Joomlashack's 2017 Review and 2018 Preview

js 2017 review

Happy New Year, everyone.

Our team took over Joomlashack 18 months ago.

Ever since the takeover, people have been asking me questions like these:

  • "Is it worth building a Joomla business?"
  • "Do people still use Joomla?"
  • "Is anyone creating cool things for Joomla users?"

My answers are always an emphatic "Yes".

In this review, I'll explain why we're really confident for Joomla and Joomlashack in 2018.

Let's first see what happened in 2017, and then we'll see the plans for 2018.

Read more: Joomlashack's 2017 Review and 2018 Preview

Important: OSDownloads Has New URLs

OSDownloads Upcoming Release

OSDownloads is the easiest way to add downloads to Joomla. It makes it easy for you to collect an email address in exchange for downloads.

Over the last couple of months we've been working really hard on improvements to OSDownloads. These changes bring a lot of changes requested by OSDownloads users.

You'll see these changes in OSDownloads Free 1.8 and OSDownloads Pro 1.11.

In this blog post I'm going to give you an overview of the changes you'll see, including new URLs.

Read more: Important: OSDownloads Has New URLs

Introducing Frontend Statistics in OSCampus

Introducing Statistics Frontend Feature in OSCampus Pro 1.1.8

We believe that OSCampus is the best Learning Management System available for Joomla today.

We are happy to announce the release of OSCampus Pro 1.1.8 which adds another great new feature.

This release adds a new statistics layer to OSCampus.

You will now be able to see all kinds of data on Classes, Lessons, Students. All of these statistics are visible from the frontend of your site.

Read more: Introducing Frontend Statistics in OSCampus

The New Joomla 4 Administrator Template

The New Joomla 4 Administrator Template

Back in August, we took a first look at Joomla 4.

This was part of a series of posts on Joomla that have also covered the new Media Manager  and the new installer.

Overall, I was really impressed with Joomla 4 ... except for the administrator template. The admin screens were not well-designed.

Well, I now have much better news! The first alpha version of Joomla 4 has just arrived, and the Joomla team are making great progress on the admin area.

Elisa Foltyn has a post in the Joomla Magazine with screenshots from the new admin.

Read more: The New Joomla 4 Administrator Template

How to Add Title and Descriptions to Slides in Shack Slides

Intro to Shack Slides Titles and Descriptions for Titles

Shack Slides is the best way to create a slideshow in Joomla.

One of Shack Slides many features is the ability to overlay titles and descriptions onto your slide images.

Shack Slides can pull content from many different sources. In this blog post, I'm going to show you how to overlay titles and descriptions whethere you're using Joomla articles, K2 items, or a custom collection in Shack Slides.

Read more: How to Add Title and Descriptions to Slides in Shack Slides

OSDownloads Pro Now Supports Custom Fields for Downloads

OSDownloads Pro custom fields

We just released OSDownloads Pro version 1.10.0.

This release introduces a new feature: custom file fields.

In this blog post, you will take a look at how custom file fields work.

Read more: OSDownloads Pro Now Supports Custom Fields for Downloads

10 Top Tips to Speed Up Your Joomla 3 Site

10 Top Tips to Speed Up Your Joomla 3 Site

The faster your Joomla website loads up, the better ranking it will get from Google. And you don't have to break a bank to speed it up.

In this tutorial, you will learn top ten tips on getting your Joomla site running much more quickly, on mobile devices and on the desktop.

Read more: 10 Top Tips to Speed Up Your Joomla 3 Site

New Features in OSDownloads, Including Email Notifications

New Features in OSDownoads

We just released OSDownloads Free 1.7.7 and OSDownloads Pro 1.9.8. Both releases introduce new features. 

In this blog post, you will take a look at the new OSDownloads admin sidebar and email notifications settings.

Read more: New Features in OSDownloads, Including Email Notifications

You Can Now Safely Create Custom Template Overrides in Wright

Custom Template Overrides in Wright

Starting in Wright 3.6, you can safely add custom template overrides to the Wright base template and our commercial templates

This will make possible to tweak the templates without touching the core Wright files, and protect your changes for future Wright updates.

Read more: You Can Now Safely Create Custom Template Overrides in Wright

Building Joomla Extensions With Component Creator

In recent month, we've released classes showing you how to code your own Joomla extensions. These 4 classes covered how to create components, modules, and plugins.

In this week's class, "Building Joomla Extensions With Component Creator", we show you how to use the Component Creator service to speed up your development. This online tool quickly creates the complete, installable framework for your site.

In this class, Cory shows you how to create a com_movies extension with reviews, release dates, actors, genres and much more. All this without writing a line of code!

Join Joomlashack University or the Everything Club to get access to all these development classes.