Publisher Status Update

I wanted to reach out to you and tell you about the progress we’re making with Publisher, our new extension that will be the alternative to iJoomla Magazine and iJoomla News Portal.

I know you’ve been waiting for a long time. I know too that some of you have been waiting for Publisher to come out in order to migrate from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 2.5. I understand and sympathize with you.

So where do we stand now?

It’s close, about 95 percent done.

I know… we’ve been saying this for months. All I can add is that when it comes to developing Joomla extensions, or any software for that matter, things can get complicated and unpredictable. Features that you expected to knock out in days get stuck for months. I wish I could predict every bump along the day and was able to give you a better estimate, but sometimes I just can’t.

That’s why I wanted to send this email to you today: to keep you in the loop and answer a few questions we’ve been getting.

So what’s left do?

This is what we’re working on:

• SEF functionality. This is crucial. Without it, you probably won’t be able to use Publisher on your site. There are quite a few SEF solutions out there and we aim to support the majority of them. We will start with Core SEF, sh404 and SEF advanced.

• Adding media right inside the HTML editor. This is a new feature that we think will make a huge difference. We were all ready to go but when we tried it on the demo, we realized it was just too cumbersome. Those kind of discoveries can only happen after you actually use the product. The new approach though has proved more difficult than expected and is the main reason for the delay. It is the right move though, and will be worth the extra time.

• Testing. Once we have completed the SEF and the media additions, we’ll start another round of testing. We want to release Publisher as a beta with a minimal amount of bugs.

Will I have to pay even if I have a Magazine or News Portal license?

Yes. This isn’t an update. It’s a brand new product that has taken us over a year and a half to develop. None of our developers are volunteers and development has cost us an enormous amount. As much as we would love to give you all free access, this is not a plausible scenario if we want to stay in business and continue development for the long run. We do however plan to give you a significant discount!

So when will Publisher be released?

It looks like Publisher will be ready in January once we’ve added and tested the missing features described above.

Will Publisher have all the features of iJoomla Magazine/iJoomla News Portal?

And so much more! Publishers have been asking me for a while to combine the features of News Portal and Magazine, and that’s exactly what we’ve done — but in a much more elegant way. Publisher is completely tableless and the CSS is optimized and well created.

What are some of the new features of Publisher?

The main big feature is the ability for authors to submit and manage articles and media on the front end. We also have new media galleries, issues have drag-and-drop layouts, and much, much more.

Author cPanel:

Drag and Drop Layouts:

Media Galleries

Screenshot of one of our demo issues (Guardian style)

Is Publisher responsive?

At this time Publisher is not responsive but that will be one of our first tasks after it’s stable.

Will publisher be ready for Joomla 3.x?

Not right away. Most users still use Joomla 2.5 so that’s the version we’ll be supporting. However, once we make Publisher responsive, it will be relatively simple to create a version for Joomla 3.x

Will it support k2 and zoo?

Yes, both extensions will be fully supported. You will be able to use core Joomla articles, k2 or zoo inside your zones.

Can I see a demo?

Yes, you can see a demo of Publisher on our demo site

• Front end
• Admin

I hope this answers your questions! If you have any other questions, feel free to ask away on the Publisher forum.

Best Regards,

Tags: publisher