All the Joomla News for April 2023

: Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge; Published: 05 May 2023 05 May 2023

Thanks for using Joomla and Joomlashack. Every month we post a round-up of news from around the Joomla community.

We've posted all of these updates, plus a lot more in the Joomlashack Facebook group, so join if you want daily Joomla updates. We have over 1,000 members now!

JCal Pro is Ready for Joomla 4

JCal Pro is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download JCal Pro version 5.0 and it will work on your Joomla 4 sites. This is the 24th extension that we've updated for Joomla 4!

More about JCal Pro on Joomla 4

Joomla 4.3 is Available

Joomla 4.3 was released on April 18. Here are some of the new features:

Media Manager improvements including ordering, image thumbnails, and support for more file types
Workflow transition improvements
Conditional custom fields
Guided tours to help new users with admin tasks

More about the release of Joomla 4

Interview with Harald Leithner about Joomla 5

Joomla 5 is on the horizon and due to land in October 2023. Philip Walton interviewed Harald Leithner who is the Release Manager. He shares the plans for Joomla 5.

Read more about Joomla 5

Video: Speed Up the Joomla Media Manager

From Tim Davis: "As of Joomla 4.3, you can speed up the Joomla Media Manager load time by turning on thumbnail creation."

See Tim's video on the Media Manager

Create Your Own Guided Tours

Olivier Buisard recently wrote an introduction to this new Joomla 4.3 feature called Guiding you through Guided Tours. In this second article, he shows how to build your own tours for your customers.

Build your own guided tours

Video: AI Buttons for Joomla

Tim Davis says, "It is still very early days for AI and content development so it's interesting to see all the different approaches to using AI in Joomla as they come along. In this video we take a first look at "AI buttons for Joomla". It is described as "an assistant who will produce relevant and competitive content for your Joomla website!"

Watch Tim's video on AI

Video: AI in Phoca Cart

If you use the Phoca Cart extensions for eCommerce, you can now use ChatGPT to create product descriptions and metadata. The Phoca team have a video showing how this integration works.

Watch the Phoca video on AI

Manage Multiple Joomla Websites from a Single Installation

At the Cloudfest conference, a team of Joomla developers started work on a fascinating project: "This solution aims to make website management easier and more efficient by allowing users to host multiple websites on a single Joomla! installation, rather than needing to set up a separate installation for each website."

Read a report from the Cloudfest project

New Image Comparer Plugin

Kevin Olson has released a new "Image Comparer Plugin" that allows you to display two images side by side with a slider. It's perfect for before/after photos. It's available for Joomla 4 and is responsive and lightweight. Kevin has several more useful, free Joomla 4 extensions.

Get Kevin's new plugin

Videos: Joomla 4 Template Development

Yes, this a third link to Kevin Olson's work in this newsletter! Kevin has published a four-part beginner series on developing site templates for Joomla 4.

Watch Kevin's template videos

Playing with the Joomla Web Services (API) - Part 2

Marc Dechèvre continues to write a lot of tutorials around using the Joomla API. He's just published Part 2 in a series on the Joomla Magazine. He shows you how to import articles to Joomla directly from a Google Sheet.

See Part 2 of Marc's tutorial

New Joomla Weekly Podcast

Carlos Cámara has launched a new weekly podcast called the "Hepta Extensions Podcast". Carlos is sharing regular, short recaps about Joomla and web development.

Check out the new podcast

Joomla Day USA Was Successful

Laura Ellen shared that Joomla Day USA went really well: "Over 100 joomlers gathered virtually and in person to learn and network together!"

See photos and videos from Joomla Day USA

Joomla Days Netherlands is May 12 to 13

The big Joomla event in the Netherlands will be held next week in Tilburg. The event will be divided into two days. On the first day there will be a Pizza Bugs and Fun session in combination with presentations about debugging, testing, participating and developing Joomla. On the second day there will be a "normal" JoomlaDay with multiple tracks of presentations.

Sign up for Joomla Day Netherlands

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