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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!
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OSCampus is in Beta for Joomla 4
OSCampus is the best way to build an online training site with Joomla. OSCampus is now in beta for Joomla 4! This was a major undertaking and took a lot of work. It's time for some user testing. If you've been waiting for OSCampus before you upgrade, open a support ticket, and we'll get you a copy. An official release is coming very soon.
There's now a Joomla template directory
For a long time, there has not been one central place to find Joomla templates. Daniel from the French Joomla community has solved that with an unofficial directory. He now lists nearly 1,000 Joomla 4 templates for you!
Looking for a lightweight Joomla 4 template?
If you want a slimmed-down Joomla 4 template, then Lightning is a good option. It's available for free from Github. This template uses HiQ CSS.
Download the Lightning template
A busy time for Joomla's Production Team
There's a lot to unpack in the recent Production Team meeting. Here ae some of the key things that are happening:
- There will be a new UX team
- 4.3 maybe be moved back to April 18 next year
- Better approaches to deprecated code
- Joomla has moved from Codeception to Cypress for tests
Add a progressive reading bar to Joomla
Michael Russell has a cool guide on adding a progressive reading bar to your site. You can see this in action on his site. When you scroll down the pages on his site, there's a green-colored bar at the top of the page that moves.
See Michael's tutorial on a reading bar
How the Joomla team is creating documentation
This is an interesting read: how the Joomla team is approaching documentation using a platform called Docusaurus.
Read more about the Joomla team's documentation
Joomlatools is Ready for Joomla 4
On Joomla's 17th birthday, we shared some good news from a developer. It looks like Johan Janssens, one of Joomla's co-founders, has all of his extensions ready for Joomla 4 now:
Joomlatools update about Joomla 4
A library of overrides for Joomla 4
Congrats to Daniel who we mentioned earlier in this newsletter. He launched his template directory and also has just updated his library of Joomla overrides. His new Joomla 4 Overrides library is online with 66 items to download for free.
More improvements to Joomla's CLI
We've posted a few articles recently on the new Joomla CLI. It's still improving: there's a new pull request to allow users to install Joomla via the command line.
View the latest improvement to the CLI
Video: Improving the Joomla editor experience
New from Rod Martin and OSTraining: "When you hand off that new Joomla 3 or 4 site to a client and they edit an article for the first time, more often than not they are overwhelmed by the WYSIWYG editor with a couple dozen buttons. Why not give them a toolbar with just what they need? You can do that in just a few clicks with the JCE Mobile profile."
Get access to more folders in Joomla using JCE Editor
From Bjørn Ove Bremnes: "JCE Editor is more than a basic Editor for Joomla. You can give access to specific folders on the ROOT or even subfolders using the 'Filesystem' in the JCE Profiles."
Read Bjørn's guide to the JCE Editor
Two of our favorite Joomla YouTubers together
This is a fun video where Rod Martin introduces Tim Davis: "If you use Joomla, then you need to check out Basic Joomla by Tim Davis. He offers live streams as well as short tutorials on all things Joomla." Rod and Tim are two of our favorite Joomla YouTubers!
Watch the video with Tim and Rod
A new translation tool for extensions
I know very little about this project, but am sharing out of curiosity: from Marco Rensch: "Joomet is a free desktop application that checks & translates the language files of your Joomla extensions." It can also "Translate from 27 Source Languages thanks to the powerful DeepL API Integration."
Video: Keeping your links compatible
New from Tim Davis: to help keep your Joomla site mobile compatible, make sure long text and URLs wrap on your pages. Tim shows you the CSS code you need word-wrap those long URLs and text:
A new honeypot extension to catch spam
Carlos Camara has a new spam-catching extension, similar to OSpam-a-not. In the plugin configuration, you can include a list of forbidden words. Every word will be checked in the messages sent through Joomla contact forms and as soon as one of them is detected, the message will be captured and not sent.