Today I'm both proud and excited to be able to announce the first alpha release of Ninjaboard 1.0. It's has been a long while coming and it's finaly here. If you don't want to read-on and just want to go play, go grab the package here [link]
The first Alpha release is not feature complete yet but already includes all the major features you expect for a forum solution for Joomla. Here is a list of all the goodies you are getting in this Alpha :
- Categories have been dropped in favor of unlimited depth forum hierarchies.
- Added a new and very powerful template engine which is capable of blending with any Joomla template with just a couple of clicks.
- Added core breadcrumbs support
- Backend fully Mootools 1.2, for frontend we use Jquery to be able to offer superb compatibility any template
- Coded from scratch using the Nooku Framework
Now, since some of these bullets are worthy of their own post, I'll focus on the feature we are most proud and excited about : The new template engine, codename 'Cameleon'.
Ninjaboard 1.0 comes with a revolutionary template engine which supports a new technique we call 'auto-skinning' - just like a Chameleon can change it's skin pattern
and colors to fit the scenery surrounding it to camouflage itself - Ninjaboard is capable of blending with any template you install in your site. It will simply take on the style of the template.
This is perhaps the most unique feature Ninjaboard 1.0 has. It allows you to literally setup your forum in hours, not days or weeks. No need anymore to edit PHP files and risk breaking your site, or hire a developer to make you a custom template. It will just work and look beautifully integrated in your site !
This also means that Ninjaboard is extremely lightweight and very fast as it's reusing as much of your sites imagery and css as much as possible. The actual css and images in Ninjaboard are just a fraction of what's common in forum extensions in general. Yes, performance also matters.
When you look at the screenshots below you might wonder how that's even possible, as it looks like Ninjaboard is very heavy on the graphics.
Clicking a screenshot will take you to a page were you'll see links to the template vendors demo site of it and such.
Also, we're currently setting up a live demo site were you get to try what you see pictured below, yourself. And since I'm on the Morph team, Creativa is guaranteed to support it.
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