Years ago, customer information was kept on rolodex cards or ledger sheets. Today the web-based equivalent is the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. They're still about as exciting and visually appealing as a rolodex card, but just as invaluable. For instance, in our business, all our customers contact information is in our CRM, as well as their website information: who the name registrar is, what Joomla components they have installed, which software licenses they've paid for, etc. This enables any of our team members to gain access to this critical information wherever they are.

The Joomla! community has launched a new community online magazine. It's a good looking site, and has lots of information for everyone from new users to power users. So check it out!

Joomla 1.6 is in beta test right now. It's currently at beta 7. When will it be ready for general use? The standard answer is 'When it's ready.' The issue tracker currently lists about 60 'confirmed' bugs, about 20 'in progress', about 45 'pending', 15 'in review' for about 140 or so bugs that need to be resolved. Hopefully they'll get nailed in upcoming weeks, then we'll get 1.6 release candidate this fall. So when will we do our first 1.6 website? After 1.6 goes gold, we'll keep an eye on the extensions and templates that are 1.6 ready. After Joomla!,...

Every now and then, we're asked by a client if they should have a separate version of their website for mobile devices. These are generally called 'mobi' sites, because they often have a '.mobi' top-level domain name instead of the common '.com' or '.org'.   The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the de-facto standards body of the web, have published a set of best-practices for the mobile web. The idea is to make websites accessable to mobile devices which don't have the capabilities of desktop or laptop browsers. The standard 'feature phone' screen was 240 pixels wide, and 320 pixels high,...

Choosing a good password is always a problem. The essential tension is that a good password should be easy to remember, yet hard to guess. Most people err on one side or the other. Most people choose passwords that are too easy to guess, such as the name of their spouse or pet. Any word in the dictionary makes for a quick security breach. We have other vendors who send us passwords like 8#{aUv7. Yes, it's hard to guess, but also impossible to remember, guaranteeing that it'll have to be written down, copied, pasted, stored, and generally left laying about. Here's...