops for a system of roms.. I decided to check it out and decided to learn about it more.

What do you like the most about XOOPS?
It flexibility and age of the project. A lot of CMS are very young and not matured but xoops has a resource and management system of websites that most people are use to. For example, when I was giving a demo of a site people where ‘ohh it is like myob’ which I felt was a great comment about the administration side of the site; also the fact it behaves much like most libraries being a very good RAD. You can have a simple module together in an hour or so that is working on the system. It also has a fantastic group of developers and support groups behind it.

In what area of XOOPS do you contribute and why?
Recently, I have been contributing to the modules repository, documenting these on the wiki and putting my 2 bits worth into most sections of the site. Kris_FR put me on the design team, which was a great honour, but I feel I would be more suited being a coder to module or core development, even though I am busy with work. I contribute to XOOPS, to make a better community for all, I also contribute to get more contacts and business, as I work from home and would like to expand my business to a few developers and an operation specializing in xoops.

What you you major achievement in programming that you're most proud of?
Well it was a couple of visual basic application, I wrote something called The Nexus Billing System, which took 5 years it was a windows application with a mysql backend that would provided interfaces with free radius etc, for billing ISP etc. The other achievement was coding a fractal encryption set (FES).

What are your hobbies, when you're not coding?
Coffee, music, events

You favorite dish and drink?
Butter Chicken and mixed dalh, I like a butterscotch snapps and soda water to drink.

What about movies and music?
Rap, Psychedelic Trance, Punk Rock & Easy Classics.

If you would have a chance for a 30 seconds commercial with a message to the world, what would you say?
One World, One Unity with a pictures of people with there computers networked.

If you could choose a place and time to live, what would it be and why?
I like Sydney, but I would consider living in Cyprus or England.

Who is the person that you would like to meet and why?
I would like to meet the queen of England to ask why sports stars should be knighted and not computer profession who are the staple foundation of the world communication are not knighted.

XOOPS Innovation Award

This month we are starting a new category - the XOOPS Innovation Award. It will be given to people who create something very unique and very innovative! We are clear that XOOPS can only succeed, when we push the limits of our creativity, imagination, and innovation to "infinity and beyond" . And therefore we would like to recognize people who create this "WOW!" effect, when we see what they've done. The XOOPS Innovation Award is not a monthly award, i.e. theoretically, there might be a month where we won't give one, but we certainly hope that this will never happen

This month we'll be giving two XOOPS Innovation Awards:

Nicolas Andricq (ForMusS) for his ThAdmin (New Admin Interface)
Marcello Brandão (Suico) for his Yogurt Module

Nicolas Andricq (ForMusS)

Where are you from, and where do you live now?
Come from France, I live near Lyon, the second biggest city in France

How long have you been programming?
I have been programming for 4 years. I've started to program in school, and now I continue with it on my job and with Xoops.

What is your expertise?
I am an IT consultant in PROGRESS which is a programming language in 4GL. Progress provides an easy language for develop some application. I also consult different client in security, programming ...

What got you to XOOPS?
It's an hobby to learn about PHP, the OO language of Xoops and all subject about Xoops. So I love to help Xoops and xoopsers. I developed some modules for XOOPS and I help people with know-how where I can.

What do you like the most about XOOPS?
First I like the support and the community and especially the French community, secondly I like the programming object-oriented language of XOOPS. If you don't know PHP, HTML or CSS programming, you can still create easily your own website with "YOU" the community.

In what area of XOOPS do you contribute and why?
The development of modules because I like the development and creating something for others user. It takes a lot of time, but when it's done, it's a big satisfaction to see the feedback from users and seeing it as part of of Xoops.

What you you major achievement in programming that you're most proud of?
I am proud of the modules "Content" that I realized for my company. It implements URL rewriting easily for a module and provides some features for creating some simple pages. The second module is "ThAdmin" because it provides a theme for the Admin area like the one of Xoops 2.2.x

What are your hobbies, when you're not coding?
I have some time for my family, cooking and listening to music. Just some simple hobbies

You favorite dish and drink?
I'm French so I like all French food, but my favorite dish is "boeuf bourguignon" and of course red wine.

If you would have a chance for a 30 seconds commercial with a message to the world, what would you say?
"Peace and love" ... for Xoops

Marcello Brandão (Suico)

Where are you from, and where do you live now?
I am from Brasilia, Brasil where I live right now.

How long have you been programming?
I've started programming back in 1988, at that time on a commodore 64 . I asked my mother for an Atari to play video games, but since we lived at Algiers at the time and there were no games available to buy, she gave me a Commodore 64. I've then started programming in Basic, numbering lines, using "gotos" and "inputs" for almost everything. A long time ago...

What is your expertise?
I have a degree in Computer Sciences, and am finishing my master in software engineering, I usually don't get inside the code a lot at my job, I rather manage projects, as I think I am good at processes rather than coding. Take a look at openUp and you'll see what I work with almost everyday. I just love standards, body of knowledge, etc...

What got you to XOOPS?
Let's say I was looking for a CMS to build a videogame fan-site and found xoops, it was a love at a first sight

What do you like the most about XOOPS?
Xoops is for me a great framework rather than a CMS, I use it at work a lot in the intranet of the company I work for, I like the modular idea, the use of smarty templates, and the groups permissions more than anything else.

In what area of XOOPS do you contribute and why?
I try to contribute making modules, rarely giving support on xoops.org and have helped a bit on local support sites: XOOPS Brasil, xoops paraná.

What is your major achievement in programming that you're most proud of?
As I said programming isn't maybe my main area, the process derived from openup that we use at my job is maybe the major achievement I had related to programming. But in life I am quite proud of my relationship with my wife, we are together for 11 years now and we are quite happy.

What are your hobbies, when you're not coding?
I love to play xbox360, just bought GTA4 which is a great game. I like to travel more than anything, unfortunately I do play much more xbox than I travel. I also watch soccer a lot, my club Flamengo is really addicting.

You favorite dish and drink?
Shrimps and red wine.

What about movies and music?
Indiana Jones and every movie with Al Pacino, for music I almost only listen bossanova, chico buarque, tom jobim, toquinho...

If you would have a chance for a 30 seconds commercial with a message to the world, what would you say?
Be young , find happiness, the rest is unimportant.

If you could choose a place and time to live, what would it be and why?
Geneva in the 90's, Algiers in the 80's... I lived there in those decades and found it great.

Who is the person that you would like to meet and why?
Hummm... I have set an appointment with my classmates of Algeria in Paris in September, so I think I would be glad to meet them again, but apart from that one I don't know yet. I would like to meet Gisele Bundchen, because she's gorgeous

New/Updated Modules

World Map
Video Tube v1.1 Released & Available
nckarma 1.00
Jobs 3.0 RC3 released
inTHEtube - a YouTube video search Module
Yogurt Social Network 3.2 (RC1)
Xoops Flash Clock
Xoops Calculator Deluxe
Rss center in Arabic
Flash Weather Module
XoopsGraphs coming to XOOPS 3.0
XPETITIONS 0.18 Final
ThAdmin or how change your Admin Interface
MYQUIZ v3.0 final released