The Joomla! Core Team consists of volunteer developers, designers, administrators and managers who, together with a large range of Work Groups of dedicated community members have taken Joomla! to new heights in its relatively short life. This well-oiled machine is often copied but never surpassed. Joomla! has some wonderfully talented people taking Open Source concepts to the forefront of industry standards. Joomla! 1.5 is a major leap forward and represents the most exciting Joomla! release in the history of the project.

The legend of Buca di Beppo involves a covert meeting of key developers in a Mafia-style restaurant in the United States. 'Bucas' has on more than one occasion been the catalyst for key (and in some cases considered insurmountable) development 'humps' being overcome.

With copius amounts of food and wine flowing, the creative juices of coders seem to work keener, faster, and problems are solved. Louis Landry famously agreed that living near a Bucas could actually lead to faster development cycles.

Mmmm. A restaurant with photos of famous Mafia films like The Godfather and violin cases leaning against the booths. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

If Joomla! was a commercial venture, we're sure management would actually consider building a Bucas inside the building!

Masterchief meet Bugsy Landry.

To ensure this code release, Wilco Jansen resorted to sending rum to joint lead-developer Johan Janssens. Johan, who's had a penchant for rum ever since the first "Pirate's of the Caribbean" movie screened, took the bait, mixed it with Cola, and here we are with our latest 1.5 release. It looks like pirate talk will figure quite a lot in future Joomla! development!

The Joomla! team has about 1 million good reasons to be smiling about the Joomla! 1.5. In its current incarnation, it's had more than 1 million downloads, taking it to an unprecedented level of popularity. The new code base is almost an entire re-factor of the old code base. The user experience is still extremely slick but for developers the API is a dream. A proper framework for real PHP architects seeking the best of the best.

If you're a former Mambo User or a 1.0 series Joomla! User, 1.5 is the future of CMSs for a number of reasons. It's more powerful, more flexible, more secure, and intuitive. Our developers and interface designers have worked countless hours to make this the most exciting release in the content management system sphere.

Go on ... get your FREE copy of Joomla! today and spread the word about this benchmark project.