Nooku - Multilingual for Joomla

Joomladay Italy & Nooku Demo Day

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:13:28 -0800

The Nooku Team will be at the Joomladay Italy on November 21st in Rome to talk about DOCman 1.5 and it's future. But we have much more to talk about: Together with Beyounic, we are organizing a Nooku Demo Day in Rome on November 20th. The event will be mainly focussed on the Nooku Framework.

This is your chance to learn all about this exciting new framework from Nooku Lead Architects Johan Janssens and Mathias Verraes. The primary language will be English but the Beyounic Team will facilitate the communication, providing unplugged translation to and from Italian.

The event takes place from 13:30 until 18:00 and the registration fee is 15 euro to cover our costs. We have only 50 seats available, so register fast!

Topics include:

Why is there a need for a new framework for Joomla development?
How Nooku helps you to write less code
Getting started with Nooku Framework for your next project
Taking a look upcoming Joomla extensions built on Nooku Framework : Anahita, Ninjaboard, Nooku Content, ...
Q&A

Details

Location:

Aran Park Hotel - Via Riccardo Forster, 24 - 00143 - Roma, Italia

Date:

Friday November 20th, 2009

Schedule:

13h30 Welcome, 14h00 Start of the event, 18h00 End.

Price:

15 euro, to be paid at the door

Language:

English, Italian

Registration:

Nooku goes North

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:05:33 -0700

The first Nooku Demo Day last March was a fun gettogether. We got one complaint however: apparently all Joomla events in The Netherlands are in the South of the country. Jamii, one of our Nooku Partners, decided it was time for a change. They're inviting colleagues, customers, and friends (and anybody who's interested) for a second Dutch Nooku Demo Day on the 16th of October, all the way up north in Slagharen.

We love it when our partners organize events, so of course we happily accepted the invitation to come and show the latest and greatest developments in Nooku Content (the multilingual extension for Joomla), and Nooku Framework (the rapid application development platform for Joomla).

Get to know Nooku, the team behind it, and your fellow website developers, all of this in a relaxing atmosphere. We will demonstrate how easy it is to setup multi-lingual websites with Nooku, answers questions, discuss the challenges professionals face and learn from each other.

Who: Professional Joomla integrators
Where: Jamii offices in Kronkelweg 2, Slagharen, The Netherlands
When: Friday 16 October, starting at 10.00 am.

Preliminary program:

10.00: Arrival at Jamii
10.30: Opening by Ruud van Zuidam
10.35: Nooku Content Showcase
11.00: Nooku Content Ins & Outs
11:45: Nooku Content 0.7 Preview
12.30: Lunch
14.00: Nooku Framework Introduction
15:00: Nooku Framework in action: Anahita Social Engine, B.E.E.R,...
16:00: Questions and discussion
16.30: Drinks

Lunch, coffee, thee and drinks are sponsered by Jamii.

The number of seats is limited, we can only host 20 people. Be quick to register !

You can register by dropping us a line

Happy 4th Birthday Joomla!

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 17:35:43 -0700

It really doesn't seem that long since the now infamous Core Team split from Mambo resulted in the release of Joomla 1.0 on the 16th September 2005.

For us it is it will always be something close to our hearts. Our own Johan Janssens, Peter Russell and Shayne Bartlett were all members of that Mambo Core Team and as such share with sixteen others the unique privilege of being co-founders of Joomla!

As word of Joomla! spread the project attracted a new crop of developers, designers and users, enhancing and extending Joomla! further than had ever been done before. Amongst them a Belgian developer Mathias Verraes who took it upon himself to make one of the most popular Mambo/Joomla! extensions even better. The extension of course was DOCman... which had also successfully made the transition to Joomla.

Fate, destiny or karma... the sequence of events in the creation of Joomla! lead to the creation of Nooku by Johan and Mathias in 2007. Soon to be joined by Peter and Shayne in 2008.

So it is, that as we celebrate Joomla!'s birthday we also acknowledge the part it has played in our own destiny.

Happy 4th Birthday Joomla!

Joomla vs Nooku Programming Economics

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:22:41 -0700

Since we released the Sourceforge Subversion repository for Nooku Framework, we've been getting some great feedback, not in the least from early adopters -- developers who are already using the framework to build better Joomla extensions.

One of them, Danny Buytaert from Freakout.be, published a comparison between the Joomla Framework and Nooku Framework. If you've build Joomla extensions before, you'll know how much repetitive work is involved. As you can see, Nooku reduces that to almost nothing. Danny's Hello World extension has only a fragment of the line count of the original, Joomla-only version.

Creating DRY extensions

Rafael Diaz-Tushman at Dioscouri, a well-known Joomla extension development company, and long-time Nooku partner, took it one step further. Instead of doing a small Hello World app, they built a complete Affiliate Extension for Joomla -- and they did it twice: once using Joomla, once with Nooku added to the mix!

In a blog post, Rafael wrote:

Writing for Nooku Framework is simpler and faster than writing for Joomla. We simultaneously wrote the AMIGOS Affiliate extension for both Joomla and Nooku, and the difference in the amount of code necessary was startling. (...)

