Joomla! 1.5.4 was released yesterday and I have to say, Joomla! team has started to tighten things up. Besides the usual security fixes, bug fixes and some small, yet exciting changes under the hood, there is this new "compatibility" colum under Extension Manage that gets some people excited.

Jom Comment system bot and our ajax system plugin got a red dot there. A couple of our user email us, worried if our component are not compatible with Joomla 1.5.4 .

Relax, there is nothing to be worried about. Jom Comment and My Blog run natively on Joomla 1.5. There is no need for legacy mode to be turned on at all. But why it is still getting the red dot?. You see, what really happen is, Joomla simply check the plugin XML file. If it detects the old version, it will mark it as"incompatible". It has absolutely nothing to do with the php code that gets executed.

So, please don't be alarmed. An undate to those xml files will be issue within the next 12 hours. (It should be updated by the time you read this). It should take less than 1 minute to update the xml file. A couple of string replacement here and there and good.

I have to say, it is a clever way to get developer to start adopting the new xml format!

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We travelled half way around the world just to attend CMS Expo in Chicago on May 16, 2008 (formerly known as Joomla Expo). Little that we know, the Expo has attracted over 250 participants from all of USA and some from around the world gathered at the swanky Renaissance O'Hare Chicago Hotel. The expo was a success as it was highly interactive, everybody participated in the talks and we even had a raffle.

What made it even more fun event was that we get to meet other third party developers like Barrie North and the rest of the JoomlaShack team, Merav Knafo from iJoomla, Tom Canavan, Steve Burge, Joe LeBlanc and not forgetting we the warmth given by our most gracious hosts, John And Linda Coonen and Mike and Mrs Carson. Other local Chicago's like Robert Jacoby and Robert Scarry made great new friends! Azrul also managed to entertain us with his highly informative talk on Joomla SEF as one of the talks at the Expo.

The good people at Chicago has taken loads of photo's from the event. Take a look at them here.

Pssstttt: JoomlaExpo has gone an upgrade to CMS Expo to include other great CMS's in our next future event, plus more participants too!!! 

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I stand now upon the crossroads between the paths of dreams and newly acquired ambition. It was a tough struggle, but I have made my choice and put it into words, a delivered letter and now into this poignant blog post.

I shall be leaving Azrul.com after today, bidding a fond farewell to the kind folks at AzrulStudio, leaving the "Talk To Us" and support tickets, the many interesting interludes and memorable moments. No more shall I be dotting "i's " and crossing "t's", at least not at AzrulStudio, as I moved onward and into my journalistic future.

 

But if nothing else I leave to all of you the MyBlog User Manual, my last and final contribution, excepting this blog post, to Azrul.com. I hope it shall serve to silent those calls and cries for answers of some of the more familiar questions. Without me being there to man the pre-sales inquiry trenches and sales & billlings battlements.

I am sure that Mark will do spectacularly, always and as before, while our new recruits Web Designer Guy Syahrul, Business Development Girl Rekha and Code Cruncher Iqbal shall more than make up for my departure. I wish my colleague sand soon to be former workmates a fine time and a grand adventure. I would like to thank you guys for a fine time and your gregarious friendliness. I shall miss you guys and our wild adventures.

To all our customers, affiliates and partners, I thank you for a memorable occasion at this end of the email, to have had the honour of getting to know and working with such wonderful people.

To Azrul and Meriza, I wish them all the best and present to them my deepest thanks, for giving me a memorable and life changing six months. I am proud to have worked for such a dynamic and loving couple whose deeds and their business success is perhaps echoed just as well in their beauty as human beings.

When I wrote the words " ...not just another programmers paradise..." in our web copy, business plans and recruitment ad, I was just being smart, witty and doing my job as resident copywriter. But now, looking back, I must say that AzrulStudio truly is something more than just a place to work. Okay... we did work... very hard and more so besides... but it was all worth it and what I personally reaped is more than just my paycheck. Instead of just giving you money and perks, at AzrulStudio you are allowed to explore and grow. I have learned to write in different ways and improve my command of writing styles, through books paid for by Azrul and time off from work to attend courses and workshops. In my case they did it too well perhaps that I am now sprouting wings and flying off. My gratitude all the same, and hopefully with their blessings.

