Community Magazine

Congratulations! You've found the January issue of the Joomla Community Magazine! We're starting the year with a great variety or articles that hold something for everyone: tutorials and how-to's, community news (yes, elections coming up) and other interesting articles.  

Small layout changes can make a big difference to how content is perceived. One of the most effective improvements you can make to a category blog layout is to treat the leading article differently from the rest — visually signalling that it matters more.

With the release of Joomla 5, the reCAPTCHA plugins were removed from Joomla core, for a number of good reasons. The downside was that the Joomla core was left without a captcha integrated by default, meaning that forms could only be protected against spam using third-party plugins. The good news is: that is going to change again. We’re introducing a better, native and user-friendly solution, built in Joomla’s core and not depending on third-party services.

What if you could have different colors and other styling for each category? With the Articles - Categories Module, you can - and all it takes is a few small tweaks. Joomla offers many modules, but some powerful ones go unnoticed. The Articles - Categories Module is one of them, and with a few small code and CSS tweaks, it can do far more than expected.

This tutorial explains how to add extra fields to the Joomla Contact form using Custom Fields. The process uses core Joomla functionality, requires no third-party extensions, and is fully upgrade-safe.

You’ll learn how to create a field, configure permissions correctly, control where it appears on the form, and ensure submitted values are included in the contact email.

In this series, we explore methods and tools to test a custom Joomla extension. In this third episode, we’ll use PHPStan, a tool to examine and debug source code before the program is run. You don’t even have to write a test to catch bugs at an early stage.

3 years ago I built a website which would be constantly updated with new content. More recently I built a mobile phone app that would need to display the same data. This is how I updated everything from one place.

An open source CMS that’s vibrant, community-driven, super flexible and powering millions of websites: that’s how Mahmoud Magdy experienced Joomla. It was the first ever open source project he worked on: "It was challenging at first, but I loved how it pushed me to write better code and learn from others."

Our open-source community thrives thanks to dedicated people, lived transparency, and open exchange – all fueled by a shared passion for Joomla! It’s not just about technical knowledge and expertise; it’s equally about how we interact as people. This combination of competence and personal connection is what makes our community strong, vibrant, and Joomla! successful.

A new year is upon us and with a new year means new possibilities… and it seems perfect timing to start this series…

2025 is behind us, and 2026 has peeked through with its brisk air, hopeful tone and snow covered roads or gorgeous weeks of sunshine depending from where you hail...

If you ever wanted to contribute to Joomla but are not sure where to begin, Pizza Bugs & Fun (PBF) is the ideal first step. On January 30 - 31, the global Joomla community is coming together for two days of learning, collaboration, and hands‑on contribution.

Are you comfortable in front of the camera, dynamic, “charming” and always smiling? Do you feel like an adventurer ready to share your explorations of the Joomla! CMS, interview prominent figures in the community, chat in person or via video chat with volunteers within Joomla, or go in search of new ideas?

Joomla is a CMS that is completely free and open source. This means that anyone, anywhere in the world, can create a professional website without paying for a licence, without hidden subscriptions and without dependence on a proprietary publisher. This freedom is one of the fundamental pillars of Joomla: the software is open, accessible and evolves thanks to its community. 

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of being recognized by your peers. I learned this firsthand in 2011, when my colleague Isidro Baquero and I discovered our Spanish Joomla blog had been nominated for a J.O.S.C.A.R award at JandBeyond. We were just two engineers passionate enough to write about Joomla! in our native language. We didn’t win, but that moment of validation was unforgettable: it felt like we had achieved something amazing.