JoomlaDay Chicago and JoomlaCamp Chicago News

Whether you want to create a business website or start a blog, the most efficient way to do so is with a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is ideal for the entrepreneur who does not have HTML or CSS coding skills or cannot access developer talent.

In the last decade, there have been numerous CMS solutions to choose from, one of which is Joomla. Having relied on this CMS for many years, I have put together the 10 reasons why it works for me and why it should be your CMS of choice:

1. A self-hosted CMS

A self-hosted CMS means it is open-source software. This allows you to download it and put it on any server. Being open-source provides more control over the look and functionality of your website. 

It helps to have the flexibility to create any type of blog or website you want versus being limited by only a few options. 

That’s why so many different types of businesses and organizations use Joomla, including nonprofits, startups, freelancers, media, corporations, and more. For example, I build my company calendar as an open-source software so that anyone can download it and run it on their own site. Lots more creative options including flexibility to customize it to your needs.

The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the availability of the Joomla 4.0 Beta 2 release.

We believe we can improve on what is already a great product.

Introducing Joomla 4, a brand new way for people to create and manage their content, developed and sustained by a global community of volunteers. Joomla 4 offers you a platform that is reliable, steady, secure and fully equipped with a wide variety of options to build any website.

We invite you to download, install and test the package to improve quality assurance for the forthcoming 4.0 release and to discover the new features introduced in this major release.

What’s new in Joomla 4.0?

We are genuinely committed to making the next generation of Joomla the best Joomla ever. Joomla 4 will provide simplicity and a better user experience while also being a more robust system for developers.

The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the availability of the Joomla 4.0 Beta release.

We believe we can improve on what is already a great product.

Introducing Joomla 4, a brand new way for people to create and manage their content, developed and sustained by a global community of volunteers. Joomla 4 offers you a platform that is reliable, steady, secure and fully equipped with a wide variety of options to build any website.

We invite you to download, install and test the package to improve quality assurance for the forthcoming 4.0 release and to discover the new features introduced in this major release.

The release of Joomla 4 Beta is getting closer. Reaching this milestone is a crucial moment in the development roadmap of a product, and it means that the stable version is almost there. However, there is still plenty of work to do.

One key feature of Joomla is its extensibility, with thousands of third-party extensions and templates allowing further customization to meet specific needs. This new version of Joomla is a major version, which implies a more significant change in the compatibility of extensions.

To hear first-hand an extension developer approach, we talked with Geraint Edwards, YourSites lead developer.

First of all, we are very grateful for giving us your time in answering these questions.

What will happen with the extensions when J4 is released? Will they be compatible or will the developers have to provide complete new versions?

It is likely that most extensions will need to be updated to varying degrees to make them compatible with Joomla 4. For many ‘straightforward’ extensions this isn’t a particularly difficult exercise and, from my experience, it's feasible to make a single version of an extension compatible with both Joomla 3.9 and Joomla 4.0. Joomla 3.0 has flagged many classes, methods and functions as deprecated and the suggested replacements often work in Joomla 3 and 4 - so the need to version-specific code is limited.

The current global crisis has changed the way most of us live unrecognisably in recent days.  We would like to take this opportunity to assure you of the support of the whole Joomla Project throughout this period.  With many regions and countries already in lockdown for weeks and more entering into it daily, we would like to encourage our community and users to stay in touch over these hard times. There is no better time than now to remember what unites us and makes us the strong, dynamic, caring community we are all proud to be members of.

Communicate, Engage, Exchange Ideas, Contribute.
Let's face this crisis "together as one".

Joomla is a great way to break boredom and keep your brain active!

Whilst we are in lockdown, many of us will find ourselves with a lot more time on our hands.  Now is a great time to learn Joomla, expand your existing skills and most importantly volunteer your time to helping make the project better for everyone.

New to Joomla?  Learn more about it

The launch.joomla.org platform allows you to build your Joomla site in a few clicks, to install or test new components, new templates. Do not hesitate to also test your project in Joomla 4.

Looking for some likeminded company? Attend a Virtual JUG or other online Joomla event.

One of the major blows to the community has been the cancellation of events and Joomla User Group meetings in person.  Many have worked hard to take these events online, which brings a positive note, as you will be able to attend events that distance may have prevented you from doing so originally.

Would you like to get more involved with Joomla? Read more about this month’s highlighted volunteer positions below.