But more so it is their inspiration that I am following. For with my dream of having my words gracing pages, both online and real, I have taken a page from their book. If the Malaysian codes from a Malaysian programmer like Azrul can roam the world in thousands of Joomla sites then maybe my Malaysian words, can one day sweep the world as well. Either the poetic, the literary or in news reporting.

By the 2nd of May 2008, I shall soon be the newly christened Junior Editor (English) and Field Correspondent for a soon to be launched Malaysian online news portal. Our aim to be the voice of reason amidst the storm. To bridge the middleground between reactionary alternative medias and the closed ranks of established press. Our goal to be the sounding board of intellectual discussions and the catalyst of informed decisions. It will probably be a Joomla site, so maybe I shall be around the block here still, once and in a while. I am now also part of "Poetry Underground" upon FaceBook's Malaysia Network, a local poetry collective, writing and performing poetry for the masses. You might catch me ,performing guerilla style, at a street corner sometime!

I leave you all with happy thoughts and a fond farewell. "The first star on the right and all the way till midnight... "

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While it has been a blast answering all the inquiries and issues from your support tickets.  I have decided to take some time off this week to pursue my hidden passion, performing my poetry to a public  audience! I have been writing poetry ever since I was in highschool, but mostly I am a closet poet-wannabee who hides his works in his back pocket, so to speak.

 I have fallen in with some rowdy poetic types of late, folks from the "Poetry Underground" From the Malaysia Network on Facebook, and have been inducted into the ancient art of  poetry performance. I have had my virgin entry into this art last Saturday at a "Readings @ Seksan" session with some local Malaysian authors and a visiting Kunal Basu of "The Minituarist" and "The Opium Clerk" fame at "Seksan's" a local art gallery. "Readings @ Seksan" is a monthly affair organized by local literary figure Sharon Bakar as a place for local and regional authors to gather, network and read from their literary masterpieces. I was nervous and only managed to put on a passable read of my "To Thee O! Sweet Angel", a poem about my first love. Though honestly, I and my poet friends were only called upon to perform to fill-in the time for some absent authors. But that is fine with me!

Spurred on by this, I have signed up for a poetry performance workshop to be conducted by Britain's Jacob Sam la Rose courtesy of British Council, Kuala Lumpur. I shall be attending the workshop on the 24th and the 26th. I have also registered  to enter the KL"Go Green" Poetry SLAM, so named in honour of Earth Day. I shall be competing with other performance poets in a SLAM style poetry recital. It shall also be on the 26th, after my workshop. I would like to beg your forgiveness if I may be a bit late in replying to your tickets from during that time (24th - 26th April. Though as always, Mark and Azrul himself will be online and on duty. 

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While we wind our way through the hustle and bustle of coding our components and the all important business of answering your support tickets, here at Azrul.com, we also aware of the bigger picture. The greater issues that engulfs us all, as one big family of humanity and our shared home, planet earth.

In order to observe and honour Earth Day, which is tomorrow, the 22 April of this year, Azrul.com will run its operations without lights and as paperless operation for the entire day. The lights at our office shall be turned off at the close of operations today and shall not be turned on again until the morning of 23 April. We shall also turn off our printers and put down our pens and pencils tomorrow and run without our usual scribblings and writings and printings.

A drop in the bucket I suppose and symbolic gestures at best. Though we do hope to slowly work towards helping to reduce the burdens upon mother earth and run our operations in a sustainable manner. Till then we solemnly observe Earth Day and pledge our support for our Earth, our future and our childrens's future.

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We’re off to Chicago in the month of May to join other fellow Joomla! Developers for the big event, Joomla! Expo 2008 that will be held on the 16th May, 2008. This big event will be held at Renaissance Chicago O-Hare Hotel. At the J! Expo, you have the chance to meet and mingle, brainstorm your brilliant ideas with fellow Joomla! developers. We’re hoping to meet up with other Joomla! users in the States that is interested in joining Joomla! Expo on the 16th May. Reserve your tickets here before seats run out!

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I am happy to announce that azrul.com team will be moving to a new office soon. Our new office is located in Metropolitan Square, Damansara Perdana. As you can read from the title, the new office comes with one of those so called 'infinity' swimming pool, where the pool is build against the edge of the building using glass. So, in case the glass is breaks while we're having a swim, we will end up on the road!

