Details

Category: News

Published: 19 August 2021

Last Updated: 03 November 2021

Hits: 5439

Joomla 4 and 3.10 released!

 
 Important: You can upgrade your CB 2.6.2 site to Joomla 3.10 as usual (backup first as usual).
But do not upgrade to Joomla 4.0 before reading this until the end.

Joomla 4 stable and Joomla 3.10 have been released!

August 17th was a major milestone for the Joomla community - much more than just a 16th birthday!

A full nine years in the making, Joomla 4 looks like it's got what it takes to take the Joomla CMS and its community to new levels of greatness.

First off - let's just state for the record: Community Builder 2.6.2 and all our Joomlapolis add-ons are Joomla 4 ready - our demo site has already been upgraded to CB 2.6.2 and Joomla 3.10.

You can also learn more about these new releases by reading the Joomla announcement.

The main benefits / new features

From an end user perspective the Joomla 4 tagline benefits / new features are:

• Joomla4SEO - Search Engine Optimization built into the page and included in the core code - no need for extra extensions
• Joomla4Design - slick new administrator user interface gives clean and slick access to content editing and website page layouts
• Joomla4Speed - increased performance
• Joomla4Search - built-in search engine for locating content
• Joomla4Workflows - content creation and publishing workflows
• Joomla4Accessibility - best in class accessibility - layout, contrast, and infrastructure all have built-in accessibility (WCAG 2.1)
• Joomla4Security - well written, state-of-the-art code helps keep maximize security and keep hackers out
• Joomla4Emails - customizable email templates for notification events generated by the CMS
• Joomla4Multilingual - built-in support for multi-language content and websites and a huge list of already supported language translations

There are many more benefits included (mobile ready, content editor with local menus and drag-and-drop images, tags, etc.).

What's in for the Future

We are excited to see that new Joomla 4.x features-releases are now planned every 6 months, with exciting new features and improvements in their final stages, most will be ready for inclusion in future Joomla 4.1 and 4.2 releases. We are seeing Joomla getting into a new innovation cycle.

What's in it for Extension Developers

If you are reading this article you are most likely using Community Builder and possibly some related add-ons (thank you!).

The power of Joomla has traditionally been its third-party developers. These skilled individuals or companies have been bridging the gap in terms of features needed for specific use cases versus what the CMS itself can provide out of the box. Let's face it - no CMS can (nor should it really) provide every imaginable feature website designers need. That is why the CMS itself provides a rich API environment - to enable these talented third-party teams to quickly provide extra functionality - quickly and securely.

The Joomla project has provided a pseudo marketplace where third-party teams can list their code offerings in an organized and community driven feedback environment - the Joomla! Extensions Directory. Joomla, of course is free, but extension take time and effort to build and maintain (trust us on this - we have been doing this for almost 20 years - since the pre-Joomla Mambo CMS days). These third-party developers make their living / recoup their expenses by either charging a fee for people to get their extension or when people ask for support. As the demand for extensions and support increases, the number of third-party developers and new extensions increases also.

Joomla 4 is expected to increase the number of Joomla websites designed and this should have a very positive impact on the third-party developer community. According to Google, Joomla searches were up over 20% last week alone!

Yes, the hype regarding the new slick Joomla 4 environment will give third-party developers a marketing boost, but that's not all.

The modern Joomla codeset and development environment will attract more third-party developers. Joomla has provided some really great tools to help developers. The Joomla 4.0 now has the framework that will take it forward. It's generalized use of clean software patterns, such as dependency injection, webservices, workflows, object-oriented design with fully namespaced classes sets Joomla 4 clearly years ahead of most other popular CMS platforms. The minimum PHP version jumps from PHP 5.3 to 7.2, with support for PHP 8.x+ series, using modern programing language structures. Additionally, Joomla 4 uses selected parts of many trending libraries, such as Composer, Symfony, Doctrine, Bootstrap 5, modern native Javascript and deprecates older libraries like JQuery. This sounds like great music and will be appealing and fun to use for many web developers.

Let's recap

Joomla 4 is for many reasons a major milestone in the still very young Joomla roadmap. The number of new built-in features and functionality on one hand and the new code set on the other should propel the Joomla community (users and developers) forward. Time will tell of course, but the roadmap for Joomla 4.1 and 4.2 looks very promising.

Planing the Joomla 4 upgrade

The release of Joomla 3.10 and 4.0 ends the maintenance cycle of Joomla 3.9, released almost 3 years ago. Joomla 3.9.x to 3.10.x is a minor upgrade and 3.10 will be maintained for 24 months, so there no rush to upgrade from 3.10 to 4.0. We recommend upgrading Joomla to latest 3.10 and CB to latest 2.6.2 compatibility release (backup first as usual).

The upgrade from Joomla 3.10 to 4.0 is an in-place mini-migration that requires at least CB 2.6.2, but also planing, testing on a clone, and a tested backup before upgrading. This upgrade to 4.0 should start by reading the Joomla 3.10 to 4.x upgrade guide and reviewing the compatibility of your extensions. Incompatible extensions, templates and custom template overrides may well break your site.