Roger Perren wrote on his blog:

The structure of the Nooku Framework is much simpler and more flexible than Joomla's own framework. Nooku Framework reduces code redundancy with 30 to 50%, compared to Joomla, by applying the DRY-principle (Don't Repeat Yourself).
(Translated from German)

Mash up Joomla extensions

The Dioscouri blog post also touches on another great feature of Nooku: it makes your code easily reusable, even across different extensions, or across the front- and the backend.

Rafael wrote:

It encourages developers to write their Models and Views such that they can be used by other applications.

Rastin from RMDStudio, in yet another blog post about Nooku, said:

Surprisingly the Nooku Framework API is also a lot simpler to learn than the Joomla’s native API. You get to access all the classes and objects across extensions using factory classes. That is anywhere, anytime.

This for example makes it possible to mashup different extensions, from different developers, into one superextension that perfectly fits the need of your customer. And as the original developers publish bugfixes, your code keeps working

Getting started

The best way to get started, is by spending a few minutes filling out a form. You'll get access to all relevant resources.

Worried about migrating your existing code to Nooku Framework? There's no need: you can simply mix and match the Joomla Framework with Nooku Framework API's, and gradually replace parts of your code.

Twitter user 'kproductivity' (what's in a name?) summed it up nicely:

Nooku, Simply programming economics!

Nooku Framework goes Sourceforge

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:48:47 -0700

The Nooku team is delighted to announce that the Nooku Framework has been publicly released — made available at Sourceforge.net

The framework - which was announced last May - empowers Joomla! 1.5 to new levels and is designed to provide third-party developers with Joomla's missing MVC.

Lead architect, Johan Janssens, said the framework will provide developers with "future-proof" tools to "enable exciting and efficient ways to make Joomla better through extendable developement."

For the time being access is only available using Subversion (SVN). Installable packages will be made available once we hit our 0.7 milestone. There's a good reason for that: there's little documentation at the moment, and we don't want to get flooded by emails from people with support questions. The SVN serves as a simple filter.

So where do you go if you have questions ? Simply fill out the form to request access. It only takes two minutes of your time. It's a win-win: We get to know a little about you, and you get access to our discussion mailing list, where all the good stuff happens.

... oh, and you get to use the most advanced framework ever built for Joomla.

Nooku Framework is created by award-winning developers and founding members of Joomla who have been responsible for creative innovation in code for many years.

Nooku Framework extension wins Joomla Developers' Showdown

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:08:46 -0700

Last month Brian Teeman (Joomla co-founder) ran an unofficial Joomla Developers Showdown. The premise was to create a fully functional and documented extension in four days. The extension had to meet some basic requirements based around a concept of a company directory.

Beer without the headaches

Being a competitive bunch we couldn't resist and so Team Nooku was formed to complete the challenge and the humourosly named B.E.E.R was born -- short for Business Enterprise Employee Repository. The task was to develop a component to satisfy the needs of "Impossible Missions Force":

IMF employ 200 people in five departments spread across 10 offices around the world. They require a directory of all employees for their new corporate web site. At a minimum each employee record should include a photograph, contact details, job title and a contact form. IMF hope that you will be able to provide multiple methods to navigate the directory including by name, location, department.

Have a look at the resulting alpha version, powered by BEER and the underlying Nooku Framework.

Current features include:

People, Departments, Offices
Template Overrides support
Gravatar support
VCard support
Plugin support
Search engine friendly URL's
Single installer
Search plugin

Rapid Application Development

By creating a winning alpha version of B.E.E.R., team Nooku has been able to demonstrate Nooku Framework's rapid development capability. "Someone in the Nooku community said the framework was 'An alien life form that makes Joomla smarter'. It certainly is setting new benchmarks with every iteration we release," Mathias Verraes said.

"Over the past few months we have been holding Nooku Code Jams where Joomla developers can learn how to leverage the Nooku Framework. We also started doing in-house training sessions for companies looking to build more flexible Joomla extensions."

"We think the groundswell of developer interest will eventually manifest into a very powerful movement that is nothing but positive for the Joomla community overall. More power, more flexibility, more reusability. It's the next generation MVC that Joomla was craving for," Mathias said.

"If you're a developer and you want a competitive edge with your component development, Nooku Framework is a must."

Free Beer

Team Nooku will be releasing B.E.E.R. for free under the GPL license soon. In the meantime you can have a look at the manual, which includes screenshots of the backend user interface.

You can read Brian Teeman's complete breakdown of this competition on his blog. You can read more about the Nooku Framework or, if you're ready to take the dive into this fabulous framework, apply for access to the code and other resources.

Nooku Framework launch at Joomladays Netherlands

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:47:10 -0700

The Nooku team was at the Joomladays in the Netherlands last week, both as sponsors and as speakers. The Dutch Joomladays are traditionally one of the biggest Joomla events globally, and this year was no different. Organised by Guido Jansen, the driving force of Dutch community site, the event hosted some 300 attendees and over 20 speakers, spread over two days.

