Since we first launched Aurora two weeks ago, we have had many emails and posts on the forums asking why there was not a native Joomla 1.5 version. The reason for this is really simple. Due to the extensive customization options, we decided to team up with the clever guys from Ninjoomla and base the template around their template configuration component, called Tatami. From day one this has been a match made in heaven and we are thrilled to be involved with the project.

That being said, there were a couple of issues and areas where both Aurora and Tatami could be improved, so we have been working really hard to make both Aurora and Tatami tightly integrated and to push far and beyond what was initially planned for Tatami. Not only will the new version allow you to upload and manage your own logo, favicon and other template graphics, but it takes full advantage of Tatamis built in features to dynamically pull in a list of components, allowing you to configure a custom layout for each installed component - IE, Choose Right + Content from the drop down for MyBlog and Voila - could it get any easier? We think not!

There is still much to come on the Tatami front, but for now we are tightening the screws in the 1.0.x version, before we climb into the 1.5 native version. It would be pointless to start converting a product which was still in its infancy. What we have now is a feature rich, really slick extension - that i really believe is going to play a big role in the Joomla! templating world (and beyond!).

So, this is where we are at present. We have completed most of the updates needed for Aurora and the only thing that remains is redoing all of the built in presets. This is a pretty time consuming effort, as there are quite a few, but we will be getting stuck in first thing on Monday. Once that is ready, we will make the updated versions for both Aurora and Tatami available on our Club site. Once that is done, we will ask all our club members to do some extensive testing to see if there are any outstanding bugs. If nothing major is found, we will then proceed with the 1.5 version.

Please bear with us while we do the last changes to the 1.0.x versions of both. We really feel both Aurora and Tatami are bigger than just a normal template release and thus are making sure that both are done properly.