Pre-Update Check - Your path to Joomla 4

Joomla 4's now available, but if you're thinking about upgrading from Joomla 3.9, here's some important things to keep in mind before you click the Update button.

In conjunction with the release of Joomla 4 Stable today, Joomla 3.9 users will also be able to upgrade their sites to Joomla 3.10 Stable, also released today. This update for Joomla 3 series sees a number of new features introduced mainly to assist users with their transition to Joomla 4.

There's no need to rush upgrading to Joomla 4

Joomla 4.0 Stable was released shortly before this issue of Joomla Community Magazine was published, so for many readers who have used Joomla for some time, I imagine you're like most of my Joomla user group colleagues in Australia.

You'll have been watching and looking at Joomla 4's development for a while now. Over recent months you will have been enthusiastically anticipating using it for new websites (my first Joomla 4 site is already seeing a steady stream of enquiries arriving for my client).

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Recruitment, Retention and Recognition

With the release of Joomla 4.0, Joomlers - Joomla's hard-working volunteers - are as important as ever. Whether you're completing an occasional task to support the project, a regular contributor to a team's activities, a member of a team or working group, right through to the various levels of leadership in the organisation, I thank you on behalf of Joomla and look forward to many years of contributions to come.

Over 16 years, tens of thousands of hours have been contributed to the project by hundreds of volunteers worldwide. Many of those volunteers have been working away in the background, sometimes anonymously, sometimes known to just a few in the organisation.

I'd like to see that change a little. 

As the Volunteer Engagement Team (VET) team leader, I'd like the VET to be able to recognise more of the contributions volunteers are making, both in the past and going forward. As an organisation, we're looking at improving our communication with volunteers, including communicating more often with volunteers to present them with opportunities to get engaged with the project. We'd like to encourage readers to reach out to their networks to see if others may be interested in finding out more about volunteering with the project.

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Birthday Present Announcement - Joomla 4 Stable 17th August

The Joomla! Project is pleased to announce the planned release of Joomla! CMS 4.0 Stable and Joomla 3.10 Stable.

Joomla! will be 16 on the 17th August 2021

And it is with great pride that the Joomla! Project would like to announce the planned launch of Joomla 4.0 and Joomla 3.10 to coincide with its birthday celebrations.

Joomla4You

Nearly nine long years in the making, Joomla 4 is finally here. This open source, community project has delivered a Content Management System that has been downloaded over 123,000,000 times in its 16 years. Translated into 77 languages and with over 2.5 million sites. At 3.1% Joomla is the third most popular CMS accounting for one in every 50 websites on the internet. With over 9% of all business websites, Joomla’s emphasis on accessibility, speed, security and SEO out of the box make it the CMS of choice for sites that want to expand and grow.

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Explore the Core: Controlling User Access

In this month’s explore the core series, we cover Access Control Lists (ACL). ACL are one of the most powerful parts of Joomla’s core, allowing you to give permissions to users to do as much or as little as you want them to while using your website.

Though the default Joomla ACL is designed to be simple and straightforward, the ability to customize access for various uses means Joomla provides a very flexible method for defining access throughout your site. After firstly running through the concepts you need to know, I will be sharing with you a number of scenarios I’ve implemented for sites that extend the core ACL functionality to meet the client’s requirements.

What is ACL?

ACL stands for Access Control List, and is a list that defines access permissions and roles for what you are able to do in any system that implements ACL principles. Joomla uses the concept of ACL to allow site managers to define, administer and control permissions for users on your website, deciding what they’re able to view, add, update and access when logged into the site.

How does ACL work in Joomla?

For basic websites, the default ACL is sufficient to allow you to set up simple access to your Joomla website.

When you install a Joomla website you’ll be prompted for a username and password to create a Super User account. This account has permissions to modify everything on the website, which is needed in order to configure your Joomla installation. Once you have the site created, you can go to Users > Manage to then add new users to your site. Adding additional users to the Administrators user group where needed will allow you to have a team managing your site. Adding users to the Registered user group will give them the ability to log in and see content that you only want logged in users to see. There’s additional examples further in this article. You can also configure menu items that point to the login page and/or configure login modules to enable users to login from the frontend of the site.

The real power of Joomla’s ACL system comes into action more when you start looking at giving users other levels of access. The flexibility is there so that when users login, you know exactly what they are able to access on the site based on their User Group. 

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Create your own paid Newsletter with Joomla

Newsletters are essential these days. Not only to advertise your business but also as a valuable way to connect to your audience. Some new companies allow you to create your newsletter and even to put it after a paywall. In Joomla, we have been able to do this for years. Let’s see how!

If someone did tell your 2010 self that your followers will pay to get a newsletter, you would have said he is nuts... But this is 2021, and everything is possible, isn’t it?

With this vision, some companies try to facilitate paid newsletters as a service, allowing everyone to outsource this vital part of their business. And let's be honest, batch email sending is always a challenge: First, you need to find a system capable enough to send all the emails as quickly as possible. Then you need to use trusted servers to send these emails and finally get your fingers crossed to reach your audience and not be blacklisted.

Outsourcing your newsletter might look like a good solution if you are not using a flexible CMS or using a “no-code” solution.

