Joomla! proudly presents its most important coding adrenaline surge to the development and designer community. With today's release of Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2, we're shifting gears into turbo mode; an entirely re-factored core, internationalisation, FTP layering, next-generation API and framework that's so flexible and powerful and, of course, a designer's dream for unparalleled templating flexibility.

The Red Barchetta — Beta-2

We've dubbed Beta-2 'Red Barchetta', in keeping with the spirit of freedom, power, simplicity and flexibility unknown in an Open Source framework. Besides Red Barchetta conjuring up triumph through coding revolution, this baby provides developers and designers with unequaled tools. This makes Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2 the ultimate enabler for your projects. Now is the time for you to take it for a serious drive to help our team refine the software for our release candidate goals. It's also probably the best time for you to start learning the nuances of the new system to enable you to migrate your extensions and templates to the next generation CMS.

How you can Fuel the Red Barchetta?

Thowing real energy at 1.5 by jumping into the codebase — making your current extensions and templates compatible, creating new extensions, new templates and making use of all the wonderful features in 1.5. Joomla! 1.5 Beta-2 is feature complete so dive in under the hood and lets see what you can create. There never has been a better time to get motivated as this is the last beta prior to release candidate.

What's the best way community users can contribute?

While our primary focus on this release is for developers and designers, if users have questions or want to report a bug, our forum is the place to be. We want to move forward to the release candidate as soon as possible. For this it is important to be as specific as you can be if you file a bug report, and before you file a report please take the time to check whether this problem has been reported before.

What is the difference between a beta and a release candidate?

The difference between a beta version and a release candidate is best described in terms of code maturity. A beta version is not considered to be ready for production sites. With a release candidate out the development workgroup says that they are almost done, and consider it production ready.

Why should I use Joomla! 1.5?

With Joomla! 1.5 the Joomla! project really starts firing on all cylinders. The difference between our current 1.0.12 and the forthcoming 1.5 Beta-2 are not easy to describe, but in essence Joomla! 1.0.x was based upon the Mambo codebase, whereas Joomla! 1.5 has been completely rewritten from scratch. Joomla! 1.0.x was written with "freedom of use" in mind; with Joomla! 1.5 we expanded on this and added "ease of use". This all sounds very nice, but what does it mean? Freedom of use refers to the unlimited possibilities you have when building web-sites, and with ease of use we have tried to make life simpler for the end user, the web administrator and of course the third party developers.

How do 3PD developers get to learn how to develop for 1.5?

This is the moment you all have been waiting for to dive into Joomla! 1.5 and discover the new framework. The code is fully feature complete and feedback from early adopters has been very positive. If you're interested in developing extensions on the new Joomla! Framework this is the time to jump on board!

Developer Resources:

• Developer Network Wiki
• Joomla! 1.5 API Reference

Where do I find information on templating for Joomla! 1.5?

Before we point to an excellent piece of documentation it is important to realise that all templates for Joomla! 1.0.x can be used in Joomla! 1.5. A lot of features have been added to the templating system in Joomla! 1.5, but all 1.0.x templates can be used within Joomla! 1.5. There are several resources that describe the new template features, a great resource is the template tutorial and of course the BEEZ template that we included in Beta-2.

The Red Barchetta

And the Red Barchetta? A catchy code name for Beta-2 with a hint of metaphor about open source.

The "Red Barchetta" is a futuristic song about a wise uncle who keeps a Red Barchetta in his barn long after automobiles are outlawed (Before the Motor Law). A kid takes the car for a ride and ends up being chased by a Gleaming Alloy Air car. He outruns and ditches the law and returns to the barn, hides the car and goes off to dream about freedom with his uncle by the fireside. The Red Barchetta symbolises the spirit of freedom and freewill. Stories like this manifest in true open source spirit. But what has it to do with Joomla? Quite simply, we are one step closer to celebrating the new levels of freedom, by offering the second beta of Joomla!

For many of us, participating in open source is about as close as we'll ever get to being revolutionaries. Go on, we dare you ... jump in the Red Barchetta and take it for a serious spin. Be part of something that creates dramatic, wide-reaching change.

Let the revolution begin and show your spirit by displaying our Beta-2 Badges.