In may 2010, the people.joomla.org website (PJO or JPeople), mainly built on Jomsocial, launched as a beta to see if the social media sides of joomla could be centralised. It also provided a home for the Joomla User Groups, developer fan clubs and various communication channels with the Joomla teams.

Recent changes on the joomla family sites such as Events team getting their own subsite, the JUG team relaxing the rule on forcing people to have a listing on PJO, Community blog posts discussions moving to the forum and with the impending release of 2.5 earlier this year, the moderation team asked the community for suggestions of how to improve the site.

In the 1.7 release of Joomla! was introduced a cool functionnality, Menu Items Associations for a Multilanguage site.

See: community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1468-multilang-in-17-whats-new.html

It's a pleasure to announce here that Joomla 3.0.2 is bringing an improvement we have all been waiting for:

Items Associations

It is limited in 3.0.2 to the articles and article categories, but will be for sure extended to all core components (if someone codes it...   at Benjamin).

Compatibility with 2.5

 The new feature is backward compatible. One just needs to save again the parameters in the System Language Filter plugin and make sure all is fine for the already associated Menu Items.
The screenshots below are done from an updated Multilanguage demo site ( See 2.5 version here: multilingual-joomla-demo.cloudaccess.net/ )

How does it work?

1. Edit the System Language Filter plugin and make sure that Items associations is set to Yes

  2. Associating Articles Categories
When the parameter is set in the plugin, a new Associations tab displays when editing a category. All Content Languages display and a dropdown lets you choose for each of them among the categories set to that language.

3. For the categories for which association is implemented (Articles Categories for now), a new Association column will display in the Category Manager. Hovering the icon will display, as for Associated Menu Items, the associations implemented.

4. Associating Articles
A new Associations tab displays when editing an article. Clicking on the Select button will open a modal with all filters where one can choose an associated article in another content language.

5. A new Association column will display in the Article Manager. Hovering the icon will display the associations implemented for a specific article.

6. The interface is similar for menu items associations.

7. On the front-end, here is a page displaying a list menu item of a category set to en-GB. We have no menu items set to display the articles, but some articles are associated (the "Introduction" article shown above).

8. Let's click on the "Introduction" article

9. Then click on the French flag in the Language Switcher module. The associated article will display.

10. That's it! The behavior is similar for categories and menu items.

Who did it ?

We have here to thank Benjamin Trenkle who proposed code for this new feature in the feature tracker.

He is a freelancer and uses joomla most of the time for creating extensions and some templates for his customers.
He also created a club management component for joomla!
His site: www.wicked-chick.de/
 

Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) is the biggest and most profitable bank in Nigeria. They are one of the biggest companies in Western Africa and have opened branches in Cote d'Ivorie, Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom.

GTBank are also pioneers in mobile banking, so it's no surprise that their new website is mobile. And, what better choice is there for a mobile-ready website than Joomla? See their new Joomla site at gtbank.com.

The Mobile View of GTBank.com

Peugeot is one of the most famous car brands in Europe.

Peugeot can trace their company history back to 1810, eighty years before they even started making cars. Peugeot is now part of the Peugeot Citroën group, the second largest carmaker based in Europe.

Last week we mentioned that Leonardio Di Caprio uses Joomla and was using a particularly sophisticated design.

Well, Peugeot.com also runs on Joomla and they are pushing design boundaries. Check out their beautiful, multi-lingual site.

Leonardo Di Caprio is one of the most famous actors in the world.

Leonardo has shown the ability to choose great roles, starring in movies from Inception and Gangs of New York to Titanic and Catch Me if You Can.

It seems he can also choose great software. His new site LeonardoDiCaprio.com runs Joomla. This is a particularly interesting site in its design and its navigation.