This is a preview of the login Ive been working on for our upcoming Joomla admin template called Crisp Admin. We are hoping to have it released in the next week or so and while the login screen is pretty minimal I think it pulls in nicely with the overall theme.

You can see more of the admin template over at the Joomla Bamboo Blog.

Midway through last month I posted about the change in our pricing structure and the date for the changeover is rapidly approaching. On the 15th January we will be introducing the new pricing structure which will see the introduction of a two tiered system with incentives for renewing members. So if you are a new member and are looking to join the club then joining now is a quick way to save a bit of cash before we hit the new fee structure.

You can see the full demo on our template showcase, read the template description and overview here and the full documentation here.

You can read more on the Joomla Bamboo Blog.

While Im in the mood for previewing up and coming releases at Joomla Bamboo I’ll give you a sneak peak at the bonus Joomla Bamboo template release that’s scheduled for release sometime in mid January. Following the success of the Simpla Admin template Ive put together a less flamboyant and simpler version of the admin theme. Functionally its not a huge departure from Simpla in terms of features eg left accordion with toggle, version notifier etc but I think the design really beds down a more mature admin interface for Joomla.

Im also in a secret discussion with Steve from Alledia to see if we can put together a free admin theme that will help to address some of the common complaints that are often placed against the Joomla admin UI. Im confident that we can help produce something that is a hackless simplification of the Joomla admin area that will hopefully improve its usability for new users … but more on that later.

A few days before the new year I posted a preview of the Joomla Bamboo theme that is due out early in the first week in January – a few days from now. We havent released a dedicated business or corporate theme to date and I brought another designer in for this one as well. So it will be interesting to see what the response is like. Im looking forward to mixing up the designs that we release this year as well as bringing in some outside designers as well to help expand our reportoire and perhaps even free some of my time up.

We relaunched the Joomla Bamboo site a few weeks ago and the response has been pretty amazing. Its technically a soft launch with quite a few new features that we are going to roll out over the next few weeks but for the time being we are focussing on releasing the next new theme we are calling Avante. You can see a sneak peak of the Avante theme on the Joomla Bamboo blog.