I had hoped to start this blog post with the news of the release of version2 of the Zen Grid Framework but alas that is not the case. Yesterday I released the Joomla 1.5 version of the Hub Joomla template (Joomla 1.6 version coming later today) which as you can see is a striking magazine styled template that comes with some beautiful large date formatting in the Joomla content as well as the k2 Joomla template that ships with the template.

Before I go on - you can check Hub's features, live preview, documentation or download options in the usual spots.

So why did we release the May template in June?

For those that don't know we follow a schedule of monthly Joomla template releases, that usually means we release a template within the month that the template is designed for. Hub is the first template that missed the targeted release month.

There are a few reasons why this happened but the main reason was that we were slightly over ambitious in what we wanted to do with the next incarnation of the Zen Grid Framework - our Joomla template framework. So it got to the point a few days ago, where we realised that while we had a killer Beta of version 2, it wasn't really stable enough for production. This lead us to the big decision to keep working on v2 and release Hub on v1.1 of the framework.

One of the challenges of working in a small team (ie 2 developers) is that there is always a constant tension between assigning time to developing new features for templates and extensions, maintaining production levels and of course maintaining the old catalogue. This month we underestimated what was required to maintain the equilibrium.

The good news is that v2 of the framework is not far off and we hope to have a test copy for members in a week or so. I think that v2 will fill in a lot of the blanks in terms of functionality for developers and to some degree performance and other optimisation that is missing in v1.1 series of the framework. v2 is also based on a system plugin which means that you will no longer need to install JB Library along with the template and framework and all current functionality provided by JB Library will now be handled from the template administrator.

As always for those members whose subscriptions expired in May if you would like access to the Hub template files please make contact via the contact form and I will send you the relevant files.

Also please note that the Joomla 1.6 version of Hub will be available later today.