Joomla is an award-winning Content Management System (CMS) used to create both dynamic websites and powerful online applications. Its incredible ease of use and vast extensibility have quickly made it one of the most popular web solutions available. Best of all, it is a completely open-source solution, freely offered to individuals and organizations requiring a dependable content management system.
Joomla’s foundation on PHP and MySQL allows developers to build advanced applications on an open-source platform available to all. As a Content Management System (CMS), it is the essential software that efficiently keeps track of every single piece of content on your website, streamlining your entire digital presence.
It functions much like your local public library—it keeps track of and stores all your digital assets. This content can be anything you can imagine: simple text, photos, music, videos, documents, or nearly any file type, making it a powerful system for tracking and storing digital content.
A key benefit of using a CMS is that it requires minimal technical expertise for daily administration. The CMS is built to handle the complexities of content management for you, so you don’t have to worry about the technical heavy lifting, making it a great solution for easy content management with minimal technical skill.
As an international project, Joomla! Benefits from users and contributors from all over the world. This open-source CMS is easy to install and set up, even for first-time users, ensuring a smooth start. Many web hosting services even offer single-click installation, allowing you to get your new site up and running in just a few minutes. For web designers or developers, you can quickly build professional sites for your clients and then, with minimal guidance, empower them to manage their own website content with ease—a perfect solution for rapid website deployment and easy client handoff.
Joomla is used everywhere in the world to power websites of all sizes and shapes:
- Corporate websites or portals
- Corporate intranets and extranets
- Online magazines, newspapers, and publications
- E-commerce and online reservations
- Government functions
- Small business websites
- Non-profit and organizational websites
- Community-based portals
- School and church websites
- Personal or household homepages
When basic functionality is not enough, and organizations require advanced features, Joomla delivers a powerful solution. Its robust application framework is specifically designed to allow developers to build advanced add-ons and custom extensions, expanding its core capabilities in countless innovative ways for developing custom Joomla applications.
The core framework enables developers to quickly and easily build:
- Inventory management systems
- Data reporting tools
- Application bridges
- Custom product catalogs
- Integrated e-commerce systems
- Complex business directories
- Reservation systems
- Communication tools
What’s New in Joomla version 6.0.0 (Kuimarisha) and 5.4.0 (Kutegemea)
What’s new in Joomla 6?
Automatic updates
With version 5.1, we introduced TUF secure Joomla updates. With version 5.4 and 6.0, we are now introducing automatic Joomla core updates! Now you can keep your website up to date automatically and securely!
Cassiopeia child template with extended customization options
Joomla 6 comes with a new Cassiopeia child template that has extended color and font options, allowing you to define more colors and font sizes without having to create a custom CSS file.
Advanced versioning
The versioning has always been database table-based. This meant that data from custom fields was previously excluded from versioning. Versioning has been expanded to include data from custom fields.
New custom fields
We have 2 new custom fields available in Joomla 6. There is a new “notes” field that lets you add “notes” in between your custom fields or in your article. This can be very useful to add extra instructions between your custom fields to help guide your users. We now also have a “numbers” custom field that lets you display a number with optional currency formatting options.
Backward Compatibility 6 plugin
New in version 5.4 is the ‘Behavior – Backward Compatibility 6’ plugin. In version 5.4, the plugin remains active but performs no functions beyond being enabled. This ensures that when the Joomla instance is updated for version 6, it can run immediately with the updated code, and third-party extensions that require the plugin to be enabled in version 6 will not cause the update to fail. Consequently, the Behavior – Backward Compatibility 6 plugin facilitates smoother migration from version 5.
CSS transitions in Atum & Cassiopeia
Both the default frontend template (Cassiopeia) and the backend template (Atum) now use CSS transitions. This makes navigation between pages feel much more seamless.
Developer features and optimizations
New Date and Datetime fields
There are two new fields added. The date and datetime-local inputs.
TinyMCE 8.0.1
The TinyMCE version has been updated from version 6 to version 8. This release introduces several bug fixes along with accessibility improvements.
Cache language files
In version 6, we introduce a caching layer for the languageHelper::parseIniFile method. This greatly improves the loading of the language strings.
