Joomla! Community Magazine™

Every year, I promise myself I will see more national events, then promptly forget to book them. I think I’m not the only one. So, for all of us: here is your guide to what is happening in Joomla and how you can become more active.

Here in the UK, the phrase “helping the police with their enquiries" is synonymous with other phrases, such as “Assisting law enforcement with their investigation” and often ends with having “your collar felt.” 

Luckily, I even get paid to help them, which is not the usual turn of events when dealing with the Law, but in my case, it is because I build websites for several different Police groups in the UK.

Joomla has been fortunate to benefit from the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and other events over the past few years. Often, from these projects Joomla's core features are improved, and the members of the teams that work on these features go on to become pillars of the community. But is it now time for us to think about launching our own program alongside these and bring stability to the cycle of development?

To misquote Jack Swigert, “Okay, Joomla... we've had a problem here.”

We have tried to address this problem over the years, and it continues to be a problem in our community.
Making Joomla a safe space for all has proved challenging; we still have members making others feel threatened and intimidated.
But we must not give up; all together, we will make Joomla a safe space for all.

The advent of Joomla 5 heralds a new era for web developers and site managers, as it promises a suite of enhancements, optimisations, and fixes that streamline website creation and management. As we delve into the new features and improvements, it's pivotal to appreciate the developmental strides and transformations from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5.

These are more than just code!

The point of this intro is to stop you from running scared. If you think this is way out of your reach, then think again. Seriously, we have had many release managers over the last few years, and several have NOT been coders. The job has changed for good reasons, and the outcome has been better: more stable releases with a growing support network of past managers who can help with the process.
Read on, and you may be pleasantly surprised.

One of the main features of Joomla 4.3 was Guided Tours. When you install or update to Joomla 4.3 and log into the administrator area, you are greeted with the ability to “Take a Tour” in the top menu. This has helped many to learn how to use Joomla and understand the functionality of Joomla, but now Guided Tours has had a makeover. Here, we take a deep dive into all that Guided Tours in Joomla 5 has to offer.

AI is becoming part of Joomla with extensions and plugins, but it should also become part of your workforce, becoming your assistant, allowing you to be more productive and taking away some of the day-to-day chores.

You may have seen the two previous articles Joomla 5 is coming, time for a new look for all our sites? Join the challenge and have a say and Joomla 5 challenge, the responses and the winners, well since then we have set up a test site and people are working on various design elements. This is a quick update of where we are at and what we are aiming for.

Remember last month’s challenge to propose a design for our ‘own’ Joomla website? The challenge idea was born out of the marketing team's desire to bring a more harmonious look and feel to Joomla's websites. And to bring us into this decade, as the core sites were all made in the 2010’s and to take the different looks and feel and coordinate across the brand.

Let’s dive in to see who had a say and what their contribution was.