WOX (World of XOOPS) Newsletter # 31 (April 2010)

March was pretty much a "Month of XOOPS Themes", thanks to the awesome work of kris_fr, algalochkin, Tarik, sinnedesign, and ithri.

If you are a happy XOOPS user, let the world know - please blog about XOOPS, share your experiences with others, rate and review us on SourceForge and other Websites. We need to let the world know about XOOPS!!!

And if you're not happy with something in XOOPS, please let us know so we can fix it and improve! Better yet - help us fix it and improve it!

Remember - XOOPS is powered by YOU!!!!

01. Donations

If you like the XOOPS system, and would like to give something in return, you can make a donation to the XOOPS Foundation! Simply use the XOOPS Donation System and use your PayPal account or your Credit Card to donate .

Your donation will be used to promote and advance the use and development of the XOOPS system. The XOOPS Foundation is a registered not-for-profit organization in the USA, dedicated to promote XOOPS! All donators will get the Friend of XOOPS rank here on this website. Thanks to all the Friends of XOOPS for their donations and continued support!

If you wonder what is happening with XOOPS money, please read the 2008 XOOPS Financial Report

This month we would like to acknowledge following donors:

Ian A. Underwood: $25
Sebastien Cauchy: $25
John Nolte: $50
Thomas Brett: $25

Thank you so much for supporting XOOPS!!!!

02. New XOOPS developments

Current Releases

XOOPS 2.5.0 Alpha 2
XOOPS 2.4.5 Beta
XOOPS 2.4.4 Final
Documentation on the API
Modules working with XOOPS 2.4.x (Babylon by Xoops)
Language Translations of 2.4.x

03. Team Reports

In 2010 we are re-introducing monthly Team Reports from our XOOPS Teams.

Core Development Team

Work continues on XOOPS 2.4.5, XOOPS 2.5.0, and 3.0.

Please help with testing!!!

Documentation Team

New team is forming with Wishcraft leading the effort (info here. Please join the team!

Modules Development Team

Great teamwork on XOOPS Chat integration module

Theme Design Team

Tons of good stuff:

1) New themes based on Blank Theme

2) Blank Theme

- Current Work :
1) style sheet extras.css for designer and module dev (this is in blanktheme, morphogenesis, css100 and all the latest published themes)
2) Xoops 2.5.0 Beta
3) New themes based on Wordpress and Joomla templates
4) Cheat sheet for Xoops web design
5) Xoops web design tutorial

and support forums (https://xoops.org and local website), support module dev for templates

Community Coordination/Support Team

standard maintenance of the Website, and keeping it current. Added flags of XOOPS local support sites.

International Support Team

This month we have added Bosnia & Herzegovina to our hopefully growing support site group. Read the story here

See Support Site Guidelines. Unfortunately some support sites do not anymore offer the quality of support we are looking for so these sites will have to be removed as official support sites and no longer linked to from the International Support page. This will however, open the opportunity for other webmasters in these regions to start and maintain a local XOOPS Support site, which is a lot of fun and you'll help a lot by spreading our great CMS to your area and language. To apply for official status, use this form (login required).

XOOPS on Facebook: join the main XOOPS group on Facebook

Communication/Marketing Team

Submitted press releases to several blogs/websites/newspapers, e.g. CMS Report.
XOOPS is gaining more recognition: XOOPS among Top 10 Open-Source Platforms to Build a Social Network

04. XOOPSers of the Month

Our "XOOPSer of the Month" Award is given to XOOPS members who show extraordinary dedication to XOOPS, and go the extra mile for XOOPS. Sometimes they do something spectacular, but most of the time they just do something everyday, but by doing it day-in and day-out, they make a BIG DIFFERENCE in life of XOOPS community. And we thank them for that!!!

This month, we would like to recognize Hossein Azizabadi (Voltan) from Iran for his continues support and development of Oxygen Admin GUI, that will be our default Admin GUI in XOOPS 2.5. This is a second "XOOPSer of the Month" award for Hossien!!