The new space is just over 2,000 square feet in size and will give us a little bit more space to have a proper meeting and conference room, a proper place for our servers and perhaps a kitchenette. We spend a lot of our time in the office, so I want to make it nice and cozy.

Along with the new office, we're hoping our "super secret" project will be ready for preview by then!

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Recently, we have noticed that there are a couple of users who are actually unable to connect to our support desk located at http://support.azrul.com . While we are trying to rectify the issues with our upstream Internet Service Provider, it is actually quite difficult for us to locate the bottlenecks since most of us are able to access the site. 

Nevertheless, if you do fall into the above, you would still be able to access our support forums at http://forum.azrul.com and any emails sent to support@azrul.com are actually retrieved by our support desk. 

Anyway, if you are experiencing issues connecting to our support desk, I would like to request for your assistance to send me an email at mark@azrul.com or support@azrul.com with a "ping" report, "traceroute" report and also your IP address so that I would be able to further look into the issues.

 

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With the tick tock of clocks and the setting of suns, it is now near the end of 2008's first quarter. Wow! How time does seem to fly, does it not? It is almost just like yesterday that we were releasing our components for 1.5 and it seemed like just but a few moments ago that I was welcoming this year of the rat. Now here we are, fully 1.5 compatible and in the midst of new tales, fresh adventures and latest tidings.

 

First off, Azrul Studio bids a fond farewell to Eddie Yanto a while back, our bona fide hard core code- cruncher . While his time here has been a blast, he has set his sights on other things and we bid him good luck in his new journey. Needless to say we will on the lookout for talented programmers to flesh out our dev team. Anyone interested can email me at hazlan@azrul.com. We also offer a sizeable bounty (RM2000) to anyone who can refer to us suitable candidates. We are looking for keyboard cowboys and code jockeys. With intimate knowledge of PHP, MySQL and Javascript. As always AJAX, JSON and PHP framework knowledge will be an advantage.

We also had our company breakfast at Bangsar Shopping Centre's La Bodega this week to welcome the lovely Rekha, our new Business Development Gal. Well it seems that I will no longer be the odd business development duck in this software developer's paradise. Finally someone who I can speak the business lingo to. Anyway, she will be spearheading our new aggressive expansion strategy. As I said earlier, Azrul Studio is looking to go far this auspicious year! As always, there was a misunderstanding about the order whenever our crowd goes out to our company breakfast. I guess, we may have been cooped up way too long in the office and need to rediscover the pleasures of good food and communicating with helpless waiters. But it was sorted out in the end and we had a wonderful time exchanging tales and trading jibes, ideas and generally havign fun welcoming the new addition to our team.

As for our components, the buzz around the developer's lounge is that the final touches is currently being done on MyBlog's modules and content mambot integration for Joomla 1.5, by none other then Azrul himself. Though that is all I was able to get out of Mark after bribing him with some Mars bars the other day. When is it going to be released? I don't know, but it will be soon. Stay tuned ladies and gentlemen for further news adn developments!

Speaking of developments, Azrul's experiments with XEN and VPS has been quite successful and we have our very first server up and running. In fact our support and main sites are now hosted on our hosting service. Dubbed 3GoHost, this will soon be another branch of our service. Plans are being made to expand our server count soon and we will begin our entry into the still untapped territory of VPS hosting service in Malaysia. Meriza, Rekha and Myself will be busy soon, overseeing the business side of things while Mark and Azrul is hard at work between support tickets and improving our code, building and testing our servers.

In conjunction with Joomla-my.org Azrul Studio will be working hard to organize and energize Joomla! Day Malaysia 2008. We are in the planning stage right now. I have been in touch with Alex Kempkens of the Joomla Core team in their forums and Azrul will liaise with the committee from Joomla-my.org. We are looking forward to a grand and glorious Joomla! Day Malaysia 2008. We shall increase the number of participants this year and will reduce the required fee by a bit. Our aim to make Joomla! 2008 accesible to more people and reach out to more users.

By the way, we have updated our website with a new template and the latest versions of our components. Hope you guys like our new look. What do you think? Do tell us and leave your comments. There is a also a new FAQ section and a User manual out for MyBlog

Well, that's all for today, I am off to other more demanding work. Will share more tales with you guys later. Have a great week!

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