TYPO3 CMS
Announcing TYPO3 CMS 4.5 Extended Long-Term-Support Plans
The LTS support for TYPO3 CMS 4.5 ends on March 31, 2015. TYPO3 CMS 4.5, however, is among the most popular TYPO3 versions on the web. As a matter of fact this very website typo3.org runs on TYPO3 CMS 4.5. The T3O teams is in the preparation phase for upgrading to the latest LTS, but is facing lack of manpower to finish the job asap.
The CMS team lead by Mathias Schreiber <link http: typo3.org news article announcing-typo3-cms-45-extended-long-term-support-plans>announced an extended LTS plan for 4.5, also because there is a huge demand from the market for support. The fact that this support is on a paid basis sparked of a lot of controversial reactions you can read in the huge comment thread below the article.
Sometimes controversial decisions need to be made in favor of a practical solution. It is great that companies are not left in the cold. The CMS team has listened to what comes from the market and this 'Extended Long-Term-Support' is the best solution also considering we have limited resources in the community to back up such requests - which is a paid prolongation... an extended guarantee.
Mathias Schreiber adds: "The benefit is that all funding directly goes into TYPO3 CMS development."
Of course it is recommended to update your website to the latest LTS version and to update on a regular basis.
TYPO3 Association
Election 2015
The start of the online election period is postponed to March 21. The end date of the period is set to April 4. If you are a member of the TYPO3 Association, please check your profile at <link http: association.typo3.org>association.typo3.org for the validity of your email address. A voting token for participating in the election will be sent to T3A members on March 21.
You can find the candidates on the <link https: forge.typo3.org projects t3a-board-public boards>Election 2015 public board on Forge. Ask them any questions pertaining to the TYPO3 Association or their respective candidacy.
General Assembly & Dialogue Days
At this years General Assembly our members will take <link news article title-why-you-really-must-attend-the-ga-this-year-like-really>important decisions about the future of the T3A. If you want to take part at the GA, please <link http: association.typo3.org general-assembly ga-partizipation ref assoc>register yourself at. Prior to the GA the <link news article dialogue-days-2015>TYPO3 Dialogue Days will take place for the first time. The Dialogue Days will revolve around different topics and give teams the opportunity to work on a common agenda. Currently we have have 12 places left. So If you want to be there, hurry! We especially encourage members of the current teams (f.e.. cms team, neos team, marketing team, t3o team, edu team, server team, editorial team,….) to participate.
The event itself still lacks sponsoring to support location, hosting etc. Your sponsoring will give you a permanent backlink & logo at the event page at typo3.org, mentioning in all official news and a prominent mention at the dialogue days themselves.
Budget for 2015
The Expert Advisory Board gives an <link news article explanation-of-the-t3a-2015-budget>explanation of the available budget for 2015. The article explain how the budgets have been assigned for the year and the motivations for the decisions. The EAB writes: "The budgets for our two biggest software projects (TYPO3 and Neos) are equally important to us: Both have a promising future and are totally worthy of funding, yet we had to cut expenses for both projects in favour of marketing and communication investments. The success of the TYPO3 project relies on improved marketing and communication and therefore we are convinced that this decision will lead to increased funding in the future and thus further accelerate development." For this year the TYPO3 Association has received budget applications for a total of 1.300.000 EUR (2014: 825.000 EUR) with an expected income of 560.000 EUR (2014: 530.000 EUR) for 2015.TYPO3 camps
- TYPO3camp Venlo - <link http: typo3campvenlo.nl>typo3campvenlo.nl (April 17 - 18)
- TYPO3camp Stuttgart - <link http: t3cs.de>t3cs.de (May 8 - 10)
- TYPO3camp Berlin - <link http: www.typo3camp-berlin.de>www.typo3camp-berlin.de (June 19 - 21)
- TYPO3camp Munich - <link http: t3cm.camp>t3cm.camp (September 11- 13)
- TYPO3camp Mallorca - <link http: www.typo3camp-mallorca.org>www.typo3camp-mallorca.org (September 25 - 27)
recap: <link http: keinerweiss.de>keinerweiss.de/1103-recap-international-typo3-camp-mallorca.html
TYPO3 sprints
This coming week it seems to be a record number of people are participating in sprints. There is the Server Team sprint in Frankfurt, The User Experience Week combined with CMS sprint in the Harz and the dedicated Neos sprint in Kolbermoor prior to the Inspiring Conference. Around 60 people from the TYPO3 project will be sprinting.Server Team Sprint (March 20 -22, Frankfurt)
The Server Team Sprint is graciously hosted by <link http: dkd.de>dkd Internet Service GmbH. Michael Stucki tells us that currently, 7 people join full time plus 2 more who are there for only 1-2 days. The main goals for the sprint are the following:- Implement new Single-Signon service for *.typo3.org
- Create scripts to simplify repeating tasks: rename T3O users, change email addresses, etc.
