The long awaited Joomla 1.6 Beta1 has been released today. The Joomla Development Group has stated that they are committed to a 2 week release cycle between Beta versions. We have listed all of the major mew features that this new version has over the current 1.5 version of Joomla.

It took the team almost 7 long months since the Alpha2 version to get us a release of Joomla 1.6 in Beta 1 form. What an exciting day this is for the Joomla community.

With a tight release cycle between beta versions (only 2 weeks) to find and squash all the bugs they can the community needs to make sure that you submit any bugs that you find to the Joomla 1.6 bug tracker found here. The Joomla! 1.6 Bug Tracker is the place where all Joomla! bugs are tracked. Remember, they can't fix it if they don't know about it.

Key Features in Joomla 1.6:

• New Access Control System (ACL) - Allows site administrators control over who can view and manage content.
• Unlimited Depth Organizational Model (nested categories) - Gives site administrators and content creators user-defined category levels that allow for the creation of a category tree with as many or as few levels for organizing articles and other content as needed.
• One-Click Extension Updates - Allows users to keep sites secure and controlled by simplifying the process of updating extensions.
• Semantic XHTML Layouts (templates) - Provide a better baseline for content presentation.

Keep in mind that it will be a while before template providers and 3rd party extension developers have new versions of their software available for Joomla 1.6 but that should not stop you from playing around with it and trying to duplicate an already existing Joomla 1.5 website into a Joomla 1.6 website. Doing this will most certainly help you find any unknown bugs, challenges, and so forth that will need to be dealt with.

Download Joomla 1.6 Beta 1 here.

Enjoy!!!