StackIdeas

The recently concluded J and Beyond (JAB) conference saw the exchange of name cards, ideas and most importantly, experiences that lasts a lifetime for over 200 people from almost 40 countries. For us, the conference served a significant milestone to the StackIdeas Team because our website won the award in the Corporate Web Sites category in the JOSCAR or Joomla! Open Source Creative and Artistic Recognition Awards night.

“The J!OSCAR Awards are given to the very best talent in the Joomla community and we are proud to recognize Stackideas.com,” said Victor Drover, who oversaw this year’s J!OSCAR awards and is part of the Joomla Events team. “Without their contribution, Joomla wouldn’t be able to grow like it has.”

This is the fourth edition Joomladay organized by the Joomla folks of New England. To be held in the state of Vermont, the second least populous state of America, this one-day event will turn this peaceful place abuzz with talks, networking and the exchanging of new ideas amongst the Joomla users there.

Read more after the jump.

In the spirit of giving, we are proud to announce that we are sponsoring the upcoming Sydney JoomlaDay 2011 to be held this weekend (in a couple of days!). It gives us a sense of enjoyment to be able to contribute to the worldwide Joomla community particularly users in Australia.

It is also a good feeling to be able to give every participants of Sydney JoomlaDay a free copy of our Lean Mean Forum Machine for Joomla, EasyDiscuss. Yeah, participants will be given a little printed coupon to redeem their copy of EasyDiscuss. In the coupon also is a 50% discount for EasyBlog, our popular Joomla blog component, that you could use it to purchase.

If you had experienced an outage while accessing our website lately, it was because we were in the midst of moving to the new servers. We wanted to do this for the longest time but the recent workload got us all caught up with datelines.

And if you noticed, the site should load faster than usual now and we hope this migration effort is worthy of our investment.

Because this is a new server, there may be some technical issues that you may experience and when you're at it, please shout out to us on any weird stuff to support@stackideas.com immediately.

Meanwhile, feel free to download the beta version of the all-new EasyBlog 3.0 and let us know your thoughts. We shall be releasing the final version very very soon.

For smart users like you, we'd like to invite you to grab a copy of EasyBlog before the new price starts as soon as EasyBlog 3.0 is released.

Congratulations to John-Pierre and Friederik! They won the professional subscription copy of both EasyBlog and EasyDiscuss respectively at the recent Joomla! User Group Montreal meeting. If you are around there, you should also try to participate in their meetings! It's really cool!

I hope you are feeling excited as I am right now over the next upcoming major release of EasyBlog 3.0 . Yep, we initially planned to release it as 2.1 but considering the huge amount of new and improved features, a major update is more appropriate. So, instead, we'll be releasing it as EasyBlog 3.0 to help us and the users distinguish between the different version of the products easily.

It's been a week since we posted some leaks on EasyBlog 2.1 and just thought that I should share more about the new features that we've added in it since we are getting near towards the beta release...

Refreshed blog management

The current back end has been revamped to ensure that you would get a clearer picture of all the rich features that comes with EasyBlog unlike the prior which looks a little congested. Oh yes, the refreshed back end works well with Mission Control from Rocket Themes now.

As Joomla users, we all love a little extra when we part with our money. That little extra could be in monetary terms or getting more value at a minimum price. Either one, we all adore promotions and special deals because it makes us happy and perhaps, motivated to carry on doing the things we passionate about.

In the world of Joomla, you will get special deals from specific Joomla developers here and there. I must admit, we at StackIdeas are one of them giving away special promotions when we feel like it, be it direct from us or with a partner. A partner of ours TechJoomla has recently came up with a brilliant way for Joomla users to be smarter shoppers.

We would like to invite all existing EasyBlog users to help spread the love for us at JoomlaBlogger (A professional blogger that blogs mostly about Joomla! related news ). JoomlaBlogger offers quick looks which is a preview of the component to their users.

If the component is rated well enough, they will then provide a full review of EasyBlog. It will be an un-biased review I believe as we do not actually pay them to have a full review. Therefore, we would like to invite our existing or new users to help us spread the love by voting us at the following URL :)

We'd like to congratulate the winners of the recently concluded Joomla!Day giveaways in the Netherlands!

We sponsored 10 copies of EasyBlog to the 6th Dutch Joomla!Dagen held at Kaap Doorn, Netherlands. Our Joomla! blog component was given away randomly by the Organizers to these lucky 10 participants of the Joomla!Dagen.

Here are the names of the lucky people:

1. - Xandra Dick-Tinkelenberg
2. - Wim Strik
   - Roland Dalmulder
   - Milly Uylenbroek
   - Niqui Seuntjens
   - Peter van Westen
   - Charles van Poucke
   - Kees de Goeijer
   - Maarten Kroon
   - Gert Braakman

Each winner will enjoy 12 months worth of technical support and software updates worth $59.

We may not be physically there but sponsoring made us felt that this event was well worth it. Look at the accompanying video, seemed like a lot of fun!

Once again, Gefeliciteerd to all the winners!

We are so excited to show you some of our satisfied users who already adopted our blog component for Joomla! EasyBlog in their Joomla! websites.

There are thousands of sites already using EasyBlog but in this page, we are showcasing some of them and we will continue to update this page with more success stories.

More stuff after the jump.

It is still a new year and we're starting it with an awesome new component for all of you Joomla! users. Let me present to you EASYDISCUSS!

EasyDiscuss is a social collaboration tool that works for Joomla! website especially in gathering user-generated content on a specific topic. The component provides a centralized community-driven area for ideas, information, resources, and feedback that are valuable in making important decisions, or creating results.