Where are you from, and where do you live now?

I am from Iran . I was born in Tehran and now I live in both Tehran and Kasahn because my university is in Kashan (I am 23 years old)

How long have you been programming?

For about 3 years. But I would not call it programming - I can write CSS code and very little PHP.

What is your expertise?

I love creating XOOPS websites and new themes . And translating modules to my language - Persian.

What got you to XOOPS?

I think 3 years ago, I wanted to create a website for myself about cinema! Some people told me to use CMS! It's easy ! I found one fantasy website with XOOPSs ( http://www.jadoogaran.org), and from there I found http://www.xoops.ir and http://www.xoops.org

What do you like the most about XOOPS?

It's free and free (as in "freedom" and in "no cost"). It's easy to use, has a great code framework and offers a great worldwide community for developers! For users it has a good support and it's very useful for all kind of websites. And it's Open Source!

In what area of XOOPS do you contribute and why?

Localization and themes! My language and calendar is different from European languages and we need to write some code to change XOOPS to right to left! And I like to create new themes because I can use my creativity to implement any new idea into XOOPS themes, and XOOPS makes it so easy for us.

What is your major achievement in programming that you're most proud of?

In XOOPS 2.3 we've done a big localization for our language, but it was not only my work. Many people helped us in the translation and in debugging of language files. They told us what was needed and we've made it happen! I am very proud of the collaboration among Persian users

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

Reading books and watching my DVDs. Every week I go to library and get new books for reading. I am also working on improving my English. And then I have to learn my university lessons (textile).

You favorite dish and drink?

I love Iranian foods ! For example “gorme sabzi“ and “abgosht“ and “kabab”

What about movies and music?

I love any movies ! Drama or action or fantasy and many more... (I have about 2000 movies)

If you would have a chance for a 30 seconds commercial with a message to the world, what would you say?

Stop all wars

Who is the person that you would like to meet and why?

I would like meet some XOOPS developers like phppp and Gijoe and Instant-Zero developers and ask them how do they create XOOPS core and modules

05. XOOPS Innovation Award

Our XOOPS Innovation Award 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 the first Innovation Award goes to Davide N. P. Rossi (dnprossi), from Italy, for his innovative work on the xNews

Where are you from, and where do you live now?

Born in Milan but always lived in Rome, Italy

How long have you been programming?

Since 1981

What is your expertise?

Database systems, Pascal programming and since I started with XOOPS - PHP, HTMS, CSS

What got you to XOOPS?

I needed a CMS for a friend and bumped into XOOPS finding it the most promising in features and easy to use for non experts.

What do you like the most about XOOPS?

Many sites I have installed are maintained by non experts in computing and they all use it without extreme trouble compared to others. XOOPS' ease of use and its modularity are excellent.

Why did you decide to work on xNews?

Same as above. In my point of view modules must be easy to use and the news module is an example. It needed some new features to keep up with other article management modules so I decided to work on it.

You just released the version 1.68. What are the future plans for xNews?

I am working on improving SEO functionality and have had success with both .htaccess and path-info in an x-language environment soon in 1.69. I am also working on tcpdf configurator so users do not need to modify code (hated makepdf.php). On request I will add topic weight ordering. I will have to do some cleanup work with old unused code. And anything that will come to my mind because I use xNews for practically everything news, blog, links, info and what ever.

If you could add one feature to XOOPS, what would it be?

I would like to see more multi-language functionality. (x-language included???)

What is your major achievement in programming that you're most proud of?

Between 1992 and 1997 the creation of a series of software products called Pc-Photo. This was for photographers who wanted to get their negatives and slides scanned, delivered on floppies, archived and viewed in albums.

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

Coding...

You favorite dish and drink?

I live in Italy, hard to say. Everything!

What about movies and music?

Rock, Blues and any movie that does not go beyond idiocy.

If you would have a chance for a 30 seconds commercial with a message to the world, what would you say?

Hello World!

If you could choose a place and time to live, what would it be and why?

Turkey. Spent a long joyful time there and miss it.