One of the most followed topics in the Joomla world lately has been the release cycle of new Joomla versions. Since version 1.5, The Joomla! Project has moved to a completely new release cycle and has rapidly changed the version numbering system. This has been met with both praise and complaint. Some of the frustration was due to lack of knowledge or understanding. Joomla 3.0 Alpha-1 was released yesterday, and there is already a good amount of information regarding who this release is for and what it's meant to accomplish.

Open Source Matters, the non-profit organization in charge of providing "organizational, legal, and financial support for the Joomla! open-source project," has identified its four main goals for 2012. These goals were agreed upon after publishing a list of ideas and receiving community feedback starting in November of last year.

The Joomla! Project has announced the immediate availability of Joomla version 2.5.6, one day after the previous release 2.5.5. Twelve issues were discovered and fixed in 2.5.5 including several that resulted in fatal errors of some kind.

The Joomla! Project has announced the availability of the security release version 2.5.5. While this is classified as a security release, there are also 11 new features added and 113 tracker issues fixed.

We've been hearing about Joomla 3.0 for some time already. In fact, we've already written about the updated UI plans here on Joomlanews.net. In a recent Joomla! Community Portal blog post, Mark Dexter reiterates the fact that "Version 3.0 is coming!"

In a Joomla! Community Portal blog post, Steve Burge writes that, "a lot of work has gone into Joomla's social media resources, particularly Twitter and Facebook." He reports that Joomla has over 75,000 Facebook fans and 33,000 followers on Twitter, and they need help in managing these social channels.

You're invited to a free webinar to discover the changes to the user experience in the upcoming Joomla 3.0. 

In a Joomla! Community Portal blog post, Paul Orwig reported on the Joint Leadership Summit held in San Jose, California. In the post he commented that, "it was widely felt that making some changes to our project's leadership structure can strengthen communication and collaboration between teams, as well as improve oversight and accountability for all contributors and teams."

Many Joomla administrators who have already been installing and using Akeeba Admin Tools in their websites will be able to skip that installation from version 2.5.4 onwards.

In keeping with the mobile web buzz and responsive design in particular, the Joomla Usability team, headed by Kyle Ledbetter, has brought a complete web friendly redesign to the upcoming Joomla 3.0.