A few weeks ago I created a dedicated twitter account where I post updates for templates, extensions and notify the followers of new blog posts or developments here at Joomlabamboo. It's a good way of keeping track of whats happening here at Joomlabamboo and also of staying on top of the latest Joomla template and extension releases.

In general I keep the main Joomlabamboo twitter account for my own personal web design tweets plus as a way of keeping in contact with the wider Joomla community; while the JB Activity account is a pure technical update stream. So if you want to keep on top of what we are offering you can follow the JB Activity account otherwise if you are less inclined to use twitter you can always grab the rss feed of that account and plug it into your favourite RSS Reader.

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The October edition of the Joomla community magazine has just gone live and in it this month the design team have published an interview with the brains behind the new templating engine for the Ninja Board forum component. Ninja Board promises to be somewhat of a revolution for Joomla forum components which are notoriously difficult to theme.

While the stable release may still be a little while off it's great to see such effort getting put into the front end aesthetic for components for Joomla. One of my bug bears for a lot of third party components is that integrating them into the global template design is time consuming - so it's awesome to see such consideration being made from a front end point of view from one of the innovators in the joomla extension marketplace.

The interview is also worth checking out if you are curious about the Nooku framework which forms the core code framework that Ninjaboard was built upon.

You can read the full interview here.

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The aim for us in creating the framework was to provide an intuitive resource for controlling and building joomla templates for seasoned developers as well as first time Joomla users. One of the main things we wanted to avoid was bloat and so any major version increment really needs to be seen in the context of what we want the framework to do, rather than needlessly adding features just because we can.

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The Joomla template we have in production for October is another sterling design created by David Vuu. The design has been locked down and has already gone into production and should make good use of the Zen Grid Joomla template framework. I've really been inspired by a lot of the fixed element navigation options that have been popping up on the web galleries over the last few months and so I really wanted to incorporate some fixed elements into the design that made sense.

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One of the things I love about a good icon is that they illicit an almost visceral response - on some occasions in the past Ive seen an amazing icon and spontaneously felt like eating it. I think good design should really hit us at that level - sure there are intellectual and technical motivators for a design but truly good design tends to go beneath that - hitting us at an unconscious, intuitive and non-intellectual level.

Hopefully you will want to eat some of the icons that you see below.

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You can see further details here, or jump straight to the demo. For full documentation be sure to check out the Rasa documentation page as well as the Zen Grid Framework documentation for a full understanding of how our Joomla template framework works.

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I'm a little late in posting the upcoming theme here and the design you are about to see hasn't fully been finalised but it's construction is already well under way. After last month's textured Ecolift I decided to strip everything away and present something that is a lot simpler and a lot cleaner. We often get asked for simple and minimal business Joomla template designs and I think Rasa fits the bill nicely.

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A few weeks ago I started talking to Parthiban Mohanraj, who you met back in May when I introduced the new Zen Grid Framework icon, about putting together a series of icons for our Joomla extensions. Up until now I've really just cobbled together a few screenshots of the extensions and put them on an angle in an attempt to be creative and while that had mostly worked for the JB site there wasn't a cohesive throughline that connected the icons.

So I've put together a brief for our major icons and thought I'd document the process here. I must say at the very outset that Parth is an incredible resource and a real dream to work with. He is fast and professional with such an incredible eye for detail that I won't hesitate to recommend him to anyone who needs icons designed - right enough of the smoke - lets dive into the process. If you need to contact Parth directly you can do so via his page over at Deviant Art.

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I've been meaning to implement coupons for current and renewing members for sometime now and yesterday I released two new coupons for current and expired members to use for our Joomla template club. If you have a current membership you can use the coupon "jbrenewal" to get 20% off the renewal or if your subscription has expired you can save 10% off the renewal by using "jbrenewal2".

We will be rolling out a new price structure that we hinted at around the start of the year in the next few weeks and these renewing discounts will be factored into the new price structure. In the meantime you can enjoy the savings by using the coupons when you renew your subscription to the club.

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After a slight delay Im very happy to announce the availability of the Ecolift Joomla Template - the august Joomla template release for club members. Econative became Ecolift a few days ago so thanks to all who sent your suggestions in. I think Ecolift suits this one nicely.

The Ecolift template is an elegant environmental theme with soft grunge elements combined with an organic crafty feel. Its the perfect template for creative artists, green businesses or even handmade arts and crafts websites. It comes with a K2 Joomla template, unique tab like styling for our slideshow module and is built on our super flexible and easy to use Zen Grid Framework.

You can see a full break down of the features on the Ecolift page or jump straight to the demo site to see Ecolift in action. Dont forget to check the extensive documentation before you start using the template.

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We have just locked in the design for the August Joomla template and this time its a soft, subtle textured, all natural, eco friendly Joomla template. The design comes courtesy of David Vuu (Avanti, Pixel Eight and Newstream fame) and I think he is done another amazing job. We are still playing with the name and Ill fill you in on more details a little further down the track but for now you can get a taste of what we will be releasing in August.

Check the screenshot after the jump.

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