The Joomla! community announced the release today of version 2.5.  Joomla is one of the world’s most popular open source content management systems (CMS) used for everything from websites to blogs to Intranets. 2.5 is a LTS or long term support release that sees the end of support for Joomla! 1.5 and Joomla 1.7 (They jumped straight from 1.7 to 2.5) All users of Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7 should consider updating their installations. They should consult a Joomla! expert to discuss the implications that this may have on their existing templates and customs modules/ plugins.

Google have introduced a new algorithm change to try and improve site search results. This is what they have had to say.

In our ongoing effort to help you find more high-quality websites in search results, today we’re launching an algorithmic change that looks at the layout of a webpage and the amount of content you see on the page once you click on a result.

As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above-the-fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.