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Joomla blogs

Long overdue updates

With the release of Joomla 3.4 it was decided that we really should update our website.  Then we have the PHP update required since 7.4 is now out of support.

So we took a demo website and using PHP 8.0 and fixing numerous PHP errors relatng to the ordering of required paramters needing to come before options ones, and also the use of {} braces now not permitted we managed to get the site up, but the front page etc still require some major work.

Our second backup site was much easier and looks reasonable althought more work is require.

Our main site was a bigger headache. On changing to PHP 8.04 we ended up with a blank page for front end and admin area.   Cannot go back to PHP 7.4 and cannot get into the site so have to resort to using configuring PHP initialisation files.

For Joomla debugging after blank screens and this even works if the Joomla admin password is unknown.

To adjust error_reporting, we open configuration.php and add

public $error_reporting = 'maximum';

2. Additionally, we turn ON full error reporting in PHP by adding these to the php.ini file.

display_errors = On
error_reporting = E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_STRICT

3. Now, Joomla errors will be accessible from the error log file.

To be logical we shall first concentrate upon fixing the errors introduced by the change from PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.0. Then we will look into changing to PHP 8.1 and possily later to PHP 8.2. Then we will look at the Joomla 4 templates especially since out site template in Bootstrap 3 which is virtually impossible to Bootstrap 5. The admin template is also going to require some work.

Errors seem to fall into certain types:

a) Use of {} braces around a vaue that should be [] instead.

b) Array variable passed to a function, so add (array) in front of offending parameter.

To be continued.

 

 

 

Joomla 3.9 released

 

 Joomla 3.9, The Privacy Tool Suite

The Joomla! Project is proud to announce the release of Joomla! 3.9, the latest in the ‘Joomla! 3’ series.

This new release packs in more than 250 improvements for the Joomla CMS – central to which is a full privacy tool suite, which will make site compliance faster and simpler (not to mention the lives of developers a whole lot easier)!

What’s new in Joomla 3.9?

Here are just some of the new features …

The Privacy Tool Suite by Joomla

  • User Consents - Make light work of data privacy requirements
    Need users to consent to your privacy policy and/or terms and conditions? With Joomla 3.9, it’s all handled automatically. Simply and easily set up your core forms to request consent before collecting any personal data.
    You can also set up a time-based privacy consent expiration. The system will let you know if and when you need to contact your users to renew consent.
    Track user consents, manage site policy changes and much more besides, all with a glance at your dashboard.

  • User information requests? Easy-peasy
    Track and manage information access or removal requests from your users, seamlessly. Once a request is made, just log in, export their data and/or remove them.
    User data removal requests are all handled automatically, with all personal data anonymized without you needing to lift a finger.
    Never forget a request again. Just set Joomla 3.9 to remind you.

  • Extension Capabilities - Put your users in the picture when it comes to privacy...
    Extension developer – give your potential users a helping hand, by making it clear what data your extension collects. When you want to report functionality in your extensions that may need privacy consideration, simply use the new Plugin Event (onPrivacyCollectAdminCapabilities).
    With this simple action, your users gain a clear understanding of your extension, and whether they’ll need to amend their own documentation, such as their privacy policy or terms of service.

  • User Actions Log - Know who’s done what, and when
    Want to know what administrative actions have been performed on your site? Thanks to Joomla 3.9, Super Users can easily see which user did what, and when. And it also works with supported extensions! Review the action log, export it and purge the entries. You’ll never miss a trick, thanks to the latest actions module that can be added to your control panel.
    Need more? Then enable the new log rotation plugin – this will allow you to rotate and remove your log files.

Joomla 3.9 is about more than Privacy

  • Content management made fast and easy – little features, that make a big difference
    • Add notes to your articles in the backend, and filter them #19134
    • A new search feature in the backend: search for a specific article content #20083
    • Load a module by ID into your article #19362
  • More flexibility for custom fields with two new options
    • A repeatable custom field is now available #20243
    • Create alternative layouts to fit your needs #18571
  • Most recent frontend changes
    • Display the intro or full image in your newsflash module #20169
    • Show only the articles from a specific author in your latest articles module (#20687), and more options!
  • New features for multilingual sites
    • A new toolbar button to edit associations #21022
    • Propagate existing associations #21321
    • Display your tags per language #19509
  • Use Google Invisible reCAPTCHA on your websites #18146
  • Argon2id Password is now supported #20855

Visit the Joomla 3.9 site to learn more about this release and browse the Joomla! 3.9 documentation to discover how to use the new features.

This new release features over 300 improvements, with two primary major features aimed at developers: the new routing system and the beginning of a forward compatibility layer with Joomla! 4.0. Additionally, two security issues have been resolved.

 

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Joomla 3.8 released

 

 Joomla 3.8.0

The Joomla! Project is proud to announce the release of Joomla! 3.8, the latest in the ‘Joomla! 3’ series. This new release features over 300 improvements, with two primary major features aimed at developers: the new routing system and the beginning of a forward compatibility layer with Joomla! 4.0. Additionally, two security issues have been resolved.

And now, the big question is, what is new in Joomla! 3.8?

Here are some of the new features …

  • New Routing System - The new routing system gives users more control over their URL structure, including the often requested ability to remove IDs from URLs
  • Joomla! 4 Compatibility Layer - The development of Joomla! 4 has made some changes in how the core code is structured by migrating classes to use PHP namespaces. Joomla! 3.8 includes a mapping layer to allow developers to use the older class names while being able to take advantage of the new class name structure.
  • Improved Sample Data Installation - It is now possible to install sample data within your site backend after finishing the installation process, allows users to create their own generic data sets or extension developers to provide easy-to-install sample data for their extensions
  • Sodium Encryption Support - PHP 7.2 introduces the new sodium extension for processing encrypted data, through a polyfill of this library Joomla! 3.8 makes this new API available for all of our users even before they upgrade to PHP 7.2
  • Visit the Joomla! 3.8 site to learn more about this release.

