All the Joomla News for December 2023

: Written by Steve Burge Steve Burge; Published: 03 January 2024 03 January 2024

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 1,500 members now!

What's Next for Joomla in 2024?

The Joomla team is now on a 6 month release cycle. Joomla 5 was released in October, so we're expecting Joomla 5.1 in a few months. The release is currently planned for mid-April. The Joomla Magazine interviewed the release managers: Martina Scholz and Luca Racchetti.

Read more about Joomla 5.1

New Book: Developing Extensions for Joomla 5

Carlos Camara has published a new book that shows you how to develop your own Joomla 5 extensions. The book takes you from the initial stages of planning your extension development to a fully featured finished product. Tim Davis also filmed an interview with Carlos.

Get the book on Amazom

Introduction to Cassiopeia

Cassiopeia is the new default template since Joomla 4.0, and using it for your next project will give you a lot of advantages. Viviana Menzel has written a detailed introduction for Cassiopeia beginners.

Read the introduction to Cassiopeia

Easily Get New Color Schemes for the Cassiopeia Template

Elisa Sophia has released a useful new tool that generates new CSS to change the colors of the Cassiopeia template. You can choose your colors and download a user.css file to upload to your site.

Visit the new Cassiopeia design tool

Change the Design of the Joomla Search Box

Daniel Dubois shows how to improve the frontend display of the default Joomla search module. You'll see how to create a user.css file to override the normal Joomla output.

Read Daniel's search box tutorial

Use GDPR Compliant Fonts in Your Joomla Template

Marc at TemplateJoomla explains why Google Fonts on your Joomla website could be an issue. He shows how to protect your user's privacy and also shows how to add a GDPR compliant font to your Joomla template.

Learn more about fonts and GDPR

Joomla is Faster on PHP 8.3

The team at Kinsta benchmarked PHP 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3 across 11 content management systems. With PHP 8.3, they saw an uplift of nearly 30%, making 8.3 the smartest choice for running your site.

See Kinsta's PHP 8 tests

Video: Using Joomla 5's Schema.org Integration

Joomla 5 introduced new tools to help add Schema.org compliant metadata to your articles. Using this format makes it easier for search engines to index and analyze your website. Kevin Olson has a new video explaining how to use this feature.

Watch Kevin's Schema.org video

Video: Build a Joomla 5 Template with Bootstrap

Kevin Olson has a another new video, this time showing how to create your own custom Joomla 5 template. This tutorial uses Kevin's JoomSkeletal template. It's the most basic Joomla template you could possibly create, with 4 files all in a single folder and no dependencies. Kevin also published a text version.

Watch Kevin's template video

Video: Save Disk Space with Akeeba Backup

Tim Davis has a new video with a tip on how to save some space when backing up your Joomla site with Akeeba Backup. If you sometimes run short of space on your server, Tim's advice will be very useful.

Watch Tim's Akeeba Backup video

Video: A Security Fix for Joomla 3

Tim Davis has another video, this time for users of Joomla 3, which is now end-of-life. There is a security patch available for people who are still on the old Joomla 3 platform. Tim explains how to find and install this patch.

Watch Tim's Joomla 3 security advice

Deploy Joomla Articles to Multiple Joomla Sites

Alexander Elise has released a new tool that can share Joomla articles across multiple sites. You could use this to distribute content across a network, or to migrate huge amount of articles from one site to other sites. This tool is also a great use-case for the new Joomla 5 API.

See Alexandre's content deployment tool

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