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.

JoomlaPraise has updated their database query extension, PraiseQuery, for use with Joomla 2.5 and recently added it to the Joomla Extensions Directory, giving users an easy way to "run any database query and display the returned rows in a table on your Joomla site."

Many people struggle to decide whether to using WordPress or Joomla as the content management system of choice. But it is in fact possible to have the best of both worlds.

Five Joomla related businesses have combined to launch a Joomla 2.5 upgrade contest. This contest is presented for Joomla website owners who would like to have their current website upgraded to version 2.5 for free.

Earlier this year Joomlart realeased JA Elastica, a responsive designed template based on their T3 framework and offered free of charge. As responsive websites, and mobile web browsing in general, take over the attention of developers, experience with these tools and templates is becoming more and more critical.

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.

The Joomla! Project has announced the immediate availability of a new security update, Joomla 2.5.3. This update comes somewhat quickly on the heels of the release of 2.5.2, which was only ten days ago.

The Joomla! Project has announced the immediate availability of a new version update, Joomla 2.5.2. This update comes roughly six weeks after the release of 2.5.0, and over one month after 2.5.1.

While the full package is available for download, the one click update procedure from the back end Administrator is the recommended method for updating your Joomla website.

RocketTheme's popular "RocketLauncher" platform is now available with ten of the site's current Joomla template themes. "The following Joomla templates have been updated with Joomla 2.5.1 RocketLaunchers: Clarion, Halcyon, Visage, Enigma, Momentum, Radiance, Camber, Reflex, Modulus and Nebulae. More are coming soon," say developers.

Intellispire has released an update to their commercially available Aweber Plugin for Joomla. The extension is now compatible with all Joomla versions from 1.5 through 2.5.

While there are many extensions that provide the ability to connect to autoresponder mailing list companies such as MailChimp and Constant Contact, there are surprisingly few that provide this functionality specifically for Aweber.

The Joomla! Project has announced the immediate availability of a new version update, Joomla 2.5.1. This update comes just a little over one week after the release of 2.5.0.

While the full package is available for download, the one click update procedure from the back end Administrator is the recommended method for updating your Joomla website.

RSJoomla! has posted an announcement on their blog notifying customers that all of their extensions are fully compatible with the new release of Joomla. They also mention the ease of which this was accomplished.

The popular Joomla administrative tool, Admin Tools, has been updated to include new features and address issues from the previous release, 2.2.a2. This extension allows Joomla website administrators the ability to perform certain back end tasks such as, "fix your files' and directories' permissions, protect your administrator directory with a password, change your database prefix, and set a secure Super Administrator ID." While this is an Alpha release, the developer has stated that this version is "stable enough for every day use." They go on to say that, "it's the only version of Admin Tools which you can use on a Joomla! 2.5 site." To put the community at ease, they note that they are using this new Alpha release on their own production site.

The Joomla! Project announced the immediate availability of Joomla version 2.5 today. This release was accompanied by much anticipation by the Joomla community as well as some confusion over the new release schedule. The important point to note is that the Joomla! Project is stressing that version 2.5 "is a long-term-support (LTS) release that will be supported for at least 18 months."

In order to provide those in the Joomla community easier ways to promote and market all things Joomla, a few important pieces of marketing material have been released to help with blogging, promoting, selling and informing. Here's what they've listed on their community portal site..

In keeping with the new schedule as planned, The Joomla! Project has made available the first release candidate version of Joomla! 2.5. This is leading up to the general availability release due out January 24, 2012. A release cadidate version is normally the last stage in the software development lifecycle prior to releasing a version that is suitable for public use on production systems.

Widely popular Joomla! extension Phoca Gallery has announced a new stable release, making it compatible with Joomla! 2.5 and introducing several new features. The Joomla! Project has explained that most 1.7 compatible extensions will also run on 2.5; however, the attention to the coming upgrade from high profile extension developers is good news.

The Joomla Project has released Joomla 2.5 Beta2 for download, making this next version available to developers and administrators for testing and for further polishing leading up to the stable release of version 2.5. The currently expected General Availability date is January 24, 2012. They want to make the community well aware that this new release is due out soon. With this release, the end of the development cycle is just about upon us, which means that version 1.7 is nearing end of life and will no longer be supported.