The Joomla Project has announced the release of Joomla 1.6 Beta. Designed to offer enhanced site control and a more polished user experience, Joomla 1.6 is expected to deliver 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.
Some of the key features that will be introduced in Joomla 1.6 include:
- 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.
In addition, developers and implementers should enjoy the new ability Joomla 1.6 provides in allowing extensions to be built with granular control and permissions. This feature will make it easier to create more advanced, enterprise-focused applications and extensions for Joomla.
“With the release of 1.6, The Joomla Project is transitioning the development process to a more iterative, time-based release cycle,” said Louis Landry, a lead developer and community member of The Joomla Project. “This new approach will help streamline the production of new code and better ensure timely releases around product updates. I’m very excited about the beta release and look forward to working with the entire community as we continue to refine the system.”
Additional beta and release candidates of Joomla 1.6 will likely follow this initial beta release of Joomla 1.6. A stable version of Joomla 1.6 is possible toward the end of Summer 2010. The ability to deliver Joomla 1.6 at these times "is directly proportional to the amount of volunteer help the project receives" from its open source community.