Over a decade ago, a developer volunteering in the Joomla! Security Forum launched a suite of tools (Joomla Tools Suite) to help Joomlers diagnose issues with hosting, the installation and other matters associated with Joomla! Part of this suite was what is now known as the Forum Post Assistant or FPA.

Russ Winter conceived the FPA, to function as both a standalone tool and as a means for generating a report on the Joomla Forum. The FPA has become such an important part of the Joomla world that it is used as the "go to" tool for anyone with website problems. You can not only find out the state of your server, any possible conflicts that cause your site issues, but the tool also runs even if Joomla isn't installed properly.

Russ was then joined by several well-known Joomla community members, Fiona Coulter, Claire Mandville and Phil DeGuy from the Security Forum team to further develop the tool, with the aid of Sveinung Larsen, Michael Russell and "Webdongle" coding, testing and offering their help.

The combined talent, dedication and efforts of the FPA project team have helped untold numbers of Joomlers over the years, not only making it easier and simpler simpler for Joomla beginners and veterans alike to get get help when needed but also providing consistent and meaningful diagnostic information to forum members and the community as a whole to help resolve any issues and get their sites up and running in a timely manner.

This month Russ and the FPA team have worked on some of the outstanding issues and are on the verge of releasing a new and updated version, incorporating many new functions, features and sporting a new User Interface;

• Print to PDF, so you can pass the output to a 3rd party without leaving the script on your site,
• Simplified and less cluttered forum post generation workflow.
• Automatic checking and notification of the FPA latest version.
• Automatic checking and notification of Joomla! latest release.
• FPA self destruct feature, auto-deleting 7 days after installation.
• Automatic redirection to the https:// site, if a valid SSL certificate is found.
• Hosting Confidence Level indicating the probability of Joomla! successfully running on your server.
• New responsive user interface, including light and night modes.
• Improved Accessibility and html validation.
• Improved FPA report visual print styling.
• Many additional performance and security enhancements.


If you would like to try out the FPA and give it a run for its money - it's free, by the way - then go to https://forumpostassistant.github.io/docs/