RokTodo is a very simple Joomla! 1.5 component that allows you to add placeholder menu items with meaningful text, or images, to help you demonstrate the structure of a completed site. So if your client or boss is struggling with the link backs to the home page and being asked to imagine the big picture (we all know this doesn't go down well when trying to give the appearance of having made some progress), RokTodo is for you.

After a very long and sometimes heated debate on the Joomla! Forums, Joomla! recently clarified it's position on how the GPL, the license under which Joomla! is released, affects third-party extensions. To cut a long story short, extensions are considered derived works in terms of how extensions inherit the parent license of the system.

I was doing a client site recently and was struggling with having to explain to the client "well, imagine this page is here" and the modules will be this way or that way. So I started putting just links in to index.php but after a while I thought that was a bit lame. Well, the lights went on and the violins played and I can up with the idea that all I need is a menu item that has a textarea for a parameter to display a message and an under-construction notice. Viola! RokTodo was born and is possible the smallest component in the world. It also gives you the ability to possition modules on the correct pages (which is something the old link trick could not provide for).

Those following the RocketWerx SVN will notice an interesting new addition: RokACL. RokACL will be a component for Joomla! 1.5 that will lay the foundations for advanced access control. It will allow you to add new user groups, your own sets of permissions and be able to assign various combinations to form Access Control Lists.

This rather interesting component is a bit of a veteran having come through various incarnations - MamboMDK, MamboDesigner, JamboDesigner, JoomlaDesigner - and now, just to be different, RokCodeIt. It's a rather sentimental project because it was one of my first publically released components back in the Mambo glory days.