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Read the latest news from Shape5

Please give a warm welcome to the newest member of the Shape5 team, Paul Middleton! Paul has been interning with us for a few months and we have officially hired him to take on his primary role of Joomla forum board moderation. Paul is a very educated web programmer and all around pleasant guy to work with! We think he will be a great addition to our team and a great to service to the entire Shape5 community in the forums! Paul began hard coding websites in the early 90's before any type of real CMS had taken form. Around the year 2002 he began transitioning into a CMS web design approach and finally settled with Joomla in 2009 and some Wordpress. He has never turned back! He has built several websites for large companies and ecommerece platforms for photographers. Paul has a very good knowledge of css styling and is great at debugging problems. Aside from web design Paul is also a photographer, and he has a very good eye for design! His knowledge of websites, his skills in css, and his great overall willingness to help is why we have brought him on board and we think the whole Shape5 community will benefit from him greatly! Again, please give him a warm welcome, either here on this post via the comments, on Facebook, or if you bump into him on the forum boards, and make him feel welcome as he settles into his new home at Shape5!

We are pleased to announce that we have released 7 new 2.5 site shaper conversions! Those conversions include Aurora Dawn, Avignet Dream, Basics, Game Crusade, Touch of Soul, Emma Smooth and Sportopolis. These site shapers are ready for immediate download. We are continuing to work through the conversion process of the remaining templates, and we are very excited about the new endeavours of Joomla 2.5+! We currently have an amazing 52 templates and 33 extensions that are compatible with Joomla 2.5, and more to come! You can view our current compatibility list here:

http://www.shape5.com/joomla/product_compatability/current_joomla_product_compatability_list.html

Also, a quick update on the conversion of our Virtuemart extensions to Virtuemart 2.0 and Joomla 2.5. Our 5 Virtuemart extensions have reached their final phase of testing and we hope to release the final products in the next week or two for download. These conversions are much more in depth than a standard Joomla 1.5 to 2.5 conversion as much of the Virtuemart core structure was changed in the new version. Thank you for your patience while we complete these conversions. Once these extensions are finalized that completes the conversion of all of our extensions to 2.5!

We wanted to take this time to announce some small price adjustments to just two of our membership types starting in April. Our current pricing structure has been in effect for a few years now and since its relase a lot of good things have changed at Shape5! We have added dozens of new feature-rich templates and extensions, we've launched our new Vertex framework, we've launched a new Wordpress Themes club, added tutorials, added member bonus discounts, added a free Hire a Coder program, and much more! We have added a lot to the value of our membership over the years, therefore because of these new features we are adjusting the price of just two memberships. In addtion to that, the new pricing will help fund even better products, new product lines, and new staff to make your experience at Shape5 even better!

Our goal at Shape5 is always to provide the best products at very reasonable prices. Even with the new pricing structure we will still be providing some of the best Joomla and Wordpress products available on the web today at prices BELOW most major template and themes clubs! Now for the changes, we will be keeping our $49.99 (2 month, 1 domain) membership exactly how it is, our $69.99 (1 year, 3 domains) memberships will be increasing to just $79.99, our $109.99 (1 year, unlimited domains) membership will remain the same, and finally our $224.99 (1 year, unlimited domains) developer membership will increase to $249.99. This new structure will take place April 1, 2012.

We have done extensive research by examining the price structure of many competitors and we feel that our prices will still remain very competitive and the best value for your money!

Last week we launched a new demo page to our site! The new demo makes browsing much easier, and highlights our latest themes as well. Each design has a large screenshot and product description in the main drop down menu, so now you can find just what you're looking for very easily and quickly. In addition to that we have grouped our Joomla and Wordpress products on the same page so you can see the full array of all Shape5 products in one consolidated area.



Lastly if you are logged into the main site of shape5.com and then visit the demo you will see a download button on the items that your current membership allows access for. So you can demo and download all in one place!

Be sure to check it out, and we hope you all enjoy the improvement!

We are greatly concerned with the following bills being presented in the United States Congress right now. These bills have an underlying potential of removing the freedom of speech, and business development we've all experienced on the internet thus far. These bills would also hinder and kill jobs for people already in need of work. Please step up and take a stand against these bills by signing the following petition, it will only take a few seconds of your time:

 https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/ 

If you need more information just check out the internet's largest search engine and what they have to say:

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/sopa-pipa/

Information on H.R.3261 - Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) 
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h3261/show 

Information on S.968 PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) 
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-s968/show 

More Resources:
http://sopastrike.com/strike/

We have received a lot of questions regarding the compatibility of Joomla 2.5 and our products. We realize that all the recent version numbers of Joomla ie: 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, and soon to be 2.5, can be very confusing. We'd like to clarify this and make it very simple to understand.

Will our products work with Joomla 2.5? Yes, absolutely they will work! Any product that works currently with Joomla 1.7 will work with Joomla 2.5 with no issues at all.

Will you need to install a component to upgrade your site from 1.7 to 2.5? No, the upgrade from 1.7 to 2.5 is very easily done from the backend of Joomla. No downloads or file extractions will be needed. No new installation will be created, it will simply upgrade your existing files. It's really that simple.

Will we continue to support Joomla 1.5 products? We will adhere to the Jooma life cycle of each Joomla version. Joomla will discontinue support on 1.5 in April 2012. This means that as of April 1, 2012 we will no longer be creating new 1.5 compatible products, and will focus on Joomla 1.7/2.5 products. We will continue support on 1.5 products through the end of 2012. Do not let the new version number scare you, the upgrade from 1.7 to 2.5 is nothing like 1.5 to 1.6+, and can be done in a matter of minutes. If you have not begun the move to 1.7+ we would highly recommend this so that your site stays up to date with the latest features and security updates.

What products do you offer that are compatible with Joomla 1.7+? Our list of compatible products can be found at the following url:

http://www.shape5.com/joomla/product_compatability/current_joomla_product_compatability_list.html

We will continue to convert older 1.5 products to the newer 1.7+ platform, so please check this page often. Any site shaper listed as 1.7 can simply be installed and upgraded to 2.5 when it becomes available.

We are honored to have a Shape 5 template listed as one of the top 10 templates of 2011 on magazine.joomla.org. Thank you Joomla for this recognition! You can read more about it here:

http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/Issue-Dec-2011/item/623-Top-10-Joomla-Templates-for-2011

We are happy to announce that we now have some basic Joomla PDF tutorials available on our site! The tutorials will help you get started setting up a site shaper, installing a template/extensions, changing your logo and lastly setting up a database in phpmyadmin for a new Joomla install.

 We hope these tutorials provide a helping hand in getting you started in the Joomla world. You don't have to be logged in to view just click the view button for whichever version you are running (current version includes 1.6 and 1.7):

http://www.shape5.com/joomla_tutorials.html

It's our honor to say we've been chosen by Webhostingsearch.com as one of the best web tools for our excellent Joomla Templates, Extensions and Wordpress Themes and Plugins. Webhostingsearch.com picks the best of the best products to list on their site, as recommendations to website owners. Many of their listing decisions are based on user submissions, secret shoppers, customer service evaluations and much more. The goal is to find the companies that provide the best services to their companies. You can read more about how they choose their listings from here: http://www.webhostingsearch.com/how-we-rate.php

We have updated the plugn and fixed the following issues:

1) Thumbnails do not get created if you use anything else but lower case in the file name.  CAPs, spaces, numbers, etc don't work

2) When using google chrome and adding attributes once your cursor hits the first attributes price box your done. Can't tab or even click out of that box.

 The plugin is available in the downloads area to club members only.

 Cheers!