Joomla! 1.6 Available Now – Download the World’s Leading Open Source Content Management System and Easily Build Websites and Online Applications

Joomla (http://www.joomla.org), the world’s most popular open source CMS (content management system), today announced the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6. Users will be able to download the latest version effective this evening from the Joomla website. Designed to offer enhanced site control and a more polished user experience, Joomla 1.6 delivers a variety of new tools to improve website management and access, a more robust organizational structure for content control, and various other user-experience improvements throughout the software. “With new features and capabilities such as the hierarchical design of the access control system, semantic XHTML layouts, one-click extension updates and multi-language functionality, Joomla 1.6 has evolved to become the most user-friendly and powerful tool to develop a web presence,” said Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a not-for-profit created to provide organization, legal, and financial support to the Joomla project. “This has been accomplished through the tireless feedback and work on 1.6 by the thousands of members of the Joomla community over the past year.” Joomla’s ease-of-use and extensibility has made it the most popular and downloaded open source website software in the industry today (it has been downloaded more than 22 million times). It is used for everything from small personal websites to the backend management for some of the largest enterprises and highest traffic sites on the Web, including sites operated by Citibank, eBay, General Electric, Harvard University, Ikea, McDonald’s and many more. Key Features in Joomla 1.6: ·    New Access Control System – Allows site administrators control over who can view and manage content. ·    Unlimited Depth Organizational Model – Gives site administrators and content creators user-defined category levels that allow for the creation of a category tree with as many or as few levels for organizing articles and other content as needed. ·    One-Click Extension Updates – Allows users to keep sites secure and controlled by simplifying the process of updating extensions. ·      Semantic XHTML Layouts – Provides a better baseline for content presentation. ·      Multi-language Functionality – Allows site builders to implement a multi-language site. In addition, developers and implementers will enjoy the new ability Joomla 1.6 provides in allowing extensions to be built with granular control and permissions. This makes it easier to create more advanced, enterprise-focused applications and extensions for Joomla. Furthermore, there are numerous improvements in areas like code reuse, and considerable success in ensuring the stability of application programming interfaces via unit testing. “The current Joomla Platform provides developers with the tools they need to rapidly build the Web of the future,” said Ron Severdia, a member of the Joomla production leadership team. “Although 1.6 is being released today, the Joomla production team is not resting on its laurels. We're hard at work developing even more powerful Joomla features for the future, such as new search capabilities and new ways to leverage website content.” Visit http://www.joomla.org to download Joomla 1.6 today. About Joomla! Joomla is the world’s most popular open source CMS (content management system). With 2.5 percent of the web running on Joomla, the software is used by individuals, small and medium-sized businesses, and large organizations worldwide to easily create and build a variety of websites and web-enabled applications. Due to its power and elegance, it can be used by the most inexperienced user to the most seasoned web developer. Since its inception in 2005, Joomla has been 100 percent community owned and operated, and its software has been downloaded more than 22 million times. For more information, visit www.joomla.org.