The long awaited new version of Joomla has been released today.
Joomla is a free content management system used on tens of thousands of websites of all shapes and sizes.
2020Media hosting fully supports Joomla 2.5
2020Media can help you migrate older Joomla versions to 2.5
Along with new features such as advanced search and automatic notification of Joomla core and extension updates, the Joomla CMS for the first time includes multi-database support with the addition of Microsoft SQL Server. Previous versions of Joomla were compatible exclusively with MySQL databases. This improves support on the Windows platform, which 2020Media are able to offer at no extra cost.
Other key features in Joomla 2.5 includes:
Automatic notification when a Joomla or extension update is available. When logged into the control panel, site administrators will instantly have access to new notification buttons that allows them to see and act on the latest updates. In addition to updates for the Joomla CMS, a second button offers third party extension notification updates.
A better natural language search engine to the Joomla core. Complete with auto-completion and stemming (for example if you type “running” in a search field you also see run), it is faster and more versatile than the standard search.
The first London Joomla user group meeting took place at UCL on 17 January. The user group is open to all with an interest in Joomla and no level of technical knowledge is required. This meeting welcomed many new faces and we hope they’ll join the user group again.
Joomla Template Overrides
There was no set agenda this month, but a topic that was explored in detail was template overrides. Joe from Softforge demonstrated the technique which allows you to modify the look and feel of your site in ways beyond what is built into the template options. By using template overrides you avoid modifying core Joomla files and this means you can update Joomla when you need to, without worrying about breaking your website. The technique is simple in essence, though finding the right files or files to move does require some knowledge, and asking the usergroup is a great place to get some help.
Copy Joomla core file to appropriate location within template folder
Modify copied file as required.
Reload Joomla page (clearing cache if needed).
It was suggested that template overrides be covered in more detail in another user group meeting.
News from the Joomla eco-sphere
Virtuemart out. The big daddy of Joomla shopping cart is finally released and feedback was good
K2 out. A component the replaces the ‘article’ with more extendible functions. think of Joomla! articles with additional fields for article images, videos, image galleries and attachments.
Rockettheme dropping Drupal. Popular Joomla template shop will stop developing themes for Drupal after low takeup.
Joomla 2.5, the next long term stable release is due for release on 24 Jan. Joomla 1.5 reaches end of life in April 2012.
Mootools/jquery
Mootools is a bundle of javascript included in Joomla core and is often used for making sliders and pop up photo galleries. Many third-party extensions use the jquery javascript library for their functions and there is currently a debate around including jquery within Joomla core. At the moment you often get several copies of jquery loaded by different extensions (and often different versions of jquery at that!). The argument against adding jquery to Joomla core is that recently a lot of work has been focussed on making the core as lightweight as possible.
The next meeting is on February 21st. If you plan on attending, let us know at 2020Media and we’ll see you there.
ICANN, the organisation in charge of the global domain name system, tonight opens the 3 month process for allowing applications for new top level domains. Top level domains are the ‘right of the dot’ extension on domain names – like .com, .uk, .xxx.
From midnight 12 Jan 2012 until April 12th 2012, anyone who can stump up $185,000 (£119,500) as a processing fee can apply for more or less any domain name extention they like*.
*ICANN has a multi-stakeholder consensus-based decision making process so there are plently of caveats, special cases and discounts for worthy causes.
You can find out more about the process at the newgTLD Icann website.
2020Media offers registration services for domain names worldwide and we welcome the changes ICANN has made. Although it’s likely many of the applications will be by big brands like Facebook and Microsoft for domains that won’t be available for the public, there will still be more choice in the coming months and years.
CiviCRM, the free and Open Source Solution for the Civic Sector went from strength to strength in 2011. 2020Media has been providing CiviCRM hosting for several years for organisations small and large. Hosting plans with integrated “zero-click” installs of CiviCRM start at £100 per year. Read more about CiviCRM Hosting.
