Joomla 3 has been around for a long time. It is easy to forget how successful the series has become and how much it has evolved over the course of the minor versions.

As it approaches its final year as a mature, stable version of Joomla, it is about to enter its security support phase.

But first a few events to jog your memory about the significant things a decade ago.

• Felix Baumgartner jumped from the edge of space reaching 1342 Km/h
• The UK hosted its third Olympic games
• US President Barack Obama was re-elected for his second term
• The space shuttle Endeavour had its final flight to LAX
• In the film world, Marvel's The Avengers was released making box office records 
• Successful Mars landing of NASA's Curiosity rover and the Mars Science Laboratory.

But the biggest event by far was the arrival of Joomla 3 on the 27 September 2012.

You knew that, how could you forget? I remember it as if yesterday, the shiny new interface. The bugs (hey let's be fair it took a while to stabilize), and it boosted many new features.

It was the first to have Bootstrap at the core of the default template, and support for PHP 5.2 was dropped. PostgreSQL support was added.

There were a few odd ones that made me think: oh yes. 

• Saving blank articles allowed for the first time
• Guest user group present by default.

You can do the full meander down memory lane with this article: Joomla 3.0.0 Released

So that was 10 years ago and we still have millions of websites powered by Joomla 3 and a healthy growth in Joomla 4 sites.

What is a Security Support Phase?

But now Joomla 3 is soon leaving its bug fix support phase. The end of the bug fix support phase marks the point at which only security patches are added to the releases. 

Up until now, there have been bug fixes, backports and the additions of small improvements that have made it into J4 that affect J3 as well. From 16th August these will stop, and for the next year the only code added to the J3.10 series will be security-relevant patches. 

These will continue until 17 August 2023, two years after the initial release of Joomla 3.10.0

What should I be doing to prepare for the Security Support Phase?

Migrate your site to Joomla 4.x

There are so many great reasons to migrate your sites to the Joomla 4 series. 

Workflows, Task Schedular, Child Templates, Enhanced Accessibility and Accessibility Tools, Security improvements, Speed improvements, it's a long list.

Oh and: Bootstrap 5.

By now most of the main extensions have been built to work with Joomla 4. Looking at the top 20 that have been made J4 compatible.

https://extensions.joomla.org/browse/top-rated/

• Akeeba Backup
• JSitemap
• AcyMailing
• JCE
• Event Booking
• Convert Forms
• JEvents
• Contact Enhanced
• Easy Blog
• EngageBox
• Phoca Gallery
• SP Page Builder
• Advanced Module Manager
• Ark Editor
• FaLang
• Eshop
• Sigplus
• Community Builder
• Smart Slider
• JFBConnect

Only

• Osio Gallery
• Shack Forms
• J2Store

Are not showing as J4 compliant at the moment of writing this article.

The full list of the J4 compatible is here: 

 Joomla 4 Compatible

Joomla 4 Compatible Templates

Check with your template developer if their template is compatible with Joomla 4. The templates of these popular developers are:

• Yootheme Pro
• RocketTheme
• Joomshaper
• Joomlart

What are you waiting for?

If you are needing some help we have you covered: Planning for Mini-Migration

And there are so many great magazine articles on just this subject.

Take the start of the security support phase as a moment to take stock and get that migration done!