We've just flipped the switch on our new Community Support portal, powered by Get Satisfaction. 

You'll now find it easier than ever to post your Seedling-related questions, ideas, praise etc... and even though the plan is to encourage Seedling (and general Joomla) users to help each other get started, discover tips and tricks and such, we'll be checking in regularily and posting back as soon as we can!

> Find Seedling's Community Support @ http://getsatisfaction.com/seedling

Tomorrow commences 'Toronto Open Source Week' and we'll be presenting Seedling at the Open Source Showcase for Non-profits in the morning at the Centre for Social Innovation.

The event is a full-day of presentations, talks and Q&A sessions all geared to inform Non-profit organisations about various types of Open Source/Free Software they can use to better communicate with existing and potential constituents and develop community.

Our plan is to introduce the importance of vetted 3rd party extensions to Content Management Systems like Joomla - we'll be showcasing Seedling's features and talking about advancements we're currently making to our distribution (watch this blog for more info soon.)

Some of you may have noticed seeing a ton of spam build up in our support forums.  What started out as a "we'll get around to fixing this in a second" sort of thing snowballed into having to delete hundreds of fake site members and their posts and has really turned us against the Agora forum extension.

Sorry to any of you looking for some of the genuine posts which got buried in the forums - we'll be launching a new public support forum in sync with our next release of Seedling sometime in October - look here for news on that (it will also feature the forum as an included part of the release).

If you want to have the content management system Joomla + extensions and tools in one package now you have it.  The name is Seedling and it makes your life easier when it comes to build or manage your website.

- Mircea Goia, mytestbox.com

Not only are we committed to making Joomla easier to use, but to helping you use it better.  Because of this we're announcing Seedling's new focus on commercially-supported Joomla packages.

There are now two ways to get Seedling's distribution of Joomla - by choosing our basic/community support or professional support package. 

Now, for just $49 you can download our distribution package and get access to our community forums - where we will be around to help out, but can't guarentee quick answers to your questions.

Signing up for professional support gets you our distribution package, forum access plus 12 months of email and web ticket support! (with typically < 24hr turn-around time.)

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After months of research, discussion, design and development, I'm proud to announce that Seedling is live and our first release is available for download! 

Tons of work has gone into this but its been exciting times! :)  Lets get some questions out of the way so we can start having fun together...

* Bloggers and Press people: download a PDF Press Release here!

What's Seedling's distribution of Joomla?  Simply put, its a complete website in a box, built with Open Source Software.  The package includes Joomla as well as a best-of-breed hand-picked suite of extensions - all integrated and pre-configured, ready to use upon installation on your server.

Sounds interesting - how do I learn more?  Well, get cracking by reading through our website; we've got some general information as well as a feature tour and walk-through video plus some articles & tips to give you background info and have you installing it in no time!

After I've read through it all, what's next?  You can download Seedling's distribution of Joomla here on our website and get cracking. We try to document all the processes you'll be facing in getting your site up and running but if you have any questions, you can easily jump into the community forums and post questions; we'll try to respond with super-hero quickness! :)

What's next?

We're going to be posting here on the site quite frequently - with an bunch of fun stuff here in the blog, articles & tips on making the most of your Seedling install, FAQs to help understand Joomla better and answers to any questions or comments raised in the community forums.

As major versions are released of Joomla core, we will also be creating updates of the Seedling distribution for download.

Also, we'll continue to post to our whyjoomla.com blog (now more often through 2009 - ahem, a New Year's Resolution! :)

Thanks!

Seedling is not only the result of sleepless nights here @ design guru, but the talents, passion and efforts of literally thousands of designers, developers, programmers and good folks who work with Joomla all over the world.

Specifically, we'd like to acknowledge the chaps and lasses in the Joomla core team and working groups, as well as everyone involved in creating and maintaining the extensions we've included in our debut release, Seedling version 1.59.

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Back in 2004 a web development firm in Chicago was faced with the daunting prospect of using bloated software to manage their projects.  To them, it seemed that using Microsoft Project in attempts to organise the development of their projects was the wrong way to go... The result of this dilemma turned out to be a simple-to-use web app that changed their business model and far exeeded their inital modest expectations.

Basecamp has become an industry standard for simple collaborative project planning/management and even set the stage for hundreds of web apps which have sprung up over the past few years.  The guys behind Basecamp at 37 Signals have always maintained a high value for simple interfaces and software that lets people get things done easily.  I fell in love with Joomla around the time Basecamp was released and immediately felt that it expressed those same values.  5 years on, Seedling is now attempting to make it easier than ever to use Joomla well and thats something I'm very happy about.

Cheers and Happy Birthday Basecamp!

Ultimately icons serve the functional purpose of leading eyes towards particular bits of information and/or actions on websites.  Of course, that's not the only reason to use them on your site - the right selection of icons can also add a certain overall feed to your website.

We *love* the Function Icon set - in fact, the icons you see on plantseedling.com pretty much all come from this set.

Released completely for free last year, it features 128 icons measuring 48 x 48px that feature a good number of functional web actions but in a warm and friendly way.  The icons are slightly glossy but don't chase an obviously over-done OSX look like lots of sets on the web.

Download the set to use on your site here:
http://wefunction.com/2008/07/function-free-icon-set