LaSalleMart needs prominence in Joomla.
Instead of burying the LaSalleMart dashboard in a component’s admin, we need the LaSalleMart dashboard right in the Joomla dashboard. And, we need to delete or relocate Joomla dashboard icons.
We need to customize Joomla 2.5 for LaSalleMart, so LaSalleMart and Joomla are one. No more relegating ecomm to sub-menus and sub-dashboards. No more that ecomm looks like an add-on. We want one integrated whole.
Furthermore, we want a matrix of Joomla-LaSalleMart Distros. We want Distros based on geographical location + “white label” + vertical market specialization.
The Square One CMS is a critical precedent for doing Joomla distributions. It’s important to see that it is not a crazy idea to intermediate Joomla — that it’s actually happening.
It will be critical for Club Commerce to intermediate Joomla. To strip it of superfluous extensions, to customize the updater as we see fit, and to use it as input into our Distro builds.
Another important aspect is that we will need to manage our success. We need to protect our six figure investment in LaSalleMart programming with Joomla 2.5. Joomla 3.0 may come along and have a whole new way of doing things that lack backwards compatibility. I’m all for progress, but shame on us at Club Commerce for not managing our software investment. Should we blithely allow our software to become instantly obsolete just because a group of people running Joomla says so? When Joomla 3.0 becomes LTS, Club Commerce will have the critical mass to manage Joomla 2.5 & Joomla 3.0 as we see fit.
Square One matters to LaSalleMart so much that I already did two podcasts with S1′s Founder earlier this year.
Jeremy just wrote a terrific post called “Square One 3.0 Discussion” in the S1 Google Group. He enunciates the tensions involved with planning a Joomla 3.0 distro. He also articulates the tensions involved with maintaining a simple little Joomla distro versus broadening the scope into new unique features.
At Club Commerce, the investment in our own “Square One” type of Joomla Distro is worth it. But, an investment it shall be as it will take time, effort, and money to make a serious go of it. We should either offer our own “Square One” type of Joomla Distro to the community; and/or, combine our efforts with the S1 Project in order to support this very worthy endeavour.
In the same way, Club Commerce should become a sponsor of the FoF project. By sponsor, I mean that Club Members pay programmers to do work for FoF, and then offer them to Nicholas — or, perhaps, to pay programmers to do work at Nicholas’ behest.
In either case, we will see where our journey takes us.
It is certainly an experience translating theory into practice. Intermediating open source software is a critical aspect of mitigating risk, and banding together to effect this intermediation is a one reason to band together. The actual Doing It may turn out better than the theory, as my Club Commerce Members contribute back to the projects with which we are intermediating! Sounds good to me.
Another reason to intermediate Joomla itself is hoisting Joomla onto our software development process, in order to unlock inherent value. Again, the “Moneyball”!. You’ll hear references to Jenkins and other infrastructure in Jeremy’s Joomla-and-Beyond-2012 presentation:
<iframe width=”400″ height=”225″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/9nONlUeSXKs?rel=0″ frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
Why Square One Matters To You (JAB2012)
Thank you to Jeremy for leading the S1 project; and, to everyone who is participating. You are doing important work!