Planned CiviCRM improvements for 2012
Accounting integration improvements and Quickbooks integration
CiviMobile – CiviCRM for mobile devices
CiviSMS – SMS blasts and interactions
Mass Dedupe and Merge – Batch merging for groups of duplicate contacts
Multiple membership renewal reminders
Relative date filters for all search forms
UK Direct Debit Integration
These planned improvements rely on donations to the core development team, so if you can donate anything at all to help ‘make it happen’, you can do so at http://civicrm.org/mih. You can choose the specific feature you want to target so it’s very clear how your donation gets results.
Let’s a take a detailed look at these 2012 CiviCRM features
This feature is the first step towards enabling better integration of accounting concepts and systems with CiviCRM. It implements a number of data changes to make further enhancements possible, as well as providing Quickbooks integration via IIF file export (and integration with other packages via CSV export)
CiviCRM for mobile devices. This includes iPhone, Android, iPad, Blackberry and more. This version will include the ability to view/search contacts and see most of the details of each contact. It will also have the ability to create/edit contacts, and handle event attendee check-in.
Administrators will be able to configure an unlimited number of reminders at specified dates relative to the membership expiration, and configure different message templates as needed for each reminder.
Joomla! 2.5 will be released in January 2012 and it is the successor of Joomla! 1.5. It will be a so called long term release and it will be the Joomla! state of the art until July 2013. The versions 1.6 and 1.7 were short term releases and they paved the way to Joomla! 2.5.
New Features
Joomla 2.5 will have a host of new features including new search functionality, multi-database support, and update notification.
Search is “reinvented” in Joomla! 2.5 with Finder. The new finder component works with a search index.
New Search Function in Joomla
Based on Finder, which was developed by jXtended, Joomla 2.5 has added an exciting new natural language search function. This feature incorporated auto-completion and stemming. Stemming is the ability for the search to use the root of the word you entered to locate matches. While there is still work to be done, this search is also much better at searching in languages other than English.
This new search is faster and more versatile that the standard search. The data is indexed to get this flexibility and speed. New plugins are required to use this search. Joomla ships with the new core extension plugins, but other extension developers will need to create their own plugins to work with this new search. By default, the standard search is active and this new search is disabled. You can enable the plugin and index your files when the extensions you want to search have the new plugins.
More Databases
With Joomla! 2.5 it will be possible to run Joomla! on MySQL and Microsoft SQL Server. Drivers for PostgreSQL and Oracle seems to be very near (Getting Ready for Multi-Database Support).
Joomla Update Notification
The number one request from ideas.joomla.org was for Joomla to tell the site administrator when Joomla needs to be updated. Site administrators will now be able to see as soon as they log in if Joomla is out of date. They can then click the button and be taken to the one-click update to Joomla. A second icon does the same thing for any non-core components that are set up for the one-click updating by their developers.
User registrations with CAPTCHA
A CAPTCHA plugin using the reCAPTCHA service can be enabled. Once you sign up for free with reCAPTCHA and enter your keys, you can enable CAPTCHA on new user registrations. It could also be used by other extensions needing CAPTCHA. This helps stop spammers signing up to your site.
Better Choices for Offline Mode
You can use the default offline message, disable it or create a customized message. Additionally you can select an image for the offline mode page. You have even a possibility to set the site to offline mode during installation so no unauthorized people can see it before you want them to.
Why 2.5? What happened to 1.8?
New Release Cycle
Every 18 months, a long term release of Joomla! will appear. That’s why 2.5 will be released this month. The .5 signifies a long term release. Moving from 1.7 to 2.5 can be done with the one-click upgrade within Joomla and most extensions that run on 1.7 should also run on 2.5.
Joomla 2.5 is the direct upgrade for Joomla 1.7. Joomla 1.7 will be supported for critical security issues only for a period of one month after the release of Joomla 2.5. After that time, only Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5 will be supported by the Joomla project. Note that Joomla version 2.5 is a long-term-support (LTS) release and will be supported for at least 18 months.