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What type of Joomler are you?

When you hover around in the Joomla Sphere long enough, you’ll see that, like every community, it comes with its own personality types. In this article, you’ll meet a few of them. And if you recognise yourself in one (or more) of these Joomlers, we also advise you on what role you could play in the Joomniverse. Have fun finding your personality type!

Friendly Neighborhood Joomler

Everyone should have one around: the Joomler always ready to help us out when we’re stuck. We can find you at a JUG meeting, Googling away before the Doctor Joomla-question is even asked, or answering questions in forums or on social media. If you are the friendly neighborhood Joomler, you can be someone who knows everything, but more likely you like to search for the right answer to help out in the best possible way.

Your ideal role: you are the gem everybody wants in their team. Since a brand new major release is on the way, you might be best in place in one of the marketing teams, because these are the teams that could use a little help right now.

Joomfluencer

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, a personal blog: you know how to spread the Joomla love, and you’re pretty good at it too. You love Joomla and you’re a trustworthy source of information for your growing number of fans, who retweet, share and like everything you do. You don’t just send: you like to interact and communicate with your followers because you love to share your passion for Joomla with them, and they like to share it with you.

Your ideal role: you probably guessed it already since it’s a no-brainer. If you haven’t joined one of our marketing teams yet, you should do so now. They’d love to hear from you!

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Joomla 4 RC 2 and Joomla 3.10 Alpha 7 are here

The Joomla! Project is pleased to announce the availability of Joomla! CMS 4.0 Release Candidate 2 and Joomla 3.10 Alpha 7.

Joomla users and extension developers are asked to download and install the packages in order to provide quality assurance for the forthcoming 4.0 and 3.10 releases.

Joomla! 4 is the latest major release of Joomla! CMS. Please note that going from 3.9 to 4.0 is a migration. You would need to upgrade your J3.9 to J3.10, which will be available the day J4.0 is stable. J3.10 has a compatibility checker to help guide you through the migration to J4.0. Please do not upgrade any of your production sites to the release candidate version!

What is this release for?

Joomla 4.0 RC2 is aimed at extension and template developers. To encourage them to work with this release in order to prepare extensions for the stable release of Joomla! CMS 4.0. Users are encouraged to test the package for issues and to report issues in the Joomla! CMS Issue Tracker. Test sites based on this release candidate can be taken through to stable but never use this version on a production site. There will be an upgrade path between release candidates and the final release candidate to the stable of Joomla 4.0 should you wish to try a new site build.

Spotlight on Joomla4Accessibility

Whatever size your site is, accessibility is a must, and from the start Joomla 4 delivers best in class accessibility. The layout, contrast and infrastructure all have accessibility built in so all your visitors will benefit.
Now you can change how you use Joomla as an administrator in your profile.
Using the accessibility tab you can:

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The May Issue

The JCM Team is proud to present you the May Issue of the Joomla! Community Magazine. 

This month’s edition features:

  • Interviews to extension developers about their path towards Joomla 4 compliance: Sander Potjer from PWT Extensions, Rüdiger Schultz from JDB Export and Tomasz Kowalski from DJ Extensions. 
  • An article of the “Explore the Core” series about Custom Fields by Marc Dechèvre
  • Anja de Crom interviewed Abhishek Das to let him share his “How I learned Joomla” story.
  • Philip Walton wrote a piece to announce the students who will take part to the Google Summer of Code 2021.
  • This month we’ll get to know Laura Gordon as part of the “Meet a Joomler” series.
  • Himanshu published an article about Visual Studio Code as developer tool.
  • Mike Carson wrote a SEO Checklist with 28 tips to increase the ranking of a Joomla website in the SERP.
  • SD Williams published the monthly open roles throughout the Community.

Acknowledgements

This release wouldn't have been possible without the work of the Community Magazine Team, all the authors and all the people who allowed us to interview them.

Thanks to all those who participated.

The Call for Authors for the Community Magazine is always open. If you want to write for the Magazine, regularly or just once, drop us a line at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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Explore the Core! Play with Custom Fields to enrich your content or your design

Joomla basics for newbies

In our Explore the Core series, experienced Joomla users help you find your way through Joomla's powerful core features. In this month's issue, Marc Dechèvre shows us what you can do with Joomla's built-in custom fields (spoiler alert: a lot). Dive in and explore!

Custom Fields shipped with Joomla 3.7 back in 2017. This was an initiative of Allon Moritz, a well-known Joomler from Switzerland.

And like many Joomlers, I am very grateful to him because Custom Fields are definitely a game-changer! No matter whether you are a basic user, an advanced user or a developer.

Since then almost all the websites I have built make (extensive) use of Custom Fields.

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May 2021 Community Builder Video Available

Thanks again to guest presenter Nick Antimisiaris from Joomlapolis, he's the Nick A. you'll find in the newsletter and the forums.  Nick has literally written the book on the Community Builder extension. This Saturday Session went right up to the end at with questions on the many features of Community Builder.  

Did you know that Community Builder has been around longer than Joomla? It has!  Community Builder started back in the Mambo days, the system before Joomla.

Check out this session for yourself and don't forget to pop over to joomlapolis.com and all the features of this longtime extension yourself.

 

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