 

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Joomla 3.7 released

 

 Joomla 37

The Joomla! Project is proud to announce the release of Joomla! 3.7, the latest in the ‘Joomla! 3’ series. This new release features over 700 improvements to the popular CMS, including many features which make administration of Joomla! Web sites easier and more feature-rich, as well as several security updates.

Here are some of the highlighted features:

  • Custom Fields - use extra fields, including text fields, selects and 13 other field types, in your articles, users and contacts
  • Multilingual Associations Component - translate your content easily from a single, unified interface
  • Improved Workflow - create a category, article, and menu item all in one step from within the menu manager
  • Backend Menu Manager - manage the administrator menu just like the frontend, create a different configuration for each of your backend user groups
  • Do more with TinyMCE - including new buttons to easily add menu links and contacts and many other improvements
  • Easier Extension Maintenance - prevent administrators from accidentally uninstalling needed extension package elements
  • User Experience - the little changes that make all the difference: your User Experience is improved thanks to the display of your global settings, a flatter backend template, the possibility to share sessions between apps...

There are many features to explore and we will be revisiting our components to ensure that they continue to work fine with this new Joomla release!

The future of Joomla 3 and Joomla 4

The current plan is that the next release, Joomla 3.8, will be the last in the Joomla 3 series. According to feedback from the Joomla developers, we could expect Joomla 4.0 to arrive around six months after Joomla 3.8.  We do note however that there are still regerences to Joomla 3.9 upon the Joomla web site.

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Joomla 3.6 released

 joomla 3 6 stable release

The Joomla project has released its version 3.6 stable package.

This new Joomla release has lots of bug fixes and over 400 improvements to make everyone's day to day Joomla usage easier.

One thing we did like was that the Joomla team has also created a made a great Joomla 3.6 microsite highlighting all the main features. Even more items can be seen in the Joomla 3 FAQ as well as a more technical list on the project's GitHub repository.

Here are some of the highlighted features:

  • Joomla update can now perform a reinstall reverting back to default code.
  • Usability improvements that help find things easier and get things done quicker with dropdown task execution.
  • New Sub form field function for developers to take advantage of.  Developers should read this as nested forms and enhanced repeatable fields.
  • On the fly category creation will make content editors happy as they can create a new item and a new category in the same process.
  • Menu type ACL gives even more control to fine-tune permissions on backend menus.
  • New option to show all items from all menus gives a quick overview of what is displayed where on the website. It makes it easier to spot duplicated links, missing menu items or just obtain an overview of every menu on your site.

There are many features to explore and remember that our components work fine with this new Joomla release!

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Joomla 3.5.0. released

joomlaThe Joomla! Project and the Production Leadership Team are proud to announce the release of Joomla! 3.5.0.

Introducing 34 new features, including support for the recently released PHP 7 scripting language, which significantly increases web site speed.

This version of Joomla! supports the most recent release of PHP, the most popular programming language for developing web applications. PHP 7 was recently announced with significant performance improvements and is now available for use by the general public. With Joomla! 3.5 users can now enjoy the benefit of that performance improvement.

Joomla's new email update notification plugin periodically checks for available Joomla! updates and bug fixes, then emails administrators to notify them. 3.5's new statistics collection plug-in gathers the system environment in use. The raw data collected is anonymised before transmission and access to the compiled data is publicly available at https://developer.joomla.org/about/stats.html.

To have a full list of the features please visit our GitHub Repository.

Official release details are located here.

Joomla 3.4.8 released

joomlaThe Joomla! Project and the Production Leadership Team are proud to announce the release of Joomla! 3.4.8.

This is a bug fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla This release fixes some bugs related to session management from Joomla 3.4.7. The project understands that many of our users are now on Christmas Holiday's so we would like to emphasise that this release only contains bug fixes and whilst we strongly encourage our users to update as soon as practically possible, this update can be left until after any holidays.

What's in 3.4.8

Joomla 3.4.8 fixes some issues found in the 3.4.7 release on Monday to do with browser sessions. All reported bugs from the 3.4.7 update have been fixed in this release:

For known issues with the 3.4.8 release, see the Version 3.4.8 FAQ in the documentation site.. Please note that it is expected that you will be logged out as soon as the update is complete.

Official release details are located here.

Withdrawal of Support for Joomla 2.5

With the removal of official support for Joomla 2.5 by the Joomla Project, we regret we are no longer able to provide general support for our Joomla components on this version.  Instead our support will concentrate upon the latest Joomla 3.x versions, currently 3.4.

Should you experience with our extensions upon Joomla 2.5 we will try to help and advice and possibly investigate but no new features or enhancements will be developed.

We recommend our customers migrate to the latest officially supported Joomla version as soon as it is possible.

Joomla Resources

In the spirit of spreading information about Joomla this short message provides a short list of free Joomla resources that can assist you in meeting your website construction goals.

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10 Joomla resources you can tap into:

Joomla 2.5.28 released


joomlaThe Joomla! Project and the Production Leadership Team have announced the release of Joomla! 2.5.28.

This is a maintenance release for the 2.5 series of Joomla! and is the final scheduled release of the series. Support for Joomla! 2.5 is scheduled to end on December 31, 2014.

What does this mean for me?

End of support refers to when Joomla! no longer provides bug fixes, features, or security updates for a release. This is the time to make sure you have the latest available update of Joomla. Your website will continue to work as normal.

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Profile Information

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