After attending two big Joomla! events this year, J and Beyond in Germany and JoomlaDay Chicago, I discovered significant and conflicting differences between European and American community mindsets. This has gone a long way in helping me understand underlying frustration that exists between the two groups.

I call this the Joomla! cultural divide and it has its roots in the original intent and purpose of the Joomla! project. This has not been clearly understood by many American Joomla!
community stakeholders.

Read more: The Joomla! Cultural Divide

An Alpha version of Joomla! 3.0 is now available for download and it's an exciting new release. Among other things this new version is positioned to have mobile built right into it. So the question now is what version of Joomla! should I be using?

This particular 3.0 version of Joomla! is for developers and early adopters only. If your website is currently on Joomla! 1.5x or Joomla! 2.x you are in good shape. Both of these versions are solid. Something to keep in mind however is that Joomla! 1.5 has come to it's official end of support by the Joomla! project. Now is the time to think about the future...

Read more: Get Ready, Joomla! 3.0 Is Here!

Some people make changes to their website on a live production server. I prefer to work offline. I have a copy of my website on a localmachine server environment using MAMP. If you are not familiar with MAMP you can check these articles out.

Working offline helps you avoid screwing up your production site if something goes wrong. I discovered this workflow doesn’t guarantee there will be no problems to your live site in regards to using the Disqus commenting system.

I got some complaints recently from people who clicked on my Disqus comments links after I posted  notifications...

Read more: What To Do When Your Disqus Comments Link To The Wrong URL

It can be a daunting task to keep all your Joomla! websites up to date including the third party extensions. Each website is usually a unique mixture of components with their specialized functionality. Although you might only have a small number of extensions and plugins on any particular site, once you have several sites you have a long list of things to keep track of. For my websites I've kept track of things by keeping a database record of each site so I remember which ones to login to when updates are required. It's far from a perfect solution and often a site or an extension will lag behind in an update. Now there is an easy way to monitor all your websites and be on top of updates and backups the way a responsible webmaster should be.

Read more: Watchful - Remote Updates, Backups and Security Monitoring for Joomla!