Community Translation Team Lead

The role involves the following:

• Liaise with the marketing team regarding resources that need translation, for example, landing pages, advertisements, video scripts, and other marketing materials
• Set up and manage the translation projects on Crowdin
• Maintain regular communication with the translators
• Monitor the translation progress and contact / find translators to achieve 100% translation levels
• Review all translations in all languages
• Inform those involved with publishing information when a translation is completed / available 
• Expected commitment: minimal  2 hours a week

Read more about the team’s activities here: https://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/community-translation-team 

Accessibility Testers

The role involves the following:

• Testing Pull Requests (PRs) relating to Accessibility (A11y) and hopefully continue testing Joomla! 4 to make it fully accessible
• Expected commitment: averages 2-3 hours a week
• Having an understanding of accessibility and WCAG 2.1 guidelines

• Being able to perform a A11y Audit

Read more about the team’s activities here: https://volunteers.joomla.org/teams/jat-at

Joomla 3.9.16 is now available. This is a security release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses six security vulnerabilities and contains over 20 bug fixes and improvements.

Don't forget to backup your site first

What's in 3.9.16?

Joomla 3.9.16 includes 6 security vulnerability fixes and addresses several bugs, including:

Security Issues Fixed

• Low Priority - Core - SQL injection in Featured Articles menu parameters (affecting Joomla 1.7.0 through 3.9.15) More information »
• Low Priority - Core - CSRF in com_templates image actions (affecting Joomla 3.2.0 through 3.9.15) More information »
• Low Priority - Core - XSS in Protostar and Beez3 (affecting Joomla 3.0.0 through 3.9.15) More information »
• Low Priority - Core - Incorrect Access Control in com_templates (affecting Joomla 2.5.0 through 3.9.15) More information »
• Low Priority - Core - Identifier collisions in com_users (affecting Joomla 3.0.0 through 3.9.15) More information »
• Low Priority - Core - Incorrect Access Control in com_fields SQL field (affecting Joomla 3.7.0 through 3.9.15) More information »

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Link rel attributes: ‘noopener’ attributes #28005, ‘sponsored’ and ‘ugc’ attributes #28055 
• Fields - Imagelist: Correct the display of the folder structure #16708
• Popular Tags Module fix #27745
• User - Contact Creator plugin: catid fixed #27949

Visit GitHub for the full list of bug fixes.

Download

Joomla 3.9.12 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses one security vulnerability and contains over 30 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.12?

Joomla 3.9.12 includes one security vulnerability fix and several bugs and improvements, including:

Security Issues Fixed

• Low Priority - Core - XSS in logo parameter of default templates (affecting Joomla 3.0.0 through 3.9.11) More information »

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Fix for minyear and maxyear in the calendar #26119
• Handle Google Font weights and styles in Protostar #25976
• Fix user session on mssql server #23213
• Protect SQL servers by adding pause mechanism to cli finder indexer #13502
• Fix Imagelist custom field default image #26352

Visit GitHub for the full list of bug fixes.

Download

Joomla 3.9.5 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses three security vulnerabilities and contains over 20 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.5?

Joomla 3.9.5 includes three security vulnerabilities fixes and several bugs and improvements, including:

Security Issues Fixed

• Low Priority - Core - Directory Traversal in com_media (affecting Joomla 1.5.0 through 3.9.4) More information »
• High Priority - Core - Helpsites refresh endpoint callable for unauthenticated users (affecting Joomla 3.2.0 through 3.9.4) More information »
• Moderate Priority - Core - Object.prototype pollution in JQuery $.extend (affecting Joomla 3.0.0 through 3.9.4) More information »

Bug fixes and Improvements

• User Password: Add minimum lowercase rule for password validation #24230
• Associations tab: Fix wrong behaviour of Indonesian language #24244
• Debug language: Fix User Actions Log Manager #24178
• New installation language: Kazakh #24233
• Google Authenticator plugin (2FA): QR-code generator implemented #24255

Visit GitHub for the full list of bug fixes.

Download

J

oomla 3.9.6 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses two security vulnerabilities and contains over 25 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.6?

Joomla 3.9.6 includes two security vulnerability fixes and several bugs and improvements, including:

Security Issues Fixed

• Low Priority - Core - XSS in com_users ACL debug views (affecting Joomla 1.7.0 through 3.9.5) More information »
• Low Priority - Core - By-passing protection of Phar Stream Wrapper Interceptor (affecting Joomla 3.9.3 through 3.9.5) More information »

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Media Manager: Fix logic in file upload check introduced in 3.9.5 #24637
• Edge Chromium support added #24379
• User Notes: Fix date format #24529
• Frontend editing: article category editable by Publishers and up #24640
• Cache: Cache folder automatically created if it doesn’t exist #21952
• PostgreSQL database improvements #24682 #24683 #24652

Visit GitHub for the full list of bug fixes.

Download

Joomla 3.9.9 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses one security vulnerability and contains over 30 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.9?