Free Software is about Freedom

The Nooku team gave three presentations. The first was a keynote by Johan Janssens, titled 'Why freedom makes a better business model'. Johan has gained quite some experience with the business side of free open source software, both free as in beer (as Lead Developer of Joomla 1.5, DOCman 1.3, and Nooku Framework) and free as in freedom (Nooku Content, the multilingual extension). The presentation discussed some of these experiences as well as existing open source business models such as 'the beekeeper'.

Nooku Content

The second presentation was about our multilingual extension, which always draws a crowd. We have renamed it to Nooku Content, because it's growing to be more than 'just' multilingual. The SEF URL and search engine optimisation features alone are a good reason to install Nooku Content, even on monolingual sites. As usual, Johan explained the basics first, followed by a demo by Mathias showing of some of the goodies.

Nooku Framework

The second day was very exciting, as it saw the launch of the new Nooku Framework -- "an alien life form that grows inside Joomla and makes it better", as one of our partners called it.

Apparently there were already some rumours going around, as someone came up to us when we arrived and asked us if it was true that you can create a complete working Joomla 1.5/MVC component using only a database table, a bit of html and a single line of code. Of course we told him to wait and see. So what do you think? Is it possible? Tweet using the #nooku hashtag.

Johan explained the features and the philosophies behind Nooku Framework, and the reason for building a new rapid application development platform for Joomla. After that, Mathias showed some live coding examples. The crowd was very enthusiastic -- many of them have already signed up for code access.

Doctor Joomla

Surprisingly, one of the most fun things was the Doctor Joomla sessions. The Nooku Team, as well as some of the other speakers and attending Joomla experts, where available in the afternoon to answer any question people had. This is the closest any Joomla user can get to so much expertise. People dropped by with questions ranging from newbie stuff, over template design, to development questions, and the Doctors made sure everyone got the most suitable expert to solve his issue.

We'd like to thank the organisation, everyone who attended our presentations, and the Nooku Partners who joined us for the event.

Impressions from Nooku Team at the Joomladay NL 2009.

Nooku TV - Anahita Social Engine for Joomla!

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 01:07:33 -0700

In the second episode of Nooku TV Pete Russell talks to web architect Rastin Mehr, of rmdstudio.com, about Anahita, a new social engine framework for Joomla. At its core Anahita is powered by our own Nooku Framework.

Rastin's experience with Nooku Framework took Anahita to unexpected levels :

rmd Studio discovers Nooku Framework
Subsequently entirely re-wrote Anahita (using Nooku) in six weeks
Far more fun!
Could not have built Anahita without Nooku Framework
Plugs into Joomla!
"Alien-life form inside Joomla! makes Joomla better and smarter and live longer..."
Nooku Framework is "the MVC core that Joomla always wanted"

More information about Anahita Social Engine can be found on Anahitapolis.com

Anahita Social Engine for Joomla from Nooku on Vimeo.

Join us for the second Nooku Code Jam in Hamburg

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:40:45 -0700

Last month, the team at Delius, one of our Nooku partners, organised the first Nooku Code Jam in Ghent, Belgium. Among the visitors where Sascha and Steffan from YOOTheme, creators of the Zoo extension. The Nooku Framework must have made quite an impression. Not only are they looking into using it for their new extensions, they also agreed to organize a second Nooku Code Jam in Hamburg, Germany on June 27th.

If you are a developer, and just like us want to bring future-proof Web 2.0 development to Joomla, come and join us in Hamburg. Just contact us here with some information about yourself. The event takes place from 9:00 until 17:00 and the registration fee is 25 euro to cover our costs.

What can you expect?

Nooku Code Jams are fun and informal events. The day starts with the grand tour of the framework. What does it do, what are the concepts and philosophies behind it, etc. Next we show you how to build a small but fully functional MVC component, using only a ridiculously small amount of lines of code.

After lunch, it's Nooku Workshop time. You get to make your hands dirty ! Depending on your experience with PHP and Joomla, you get to build your own component using what you've learned. Or if you're more experienced you can join the advanced workshop where we dive deep into the Nooku Framework API to learn how to build ultra powerful and extendible extensions.

Impressions from the first Nooku Code Jam in Gent, Belgium on 15th of May 2009.

Can't make it to Hamburg?

Don't worry, we're planning more Code Jams in the near future. In the mean time, if you want to get your hands dirty you can request code access by filling out our form. We're slowly letting in more people, especially if you have an interesting project coming up or if you feel you can contribute. You're not only getting the code, but also access to the mailing list and other resources. And all of that for free.

Want to help out?

Organize a Nooku Code Jam yourself? All you need is a venue that can hold about 15 - 25 people (and if possible an extra room for breakout sessions), wifi and a projector. Get in touch for more information.

Classicalmasterclasses Goes Live in Five Languages

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:02:16 -0700

Classicalmasterclasses.com, the new search portal for music masterclasses has gone online. Professors and institutions can register their courses and students can easily search them with different filters. The site has been built with Joomla and is powered by Nooku. To capture an international audience classes are offered in five languages: German, English, Italian, French and Spanish.

The site was built by one of our Swiss Nooku partners, Masterhomepage, who did the technical implementation. If you want to offer Nooku to your clients and help them sell their products and services in local languages around the world, sign-up to be a Nooku partner.