I'm a little late in posting the upcoming theme here and the design you are about to see hasn't fully been finalised but it's construction is already well under way. After last month's textured Ecolift I decided to strip everything away and present something that is a lot simpler and a lot cleaner. We often get asked for simple and minimal business Joomla template designs and I think Rasa fits the bill nicely.

A few weeks ago I started talking to Parthiban Mohanraj,  who you met back in May when I introduced the new Zen Grid Framework icon, about putting together a series of icons for our Joomla extensions. Up until now I've really just cobbled  together a few screenshots of the extensions and put them on an angle in an attempt to be creative and while that had mostly worked for the JB site there wasn't a cohesive throughline that connected the icons.

So I've put together a brief for our major icons and thought I'd document the process here. I must say at the very outset that Parth is an incredible resource and a real dream to work with. He is fast and professional with such an incredible eye for detail  that I won't hesitate to recommend him to anyone who needs icons designed - right enough of the smoke - lets dive into the process. If you need to contact Parth directly you can do so via his page over at Deviant Art.

I've been meaning to implement coupons for current and renewing members for sometime now and yesterday I released two new coupons for current and expired members to use for our Joomla template club. If you have a current membership you can use the coupon "jbrenewal" to get 20% off the renewal or if your subscription has expired you can save 10% off the renewal by using "jbrenewal2".

We will be rolling out a new price structure that we hinted at around the start of the year in the next few weeks and these renewing discounts will be factored into the new price structure. In the meantime you can enjoy the savings by using the coupons when you renew your subscription to the club.

After a slight delay Im very happy to announce the availability of the Ecolift Joomla Template - the august Joomla template release for club members. Econative became Ecolift a few days ago so thanks to all who sent your suggestions in. I think Ecolift suits this one nicely.

The Ecolift template is an elegant environmental theme with soft grunge elements combined with an organic crafty feel. Its the perfect template for creative artists, green businesses or even handmade arts and crafts websites. It comes with a K2 Joomla template, unique tab like styling for our slideshow module and is built on our super flexible and easy to use Zen Grid Framework.

You can see a full break down of the features on the Ecolift page or jump straight to the demo site to see Ecolift in action. Dont forget to check the extensive documentation before you start using the template.

We have just locked in the design for the August Joomla template and this time its a soft, subtle textured, all natural, eco friendly Joomla template. The design comes courtesy of David Vuu (Avanti, Pixel Eight and Newstream fame) and I think he is done another amazing job. We are still playing with the name and Ill fill you in on more details a little further down the track but for now you can get a taste of what we will be releasing in August.

Check the screenshot after the jump.

Ive just rolled out the next major update of our Joomla template framework - the Zen Grid Framework. Version 1.05 is a reasonably major release and it adds a lot of functionality to the core framework. Check out the feature list below or if you cant wait - make sure you read through the changelog for your respective template in the changelog post of your template's forum.

The big news is that the framework now supports Google Fonts - as you saw in the recent release of the Newstream template. This feature adds an extra layer to the visual aesthetic of your site and gives you the option to use google fonts for your logo, headings, body text or navigation elements. We will be updating the docs later today so be sure to check out the options available there in the next day or so.

I'm happy to announce that the Newstream Joomla  template is now available for all of our club members.  New stream is a simple news portal or Magazine template with a bold color hierarchy that is perfect for creating an elegant Joomla magazine or Joomla news site. It has a wonderful K2 template that is perfect for ;multi-user blogs or magazine type layouts.

 The template is a little late in delivery but we had to delay this release in order to make it compatible with the latest version of the Zen Grid framework. Version 1.05 of the framework  includes a  few new tasty features such as support for Google fonts, better implementation of the logo or the option to use Google font replacement for the logo as well as a handful of other smaller layout tweaks and refinements. I'll be spending the rest of today porting the existing templates to the new framework and will put together a special announcement regarding the release of the new version of the framework.

For now you can see the Newstream template  in action on the demo site, or read about its features on the feature overview page or check out the indepth documentation on the doc page.

The very first edition of the Joomla Community Magazine has just hit the presses and judging from the responses via twitter and in the comments on the magazine it's already quite a success. There has been some amazing work done by the team in putting this complex site together and the list of authors is already very impressive.

The site design was created by our friends over at Komrade (aka Joomlaworks) and is an edgy design that fits nicely with the other official Joomla site designs. While there is still some functionality yet to be rolled out this is an awesome release and should hopefully be the base for informal, indepth and insightful reflections on using and working with Joomla from users and developers alike.

We have just released a pretty major update to our free jQuery JB LIbrary plugin. The aim of this release is to cut down on conflicts caused by other instances of the jQuery library loading on the page. jQuery is a fantastic javascript library but it tends to misbehave if there are multiple versions of the library being loaded and unfortunately some Joomla extension developers dont provide an easy way to turn the references off. JB Library can now remove extra instances of jQuery as well as any other javascript you want removed from your site's output.