Joomla 1.6 Early Review

According to Joomla developers, the extremely very first secure variation for branch 1.6 may appear within the mid-to-late first quarter of 2010. Like a substantial number of our clients use Joomla all us made the decision that it may be beneficial to view in details what precisely is on its way. Thus we are going to be prepared to create all of the necessary updates in our Joomla web hosting, Joomla templates and Joomla lessons to satisfy all the wants of the brand new Joomla users. Down below we will talk about our experience with the 2nd Alpha version of Joomla One.6. This really is still a really early stage in the new Joomla release and that may be the reason why we will neglect all the bugs built in for this level from the development.

Joomla Templates

As we are proud to maintain one of the biggest galleries for Free Joomla Templates, and we plan to continue providing templates for the new Joomla, our first area of investigation naturally was the Joomla teplates.

Our first impression is that Joomla One.6 is not significantly different from Joomla One.5, especially on the frontend. By default it comes using the well-known template Rhuk Milkyway, which is exactly the same as within the previous stable release. So are Joomla 1.Five templates compatible with Joomla 1.6? The answer is ‘generally yes’ and a proof for that is the working Rhuk Milkyway template. The fact is that the template engine itself has not changed. Nevertheless, numerous templates rely on core Joomla functions which have been changed in the new variation. This means that they will give PHP errors/warnings and will definitely fail. We have tried several popular templates from leading providers and all of them gave errors. That’s why we believe that most third party Joomla 1.Five templates will require to become modified more or less so that you can become fully compatible with version One.6.

Joomla extensions

The next question is about the compatibility of the Joomla 1.Five extensions. Our tests show that no popular Joomla 1.5 extension works correctly in variation 1.6. According to Joomla devs updates are to become expected for all extensions to ensure that they can function properly with the brand new Joomla. In most cases those updates ought to be minor if the extension is written about the native 1.5 API. Nevertheless, extensions relying on the Legacy Mode will not function at all. This implies the idea that there will be no longer legacy mode in variation One.6. SiteGround support team will continue to follow the development of the Joomla extensions compatibility and will be ready to offer extension installation as part of its professional Joomla support, once the brand new variation is released.

Joomla upgrade from 1.5 to One.6

Of course, an upgrade from variation 1.Five to 1.6 is envisaged. The upgrade feature is in the to-do-list for Joomla One.6 but its current progress is %. This will cool down all enthusiasts who dream of early migration to Joomla 1.6. Here we are going to be monitoring the progress too, so that we can once again provide professional upgrade for our existing customers’ website once this is possible.

Joomla Admin Panel

Joomla 1.6 Admin PanelNow that we’ve quickly gone over the general items, let’s peek inside the Joomla 1.6 administrator panel. Its default admin template is slightly redesigned but as a whole most positions are preserved from the previous version. There we find the following new features and changes:

Joomla 1.6 Admin Panel1. The significantly talked about ACL (Access Control Lists). Generally, the idea is to be able to define separate user groups with various permissions. Permissions could be granted for:

• viewing and editing of categories and articles;
• utilizing components and modules;
• utilizing (viewing) user profile directories and files;

Joomla 1.6 Sub-Categories2. The next notable improvement is that the complex article management model of sections/categories has been substituted with a simpler categories/sub-categories model. This will definitely be a great relief to all novice Joomla users.

3. The next interesting thing is that the former ‘Frontpage’ articles option is renamed to ‘Featured’. This really is definitely much more precise simply because a featured article might appear not only about the frontpage. This improvement will help to decrease the overall confusion.

4. Last but not least, there is really a functionality for ‘Update’. While at this stage it is unclear how precisely it'll function, we suppose it will be something similar towards the update functionality found in WordPress. In other words, updating your Joomla and extensions ought to be done with just several clicks.

Our conclusion is that Joomla 1.6 is an important step forward. The improvements on usability and security have impressed us. Still, there are many more things to become desired. The SEO/SEF functionality for example is untouched and you will find no plans for its improvement. If you're interested in learning all the new things planned and their progress, please check the official Joomla 1.6 status page.

Finally, if you wonder when you'll have to migrate to the new Joomla 1.6, chances are that it will not be prior to the second half of 2010. At least not should you wish to have third party extensions and templates working.