- Update <link http: forge.typo3.org>forge.typo3.org to Redmine v3.0.0
- Upgrade demo.typo3.org
TYPO3 User Experience Week and CMS code sprint (March 21 - 28, Festenburg, Upper Harz)
<link news article t3uxw15-from-21-28-march-in-the-harz-region>typo3.org/news/article/t3uxw15-from-21-28-march-in-the-harz-region/ Petra Hasenau from <link http: www.cybercraft.de>Cybercraft, organises the User Experience Week for the second time. Petra tells 'This Week' that she is very much looking forward to the event again. The event tries to get more female attendants in. Last year one third of the <link http: www.t3uxw.org t3uxw14>participants were women - unusual for most tech event. <link http: typo3.org news article typo3-user-experience-week-2014-full-report-on-t3uxw14>T3UXW14 was the held in October of last year. The timing of this event is early in the year as to allow the results of the week/sprint to be integrated into the upcoming TYPO3 CMS 7 Long Term Support release and to have a similar small meeting at the Developer Days in Nuremberg.
This year T3XW15 is combined with a TYPO3 CMS code sprint. Currently 24 people have enlisted for T3UXW15 and 10 for the CMS code sprint.
The event received only 50% of their requested budget, but by combining with the code sprint, some budget from grid elements and 4-5 people sponsoring their own lodging and travel the event brings together the best of the best again.
Petra also mentions the <link http: www.t3uxw.org donate>t-shirt campaign that brought in some money to lay down a good foundation for the week.
There are actually still a few people on the list to attend and your sponsoring might still enable them to participate.
Codesprint Neos Kolbermoor (March 22 - 26, Kolbermoor)
The Neos sprint will be right before <link https: www.inspiring-conference.com _blank>Inspiring Conference and will take place at the Academy for Professionals (AFP) <link http: wiki.typo3.org neos_code_sprint_march_2015 _blank>wiki.typo3.org/Neos_Code_Sprint_March_2015Upcoming Events
Developer Days (Nuremberg., July 16 - 19)
The <link http: t3dd15.typo3.org>Developer Days 2015 will take place at Nuremberg castle in Nuremberg. Registration will begin April 1 at 10:00AM CET. You can already send in <link http: t3dd15.typo3.org sessions>suggestions for sessions.
The website does honor the Developer Days by its technical foundation. It is based on TYPO3 Flow and Polymer. Thomas Maroschik, Sascha Nowak and Lienhart Woitok are the current web team taking care of the installation. The code resides at <link https: github.com t3dd backend>github.com/t3dd/backend. The team invested above 200 man hours into the t3dd website. There is still a lot to do definitely until after the event. Thomas defines it as a great learning process.
Thomas considers the year 2015 to be a game changer in regards to <link http: webcomponents.org>web components. In order to make it a topic for the Developer Days and to gather experience he decided to realize the site using this technology. Browsers are currently in the process of integrating the necessary base technologies, with Chrome being the current leader. The <link https: www.polymer-project.org>Google Polymer team started some years ago to bring us polyfills that enables you to use those technologies in browsers that didn't support them. (Introduction with slides - <link http: webcomponents.org presentations polymer-and-web-components-change-everything-you-know-about-web-development-at-io>webcomponents.org/presentations/polymer-and-web-components-change-everything-you-know-about-web-development-at-io/)
Polymer is one of the first libraries embracing web components. It is pretty mature for a developer preview. As a storage layer for the data the team started with <link https: www.firebase.com>Firebase during the prototyping phase. Since that did not fulfill the needs they built an own REST based storage layer with Flow. This made many things possible, like typo3.org SSO.
Polymer confronted the team with a head trip, not only learning vanilla js basics again, but also the fact that the isolation of every component is light and shadow at the same time. The benefit of web components is, everything inside is isolated. The drawback is, everything inside - well - is isolated… This means global styles like currently for all kind of html elements isn't easily possible anymore. Unlearning what you know that works is hard, very hard Thomas says. Over time with the X-th iteration they figured out how to build something out of those components. The documentation is OK, but it only describes the components. Pretty much no-one tells you how to build something out of this. Also the whole toolchain we used until then had to be reconsidered and changed.
All in all a technical feat that probably deserves its own session at the Developer Days.
TYPO3 East Europe 2015 (November 13-14, Cluj-Napoca, Romania)
Miscellaneous
The one-stop TYPO3 Vagrant Development box
Have you ever wanted to run a local TYPO3 installation, needed to test several versions of TYPO3 or needed to test a single installation against multiple php versions? You are mostly stuck with a LAMP package, macports, homebrew or some other custom solution. Setting up and configuring these environments is most likely not your cup of tea.
"Create a complete TYPO3 development machine in minutes. No more worries about messing up your operating system."
Michiel Roos, of Dutch TYPO3 company <link https: www.maxserv.com>MaxServ, has developed <link http: www.michielroos.com articles the-one-stop-typo3-vagrant-development-box.html>TYPO3 Homestead. TYPO3 Homestead enables you to It will install a Vagrant box complete with all the versions of TYPO3 you wish to test, along with a full stack of open source software to run homestead. The only thing you need to do is run through the install tool.
The TYPO3 sources will all have the proper push urls and commit message setup out of the box. So you can start bringing in those patches right away!
You can find more information on the <link https: github.com tuurlijk typo3.homestead>TYPO3 Homestead project page.
This Week in TYPO3 is brought to you by <link https: www.maxserv.com>Maxserv. Of course you can also sponsor This Week in TYPO3 and have your name mentioned here as well. Please <link>contact me by mail for more details.
Check out the events calendar for a user group meeting, code sprint or other event near you: <link http: typo3.org events>typo3.org/events/. Do not hesitate to share you TYPO3 activities in 'This Week in TYPO3'. Just let me (@benvantende) know what you are up to.