Details

Category: News

Published: 19 August 2021

Last Updated: 03 November 2021

Hits: 2386

Community Builder 2.6.2 can be freely downloaded by all registered members

We just released Community Builder 2.6.2 to fix all known issues for just released Joomla 3.10 and Joomla 4.

CB 2.6.2 contains 4 minor but important compatibility fixes for Joomla 3.10 and Joomla 4.0.

Details can be found in the full CB 2.6.2 changelog.

Community Builder 2.6.2 is a highly recommended upgrade for all CB sites on Joomla 3.x and 4.0.

Unless you are just upgrading from 2.6.1 to 2.6.2, as always, you should first test on a cloned environment before upgrading your production site.

Our demo website has already been updated to Community Builder 2.6.2, so you can see it in action along will all our Joomlapolis add-ons.

Community Builder 2.7 is next on our list!

Our next planed release, Community Builder 2.7, will be released shortly. As already announced in CB 2.6.0 and CB 2.6.1 news, CB 2.7 will require PHP 7.4+ and MySql 5.6+. The upgrade/install process will check these requirements.

As Joomla 3.10 is now the only maintained 3.x series and a simple one-click backwards compatible upgrade from Joomla 3.9.x, we are revisiting our Joomla requirement for next CB 2.7 to Joomla 3.10 (up from now unmaintained 3.9 series 3.9.0, released 3 years ago).

Details

Category: News

Published: 11 August 2021

Last Updated: 03 November 2021

Hits: 2926

Community Builder 2.6.1 can be freely downloaded by all registered members

We just released Community Builder 2.6.1 with 11 new features and 20 bug fixes!

The main new features (full CB 2.6.1 changelog) include:

• Modernized rating fields
• Massively improved speed in front-end and mainly in administration back-end thanks to rewritten Javascript
• Improved integrated private messaging with message read date indication
• better MySQL 8.0 and PHP 8.0 support
• Client-side image resizing for PNG, WEBP and AVIF images
• Improved Joomla 4.0 RC6 support
• Updated advanced warning for obsolete (and soon incompatible) PHP, MySQL and Joomla versions

Community Builder 2.6.1 is a recommended upgrade for all CB sites.

Our demo website has already been updated to Community Builder 2.6.1, so you can see it in action along will all our Joomlapolis add-ons.

As always, you should first test on a cloned environment before upgrading your production site.

Looking ahead to Community Builder 2.7 and 3.0!

Our next release, Community Builder 2.7, will be released shortly after Joomla 3.10 and 4.0 Stable releases, due August 17th. We have already started modernizing our code-base for CB 3.0 as you will see in next CB 2.7 release. This modernization effort will use new features that PHP 7.4 supports. This means that the obsolete PHP 5.6 to 7.3 versions will no longer be supported starting with the next CB 2.7 stable release. The CB 2.7 upgrade/install process will be checking the PHP version as a prerequisite for completion. Similar checking will apply to over 10 years old MySQL versions prior to MySQL 5.6 (revised down from 5 years old expected 5.7.8 version) and to Joomla versions prior to Joomla 3.9.0, released 3 years ago. To avoid any surprises, we have added PHP, MySQL and Joomla obsolete version warnings since CB 2.6.0.

Details

Category: News

Published: 04 August 2021

Last Updated: 03 November 2021

Hits: 2301

Joomla 4 and 3.10 release dates

Joomla 4 stable and Joomla 3.10 are scheduled to be released on August 17th on Joomla's 16th birthday!

It has been a full nine years in the making - a huge open source community effort.

With over 123,000,000 downloads in its 16 years, Joomla has been translated into 77 languages and is currently powering over 2.5 million sites. With an estimated market share at 3.1% Joomla is the third most popular CMS accounting for one in every 50 websites on the internet. Joomla’s emphasis on accessibility, speed, security and SEO make it the CMS of choice for business site (estimated at 9%) and sites that want to expand and grow.

You can start preparing your migration to Joomla 4.0 project using the Joomla 3.10 RC1 and Joomla 4 RC5 releases.

Community Builder 2.6 (latest build) and all Joomlapolis add-ons should install and run just fine on both environments.

The CB Team has been testing all our extensions on both environments and our community is encouraged to take Joomla 4 RC5 for a spin on your test sites and report back issues to the Joomla Team and any CB related issues to us.

You can learn more about these new releases by reading the Joomla announcement.

Details

Category: News

Published: 21 July 2021

Last Updated: 03 November 2021

Hits: 2737

Joomla 4 RC4 and 3.10 alpha 9 are here - another step closer to Joomla 4 stable!

The Joomla project team has recently released Joomla 4 RC4 and Joomla 3.10 alpha 9.

Reminder: Joomla 4.0 RC4 is aimed at extension and template developers. Everyone is encouraged to test the package and to report issues on the Joomla! CMS Issue Tracker.

Community Builder 2.6 (latest build) and all Joomlapolis add-ons should install and run just fine on both environments.

The CB Team has been testing all our extensions on both environments and our community is encouraged to take Joomla 4 RC4 for a spin on your test sites and report back issues to the Joomla Team and any CB related issues to us.

We have also started a new Joomla 4 RC playlist on our YouTube channel and will be releasing more videos soon. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on new videos.

You can learn more about these new releases by reading the Joomla announcement.