Last December Arxia sponsored the 2nd TYPO3 Usergroup Romania Meetup. The event was a great success and was followed by the first ever TYPO3 Certification Event in Romania. The certification exam was conducted by officials of the TYPO3 Association.

Three of our colleagues registered for the Certification Event and participated in the exam. Today we received word that all 3 passed the exam. As a result in the Arxia team there are 3 Certified TYPO3 Integrators. So our congratulations go to:

• Fleșer Alina
• Bodor László
• Militaru Tomiță

Arxia is as good as its people are, so that’s why we invest in trainings and certifications in order to be able to deliver quality services to our customers. Having three Certified TYPO3 Integrators is another important step and a guarantee of the quality of our work.

As many of you already know, today is the big day when the brand new version of TYPO3, version 4.6 is being released. Celebrating this event, many enthusiasts around the world are organizing release parties where people can participate, have fun, talk about TYPO3, Flow3 (which was released last week), Extbase and many other subjects that are related.

In Cluj Napoca/Romania where Arxia’s headquarters are there will be also a release party and many team members will participate in what is poised to be the biggest TYPO3 release party ever in Romania! If you want to come is not too late. You can still sign up here

Location: Bistro Viena
Time: 20.00 LOCAL TIME
Organizer: TYPO3 Usergroup Romania

Between the 30th of July and the 7th of August the Arxia Team was on a teambuilding camp. The first part of the camp was covered in my last blog post so i will concentrate on the second part.

While we were working in this camp with a reduced schedule we also had lots of other activities together. One of the most interesting ones was when we split up in 4 groups and went on a photo hunt mission. Each group had to take at least one picture of some predefined objective. For example one of the hardest objectives was to take a picture that symbolizes egoism. All the teams worked hard and we did made a few noteworthy pictures during this exercise, some of these can be seen in the photo album attached to this post.

Other common activities included making an egg fly or telling a story about yourself. But also individual personality tests were conducted and these had quite a success among the team members.

On Wednesday the team travelled to Baile Homorod (a local resort) where the majority of our colleagues went to horse riding. None of us ride a horse before but thanks to the staff of the Lobogo Panzio we managed quite reasonably in the saddle.

In the evenings people come together and some played Citadels for long hours, others played Poker and some were just having a beer and a pizza together with the colleagues.

The week ended with another trip to the Balu Adventure Park and to the Sfanta Ana crater lake near Tusnad Bai. Here we slept in tents in the camping site near the lake, made a campfire in the evening and talked late into the night. On the last day of our camp we visited the Mohos lake and then started our long trip back to Cluj Napoca.

Its safe to say that this was the most successful Arxia Camp to date with people having lots of fun and work together. Also this camp raises the bar for the next years and will be quite a challenge to find a location like this and to organize the camp. But challenge is the reason why we are here at Arxia!

And here are the photos:

		Arxia Camp–part II VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Post written by: Bodor László (Arxia TYPO3 Team)

As of 30th of July 2011 the Arxia team is out on a teambuilding camp, second time in the last two years. This time we have chosen the Laguna pension in Odorheiu Secuiesc, Romania. For 9 days our team is combining work with fun and leisure. Our teambuilding camps are somewhat special because we have to assure that our customers have permanent support for their websites so usually we do work in these camps but with reduced schedule.

What else we do ? We travel and visit tourist sights, we participate in teambuilding exercises and most important of all, we have lots of fun together as a team. This year the camp started with a short visit to Sighisoara – an UNESCO World Heritage Site, where the Medieval Festival was just starting in this unique still inhabited citadel of Europe.

Sunday on the 31th of July our team went to visit the Balu Adventure Park in Harghita Bai. We have climbed up into the trees and did several adventure routes of lower or higher difficulty but i think its safe to say that the highlight of the day was the tyrolean traverse over the blue lake. Well there is a lot to say but i will let the pictures tell the story.

		Arxia Camp 2011 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

And this is just the beginning, more to follow as we are just in the beginning of the camp.

Update: Click here for the second part

Arxia – our company – develops projects using TYPO3 since 2005, being among the first companies in Romania to work with this Enterprise CMS. Since then we have delivered hundreds of projects with TYPO3 and trained many TYPO3 developers. We became the biggest TYPO3 company in Romania and we have been involved in some very large projects built with TYPO3 and delivered to customers in Romania and abroad (Germany, Netherlands, France).

During our work with TYPO3 it became natural for us to give back some things to the community and to the TYPO3 association. Among our actions in this direction is the TYPO3 Romania Usergroup – which is supported and hosted by Arxia. This usergroup allows Romanian TYPO3 developers to interact with each other and to find information on subjects that matter to them.

Another step in this direction is that from July 2011 we are Silver members of the TYPO3 Association. We hope that by being members will be able to support the TYPO3 Association more and that our contribution helps the development of TYPO3 in becoming the most successful Enterprise CMS on the market.

On the long term Arxia is committed to use TYPO3 and to offer it as the main solution to most of the projects in the enterprise segment. This is why is very important for us that the TYPO3 project goes forward and evolves permanently. Everyday there are new challenges, new technologies and new security issues in the IT business and we hope that by supporting TYPO3 (and the Association) we will make it ready for these challenges for the years to come.

Yesterday the TYPO3 community released a new version of the popular TYPO3 Enterprise CMS. Version 4.4 brings many novelties! Among other things we noticed first the revamped backend look&feel which also has been optimized for faster loading so users will be able to do their tasks faster and easier.

Another great improvement is the revised Rich Text Editor which now completely relies on ExtJS allowing a much smoother and faster functioning of the editor.

Of course there are many other improvements aimed mainly for developers: The Introduction Package (a fully configured and functioning site out of the box when installing TYPO3), easier installation with the revamped Install Tool, Skinning API, revised Task Center and HTML5 support both in frontend and backend, Caching Framework improvements.

Arxia will begin to use TYPO34.4 with any new upcoming project as we already tested TYPO3 4.4 by the time it was in Beta state and we are confident that it will bring a significant added value to any project. We are also performing on-demand upgrades for our clients who want to implement the new version of TYPO3 for a faster and smoother content management.

If you want to upgrade your installation and need help we are glad to offer it. Just contact us and we will see how can we accomodate your request.

Post written by: Bodor László (Arxia TYPO3 Team)

EVZ.ro, the third largest Romanian online news service has Beta launched a new version of their portal, for which our team here at Arxia has worked intensely in the past three months. The new Beta, temporarily hosted at http://beta.evz.ro, is powered by TYPO3, one of the best open source web content management systems.

The Beta will soon replace the old version, and when it will happen, the new platform will support over 100.000 visitors / day generating over 600.000 impressions /day, which will probably make it the most visited TYPO3 powered website in Romania!

In the coming weeks we’ll post an interesting case study of this project and if you want to be among the first to receive it, please subscribe to our newsletter here bellow.