Online marketing expert Jon Neubauer has been a Wordpress man in the things he do for his clients. However, it didn't last long until he found out that Wordpress '..became too clumsy, too hard to manage efficiently and logically.' so being an ambitious IT person, he tried Joomla! as the CMS basis in building websites for his clients. The rest, was history.

In his blog post, he tells us which CMS is better, highlighting it with only 3 reason that Joomla! is the winner.

Read his story HERE.

We wanted to put a word of congratulations in his comment box but seems like the reCaptcha plugin wasn't responding... probably he needs a better blogging engine?

Lately there has been some technical glitches happened at our merchnat provider Plimus and this had caused many of our registered users having problems in getting the component.We would like to apologize for this error and Plimus is working on solving this problem as I blog.

In normal scenario, any purchases made from our Products page will trigger an email notification that the order is received and confirmed to the user. The user then clicks on the link inside the email leading them to our Downloads page to download the component installer.

We encourage all users to report to us immediately if you are affected. So how do you know you are affected? If you dont receive the email notification AFTER 1 day, send us a report to support @stackideas.com and we will send you the installer.

In the report, please include the following:

1. Your order reference number
2. Your full name
3. Your email address

We will use the above details to verify your order manually and send you the component directly.

We hope to get the system restored very soon. Thank you for your kind patience.

We started StackIdeas not too long ago but have already received lots of love and support from all our Joomla! users around the world. The people in the Joomla! user group, both new and experienced have showed their endless support in our products and in return of that, we give our best to attend to inquiries and problems they face.

In today's blog, we're happy to tell everyone that StackIdeas.com has been awarded and recommended as a Best Web Tool provider by WebHostingSearch.com and these are the words of recognition directly from them:

"StackIdeas.com has been awarded and recommended as a top rated web tool and development provider by Web Hosting Search who provide some of the best webhosting reviews on the internet."

EasyBlog has been the Joomla! blogging component that have been well received by our users and I think because of the ease setting up and running a blog in the Joomla! environment that had us garner this award. This is our first award in less than a year of operation!

We would like to express heartfelt appreciation to the folks at WebHostingSearch.com for trusting in our products and having faith in the services that we offer. And to all our users and customers, we couldn't be more proud to give our thanks to of you!

You already set up your Joomla! website, beautified it and got all the content ready, so what's next? Make money, of course! It may be free to use Joomla! CMS but who pays for web hosting services? domain names? Joomla! extensions and plugins?

These costs money and you as the site owner have to fork out few hundred bucks for this. In this blog, I am sharing one of the ways to make money from your Joomla! site. It will not be a list of money makers but specifically making money from advertisement.

This article written by JoomlaIsreal spelled out the criterias to follow to get your Joomla! website prepared for selling advertising spaces. It may not be a one-size-fits-all solution but it's quite informative albeit some points in it seem to be common but hey, the first step is always the hardest but who is stopping you? ;)

Read the full report HERE

In the meantime, I wish you best of luck in your money making endeavors!

Yeah, we released version 1.2.130 last week and here's another version at 1.2.132.

It includes many template and layout fixes. Like we always do, improvements appear as they come and we are committed to give you the best with the latest, robust and useful Joomla! components.

If you haven't download the latest latest version, do head on to our Downloads page to do so. You have to be a paid customer to get the component.

In a business set up like us, making a profit is the ultimate goal at the end of the day. But in a business that revolves around Joomla!, we felt there is a sense of social responsibility in us. And because Joomla! is free to use, we believe anything free is useful to the budget conscious user.

A talented Joomla! user may not go far in his/her business if costs of running it is too high. Besides manpower, tools of the trade are the next most important asset to grow. Any great talents would go to waste if costs are a deterrent to a business with high growth potential. Any startup would agree with me here, wont you?

We at StackIdeas are aware of this and we got our minds together to release a Community version of EasyBlog! The EasyBlog Community component will differ slightly from the current version.

Click HERE to view the comparison between EasyBlog Pro and EasyBlog Community.

Besides this, the price has also been revised to reflect affordability. Don't worry, you still get the same amount of dedicated attention from us when you subscribe to our professional support.

Watch out for the announcement on this blog and our Twitter on January 15th, 2011!

Blogs are like the diary of the future. An electronic log of the important things you want to treasure and yet desire to show the world. It is a recollection of your personal history that is accessible anytime, anywhere you want.

A blog surpasses the benefits of having a new page for a business website. You engage people with blogs because it portrays the human side of online technologies.

Here are the 5 other main reasons to start a blog:

1. Passion - Blog about the things you enjoy doing that you could go on doing without getting bored. When you find excitement in the activities you do, blog about it. Start writing about your hobbies and with your blog, you can help others who may have the same hobby as you. Once you get the hang of it, your blog could turn your hobby into a money making machine!

2. Self expression - Everyone loves a little attention and to feel wanted. The blog is the right avenue toward expressions yourself to the world. However, do not be sad if no one is there to listen to you. Just blog away and pour your feelings out. Who knows, someone from the other side of the world with a kind heart has got the ears that listen.

3. Make more friends - Blogging itself naturally creates more friends and more and more visitors to your blog start to comment on it. You will make lots of friends whom have common interests are you, lives nearby and hence, have a meet up with these new people. However, to make friends, be a friend by responding to your visitors' comments in your blog.

4. Builds business - If you have a business website, starting a blog helps to promote your products and services. The sky is the limit when your business has a blog because you never know your next biggest customer may be reading is from the other side of the world, and potentially give you the sales that you have been looking for.

5. Skills - Blogging is similar to journalism. With journalism, the world is in your hands and with it, you can write about anything that interests you. The more blog you post, the better you are, hence, the more readers you will attract. Blogging regularly makes perfect and it brings in more traffic to your site too.

When you are ready to start a blog, why not get it from the experts?