WOX (World of XOOPS) Newsletter # 9

As in previous month, we continue to execute on our Plans for 2008, 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:

Xoops API documentation upgraded
Xoops developers for paid projects
Nat Sakimura joins the XOOPS Developement Team

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 3 code
XOOPS goes PHP5
Xoops documentation for developer

AWARDS/Recognitions

SourceForge 2008 Community Awards voting is in place. Don't forget to vote for XOOPS!!!

XOOPSer of the Month

This month we would like to recognize Rune Hauge (Runeher), for his countless modules, his work on the International Support Team, and his contributions to XOOPS support sites in Norway and Nordic area.

Where are you from, and where do you live now?
I was born and raised in Stavanger, Norway's fourth largest city, but now I live and work from a closed down farm in Denmark which I'm rebuilding.

How long have you been programming?
I have been programming in PHP for a few years and even longer in Flash.

What is your expertise?
My expertise is actually in creative design and digital art.

What got you to XOOPS?
My first experience with XOOPS was about 3-4 years ago. I needed a change from PHP-Nuke and stumbled over XOOPS. Soon after, all my sites was XOOPS...

What do you like the most about XOOPS?
It's complex, yet still it's so user friendly. With some experience you can transform it into any kind of site.

In what area of XOOPS do you contribute and why?
I'm using most of my breaks from ordinary work to play with XOOPS, updating my sites, making modules and acting as International Support team leader.

What are your hobbies, when you're not coding?
I have too many to mention and they change with age, hmmm... But for the moment my absolute favorite hobby is training my five dogs, 4 bitches in heat and a very lucky and happy male dog, he he...

You favorite dish and drink?
Must say McDonalds and Coca Cola, I'm afraid... (hey,... I'm not fat!)

What about movies and music?
I love sci-fi movies and I need AC/DC, KISS, Dire Straits or ZZ Top in my iPod when I'm working (I'm from that generation and I'm glad to be stuck there!!).

If you would have a chance for a 30 seconds commercial with a message to the world, what would you say?
Live your life to the fullest... If you have a job you don't like, quit and do something you like. Remember that you only have about 30.000 days to live if you're lucky. Use them well!

XOOPS Innovation Award

This month we are giving again the XOOPS Innovation Awards. It is given to people who create something very unique and very innovative for XOOPS! 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:

Ricardo Costa (Trabis) for his MyTabs and MyComments Modules
Simon Roberts (Wishcraft) for his XOOPS Users Pool Simon received last month the "XOOPSer of the Month" award. Nice going, Simon!!!

Ricardo Costa (Trabis)

Where are you from, and where do you live now?
I'm from Bombarral, Portugal, you know, just beside Spain!

How long have you been programming?
About 3 hours, just stopped to reply your kindly invitation. Well, I started coding when I was 10 or 12, can't remember. My mother gave me a Spectrum 48k, not so good as Wishcraft commodore, but good enough to learn "elses", "ifs" and other good things in life! I broke my Spectrum when I was 15 so... I've met the internet at the end of 2005, met XOOPS at the beginning of 2006. Started learning PHP in 2007. Started making modules for XOOPS in 2008.

What is your expertise?
I'm not an expert in anything I must say, what I do worst is what I do best. I'm a bad electrician, a bad guitar player, a bad poet, bad lover and even worst coder. You can call me a "wanna be developer".

What got you to XOOPS?
Luck, I must have been blessed that day. A friend of mine from a crackers forum opened a hosting company and offered me cheap space on a server. He recommended me XOOPS. I asked him why and still remember is answer - "It is very quick and easy to administrate".

What do you like the most about XOOPS?
Who said I like it? I love it, and I love it all, starting with block positions and ending in groups permissions. I've tried other CMS, I moderated sites with other CMS but you know, XOOPS was my first love. I have made a successful site with XOOPS from ground 0. When I started I could not tell the difference between an email address and an URL. XOOPS has given me a new life and I'm in debt to it. That is why I'm struggling to give back because of everything that this community has given to me.

In what area of XOOPS do you contribute and why?
I like to contribute in the forum and getting old modules back to life. I have missed support on my early days here and I know how important is to help newbies. I want to feel useful here so, I'll help every time I have the chance and (as a newbie I still am) will not hesitate to post my doubts here.

What you you major achievement in programming that you're most proud of?
"Mytabs" is being a very grateful experience as a team work, but I believe my best achievement is still to come. I have great plans crossing my head everyday. If there will be a module of the year, you and me will make it.

What are your hobbies, when you're not coding?
I used to play in a band but not anymore, we have to make choices, time won't stretch. My hobby now is getting some sleep. I bet you know what I'm talking about.

You favorite dish and drink?
The dish-washer. I can't drink anymore, I had my share!

What about movies and music?
Matrix. I like psycadelic trance, black metal ... Nirvana, Doors, Sepultura, Bolero de Ravel, that kind of stuff.

If you would have a chance for a 30 seconds commercial with a message to the world, what would you say?
I would turn red and say nothing.

If you could choose a place and time to live, what would it be and why?
Nice question. It could be anywhere, just plug me to internet and I´ll be where I want when I want.

Who is the person that you would like to meet and why?
As a poet that I am, I could not answer this any other way --> I would like to meet myself.

Simon Roberts (Wishcraft)

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.

New/Updated Modules

My Tabs 1.0
Video Tube v1.5 Now With YouTube Search
XOOPS User Pooling
Yahoo! Messenger module
X-Soap 3.0 Alpha
X-WHOIS IP Search
Google Talk Module
XOOPS Web Tools Module
xpetitions 0.19 BETA1
My Comments
Tiny Blocks (for XOOPS 2.2* ONLY)

New Hacks:

SEO Paths & .htaccess
Myalbum random pic in just one line of code

Security Issues/Alerts

none this month

Sites using XOOPS:

Fisconelmondo.it and AlessandroBonelli.it with XOOPS!
Roussin Academy Reunion
Dagpacollege - a different new website is born
XooFoo Community for Xoopsers
Two websites from Brazil
Biker Community
Sport Lounge on Xoops
One more site on xoops deployed!
New web site of MSTUCA
Sinnemax

Tutorials/Add-ons

Package "Browser" released to version 0.3.4

New/Updated Themes

Xintervice, an other new theme for Xoops
6 news themes for Xoops
Release Obscene V4 Theme
XtarKit, new theme for XOOPS cms
Gnoo Theme
Ribbons_V Theme
IPMO theme
Sdream Theme

News from around the World:

XOOPS France:
xoRewriteModule by Dugris

XOOPS China:
SlidyXOOPS: online slide system by Domecc

This month we've added two local support sites to our International XOOPS Family:

XOOPS Turkey Support open

XOOPS Vietnam Support open

It is definitely very exciting to see that XOOPS is growing and winning new friends and supporters all over the world!!! So please welcome our new XOOPS friends in Vietnam and Turkey and wish them Happy XOOPSing!!!

Xoops International Support Sites

   Arabic Support
   Brazilian Support
   Brazilian Support (Paraná)
   Chinese Support
   Croatian Support
   Czech Support
   Danish Support
   Dutch Support
   French Support
   German Support
   Greek Support
   Hungarian Support
   Israel Support
   Italian Support
   Korean Support
   Malysian Support
   Mexican Support
   Norwegian Support
   Nordic Support
   Persian (Farsi) Support
   Polish Support
   Russian Support
   Russian 2 Support
   Spanish Support
   Turkish Support
   Vietnamese Support