A system of managing content on your website is crucial when it comes to website management or development. WordPress and Joomla have been two of the most popular content management systems. While WordPress is a wee bit more popular than Joomla, the latter offers an array of choices for customization.
In this article, let us review Joomla 3.0, a new addition to the Joomla family.
Joomla 3.0 – what’s new?
Joomla 3.0 is the next big release in the Joomla CMS (content management system) community. Joomla 3.0 users might need to update to the new version of STS (Standard Term Support) every 6 months till version 3.5 releases. STS is designed for users who need access to new features. A majority of users with the existing 2.5x might not fancy the 3.0 version. Users who want to create new sites can either use version 2.5 or 3.0 depending upon their needs. The availability of 3rd party extensions and templates help you decide on the Joomla template that you want. The only drawback of Joomla 3.0 is the fact that its STS ought to be updated every six months until the new 3.5 version is available. However, this updating process is pretty simple and is also compatible backwards.
Joomla Version 2.5, the CMS is a release for LTS (Long Term Support) as the support continues until the release of Joomla 3.5 which is scheduled for spring 2014. Existing 2.5 users do not really need to migrate to the new 3.0 version.
The support of Joomla version 1.5 will end shortly, just after the release of Joomla 3.0 version. Currently, it is supported keeping the security issues in mind.
Is a direct upgrade from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.0 possible?
Any kind of issues relating to updates are considered to be top priority and these issues will be resolved in the upcoming 3x release. It is more likely that a lot of extensions and templates with regards to Joomla 2.5 will require specific modifications to function with Joomla 3.0. A good idea would be to test the possibilities before migrating or consulting the developers of individual templates and extensions you want to use. You must be aware that the technical necessities for running Joomla 3.0 are different from that of other versions. Check out the ‘Technical Requirements’ page and the FAQs page in the Joomla 3.0 release page for more details.
Features of Joomla 3.0
- New and more responsive administrator interface and template that is also friendly to mobile devices
- Ability to incorporate Twitter Bootstrap into the jui media package.
- Beez3 – a better accessible and updated package
- New template and font – Protostar that is built using Twitter’s Bootstrap
- PostgreSQL Driver – Enables you to run Joomla 3.0 websites using the PostgreSQL database.
- A simple three-step installation process
- Ability to use JFeed for better feed management rather than using the previous SimplePie
- PHP Mechanized driver
- Installing language packages straight from the extension management
- Ability to save blank articles
- Default guest user group
- Upgrading version 3.5.6 from TinyMCE
- A brand new module for new administrator statistics
- Improvised Smart search
- Continuing clean up for previous unused files, codes, tables and database fields and improvised standardization feature of tablets
- Extensive work ability on consistency and code-styled standardization
- Improvised UMS system test
- Ability to test units in the CMS.
- Ability to let SEF plug-in to make an additional canonical URL to the top
- Customized and active menu items to add up to the menu module
- Joomla platform updated version 12.2.
The latest release also includes the present version of Joomla Platform 12.2, which in turn includes a huge number of new and improvised packages.
Joomla 3.0 also boasts
a) Thirty four new features derived from fifteen new features put in 2.5.1 – 2.5.7.
b) Four hundred and ninety one tracker issues that are fixed.
However, the new version of Joomla sees no security issues fixed so far.
Final Say
Joomla is still in the nascent stage when you compare it with other CMS players like WordPress. One big reason behind this is the fact that Joomla is slightly on the complex side with its stuff spread all over the administrator’s page and other sub-menus. As predicted by a number of experts, the Joomla 3.x series will have better support. So it is worth the wait.