As many of you know, in late 2009 it was decided by OSM and the project leadership to contract with Andrew Eddie and Louis Landry and to pay them for working on the Joomla! project. This was a very big step and was only undertaken after much discussion and careful consideration. There was strong agreement in the OSM and project leadership for this decision. Formal and informal polling of community members found a substantial majority in favor of the concept, with a minority opposed to it. Some of those opposed had strong feelings against it.

From the start, the plan was for Andrew to focus on coding for version 1.6 and for Louis to help support Andrew but also to work on longer term and infrastructure projects. This general plan is still in place today, although some of the specifics have changed over time as version 1.6 has moved from alpha to beta.

The Production Leadership Team (PLT) was tasked with the role of setting the priorities for this work and providing supervision and oversight. Initially, this was done informally. Recently, we have instituted a more formal process whereby the PLT has started issuing monthly reports to OSM and the community on the work completed and goals going forward.

What does this mean to you? Just this. The PLT makes the decisions about what gets worked on and the priorities going forward. So, for example, if you have ideas or concerns about what either of these individuals is working on (or not working on), you should express them to the PLT, not to Andrew or Louis.

If you don't like the whole idea of paying them for doing this work, then you are absolutely entitled to that opinion. But again, your difference of opinion is with the project leadership and the OSM leadership, not with Andrew or Louis.

I only wish the PLT could take the credit for the fantastic work that these guys have been doing during this time. But that credit goes to them alone.

In a community as large and diverse as ours, there are always going to be disagreements. This issue is particularly sensitive and one on which people can have very strong feelings. I hope that people on both sides of this issue can work together and keep their disagreements respectful.

The Joomla! Project proudly announces the September 2010 Issue of the Joomla! Community Magazine. The magazine is a monthly collection of articles and illustrations highlighting events and accomplishments of the Joomla! community.

You have to agree that Drupal admin screens can be pretty gnarly to interact with. If you want a better looking Modules listing page and if you want a tidier node add and node edit form... Then read on and watch the video at the end.

OK. I Pride myself on being HIPP and knowing about the newest modules and the coolest modules. I can not explain how I missed the MODULE FILTER module.

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Late in the code sprint the last day of DrupalCON in Copenhagen, there was a lot of discussion going on about the upgrade path in Drupal 7.  Questions of how to handle certain aspects of the process and prevent horrible flaming death when upgrading a site and its contrib modules.  Upgrade processes, much like data migration, often become a sticky problem.   Right now that stickiness has literally stuck the release of Drupal 7.

Regardless of the release status, folks are starting to adopt D7 for their projects.  The Examiner recently launched on Drupal 7.  Acquia's Drupal Gardens moved into public beta this summer, also on D7.  These folks aren't alone, but not everyone has the expertise and backing to convince the decision makers to live on the bleeding edge.

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Some of you may have seen my tweets and screencasts about the ELI Media Server.  It's a new project as part of ELMS that will involve a lot of screencasts about how we're integrating m