Joomla! Community Magazine™

As many of you have heard, PHP 7 became End of Life last month, on November 28th. You probably also heard that this is terrible news for the security of your site and / or that upgrading your site to PHP 8 is a dreary task. While neither affirmation is the absolute truth, there are always a few kernels of truth in every plausible lie. Let's see what the end of PHP 7's service life means for your site and what you can do about it in pragmatic, practical terms.

Have you ever thought that transfering disembodied data across the globe using lasers and electromagnetic fields to your thinking rock powered by lightning so that it conjures some scribblings on a piece of glass which make you vividly hallucinate my thoughts is nothing sort of magic? Well, folks, let's talk about the source of those hallucinations, what we call content.

In the third part of this series I described how to squeeze more performance out of your site by optimizing the static media files. This month, a month later than expected due to a minor family emergency, I'll talk about putting the finishing touches which make your site more polished and professional. They mostly have to do with how your site interacts with search engines and social networks but there's also a little bit of performance to be found in there. 

In the second part of this series I described how to unlock a base level of performance out of your Joomla site with a few, simple changes. Today we're diving deeper into static media: JavaScript, CSS and image files. These changes are more involved but can turn a junker of a slow site into a decently performing one. Arguably, not all of these changes make sense for all sites but the performance benefits you get are substantial.

In the first part of this series I described why tuning the performance of your site is something you should do for both philosophical and practical reasons, as well as where to start. That post was by necessity a bit generic. In the second part of this series we'll dive into some of the basic things you can do in Joomla to unlock a decent amount of performance.

Joomla 4 is a major improvement over Joomla 3. Right out of the box you get a very fast CMS with built–in support for structured data (what was formerly called “microdata”), even several caching options to cater for any use, from lightweight persona sites to massive, busy portals.

Joomla! 4 introduces a plethora of new and exciting features. While most of them are very visible, giving you new ways to build and use your sites more easily, there's an abundance of features designed to enhance the security of your site. Today we'll be talking about WebAuthn, a feature that has the unique distinction of belonging in both categories: it makes your site login more secure and easier at the same time.

On the weekend of July 26th and 27th nine developers from around the world gathered in Manchester, UK to clean up Joomla's bug tracker. The project's bug tracker had grown unkempt, with hundreds of issues that were stagnant for a long time. Some issues were there for over a year. Moreover, the JoomlaCode issue tracker wasn’t really fit for the amount of growth Joomla had experienced since 2005. It was necessary to put the number of issues under control and move to an improved bug tracker and that was the goal of the Joomla! Bug Sprint.

Joomla!’s temporary off-line mode is a very handy option to temporarily take your site down while performing maintenance —e.g. updating the Joomla! core or an extension— and is even suggested by the official documentation for the unfortunate time that your site has been compromised. However, is this really off-line, or are there any pitfalls you should be aware of?

I promise you, this article doesn't have to do anything with religion. It talks about site security. The beast I am referring to, is unwittingly opening a back door to your site to potential hackers. You may not know it, but you could be a sitting duck. It all lies in the dark world of ownership, users, groups and permissions. This is a long article, but I promise you that you will learn things you would have never imagined. Let us shed some light to the mystery of the 777 number, and kill the evil beast!