Joomla 3.9.9 includes one security vulnerability fix and several bugs and improvements, including:

Security Issues Fixed

• Low Priority - Core - Filter attribute in subform fields allows remote code execution (affecting Joomla 3.9.7 through 3.9.8) More information »

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Repeatable Custom Fields: fix to keep HTML tags #25189
• Media Manager: Modal layout improved #22475
• Voting: Cache cleaned after voting #25201
• Article ordering: Items grouped by category first #25295
• Batch system: Improvements for Contact and Newsfeed #25259

Visit GitHub for the full list of bug fixes.

Download

Joomla 3.9.10 is now available. This is a bug fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses one bug introduced into 3.9.9, affecting template styles of multilingual web sites.

What's in 3.9.10?

Joomla 3.9.10 is fixing one bug introduced into Joomla 3.9.9 which affects the template styles of multilingual sites and results in lost data.

Please read this JDocs FAQ page to learn more about this issue and its fix.

IMPORTANT information for users who have already updated to 3.9.9 and faced this issue.
Due to a bad sql update, the template style mapping to content languages has been lost. Unfortunately, this is an unrecoverable error.
You must either:

• Restore the data manually by upgrading to Joomla 3.9.10 and then manually editing each template style and using the "Default" Field to the language required 
• Or restore a 3.9.8 backup of your sites to recover the data before updating to Joomla 3.9.10.

We would like to take a moment to apologise to our users. 
Whilst we understand that a release which introduces a major bug is always serious - in this case the bug involved actual data lost from sites. This is a red line for us. We are going to go away and look at how we can improve our release and testing strategies and report back to our users when this is complete, detailing how we aim to improve in the future.

Joomla 3.9.11 is now available. This is a security fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses one security vulnerability and contains over 25 bug fixes and improvements.

What's in 3.9.11?

Joomla 3.9.11 includes one security vulnerability fix and several bugs and improvements, including:

Security Issues Fixed

• Low Priority - Core - Hardening com_contact contact form (affecting Joomla 1.6.2 through 3.9.10) More information »

Bug fixes and Improvements

• Custom Fields: Fix language strings/unknown columns/sorting #25476
• Creating categories on the fly with numbers #25024
• Fix database schema checker for MySQL 8 #25658
• Tree sorting in templates file tree #25792
• Improved PHP 7.4 compatibility #25784

Visit GitHub for the full list of bug fixes.

Download

Did you know that August 14th is Joomla's 14th birthday?  To celebrate there is a limited edition 14th birthday design available in the Joomla Shop.  The design will only be available until August 31st.  Show your support and get your Joomla Gear TODAY!

Joomla, an open-source, community supported content management system is good for all types of sites.  Learn more at Joomla.org

After a year without a JWC in 2018, the board were eager to bring together the Joomla! Community with a World Conference in 2019. London was chosen as a venue and the dates were announced for November 2019.

Planning for this event was at an advanced stage and tickets were being sold. Then the deadline for Brexit was extended to 31st October 2019 and in the last week the new UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson has been elected with a mandate to ensure Brexit happens on 31st October, even if that means without any form of deal with the EU.

Sadly, for an international conference planned for the weeks after Brexit, there is considerable doubt and uncertainty around travel requirements to the UK and what (if any) visas may be required. This coupled with the huge workload already on the limited resources of the community with Joomla 4 at an advanced development stage, the Board has very reluctantly taken the decision to postpone JWC2019 to some date yet to be announced.

We will be going through the process of refunding tickets to those who have purchased and will keep you informed as soon as a new event can be scheduled. Whilst this is an unfortunate decision, we feel that the uncertainty over potential travel restrictions could lead to many international attendees either not being able to attend, or not wanting to risk planning travel before there is certainty about Brexit. It is therefore prudent to take this decision now rather than risk significant losses should the event have to be cancelled at the last minute.

Joomla is a global and productive Community creating and developing the award winning CMS software which powers around 3% of all websites. Together we have created both a truly remarkable software package as well as a community of like minded volunteers who strive to contribute and add to making Joomla even more wonderful.

Privacy Laws like GDPR introduced several new requirements that changed the way we think the data management and the pathway to the privacy compliance.

Read More ...

The Joomla! World Conference is November 8-10, 2019 in London UK at the Ilec Conference Center.  The main stage speakers have been confirmed.  This three-day conference includes a full day of workshops and 2 days of 4 track conference sessions.  Speakers include Joomla 4 Release Lead, George Wilson, Joomla President Rowan Hoskyns Abrahall, and more.

Joomla World Conference, or JWC, is in its 7th season and is an event the brings like minded individual together to meet, learn, share, and connect.  

For more information and buy tickets, go to: conference.joomla.org

Joomla 3.9.8 is now available. This is a bug fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses one bug introduced into 3.9.7 which affects web sites using the French Help Server.

What's in 3.9.8?

Joomla 3.9.8 is fixing one bug introduced into Joomla 3.9.7, due to the removal of the French Help Server.

Visit GitHub for more information about this issue.

Download