Joomla! Annotated – March 2021

In this march edition of Joomla! Annotated, you can read about the latest release of Joomla and related extensions. As usual, we’ve curated a collection of Joomla-related articles, tools, videos, and streams to share with you.

 

📰 Official News

• GSoC participant, 13th time lucky! - 2021 Google Summer of Code™ program (GSoC) has been accepted
• GSoC 2021 Project Ideas - List of Joomla project ideas in GSoC program
• Joomla 3.9.25 Release - This is a security release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses 9 security vulnerabilities and contains more than 40 bug fixes and improvements.
• JED Team Meeting Report

🚀 Frameworks & Libraries

• Yoyo Reactive Framework - New update of the best reactive framework for Joomla CMS.
• Helix Ultimate 2 Framework - New update of the best Joomla frontend Framework (Brings Toast Notifications, Restructured Menu Builder, Bug Fixes, and Improvements)

🔧 Tools

• Bitnami Docker Image for Joomla!
• Akeeba DocImport - The simplest way to integrate DocBook XML documentation in your Joomla! site.
• TypeHint Helper - Generate typehints for deprecated core Joomla! classes, make your IDE happy

🔥 Recently Updated Extensions (Free)

• JCE - A Content Editor for Joomla
• Kunena Forum - Forum / Bulletin Board / Discussions component for Joomla
• On a Diet - Disable Joomla Components, Plugins, Modules, Templates en masse
• BioDiv - Joomla component for biodiversity monitoring through camera traps
• Custom Tables - Allows you to add Tables, Fields and Layouts/Pages to create a catalog, edit form or details page and more !
• RSGallery2 - Gallery extension restart from scratch for joomla! 4.x
• Akeeba Engage - Comments for Joomla articles made easy
• Phoca Gallery - Joomla component which displays image gallery on website.
• FlexiContent CCK - Advanced content management system developed to greatly enhance the native article manager of Joomla! (com_content)
• hCaptcha - A simple CAPTCHA Plugin using the hCaptcha CAPTCHA service to protect your Joomla website against SPAM.
• Sports Management -  Component for managing many sports

🆕 New Extensions (Free)

• Data Compliance - A tool to help you work towards EU GDPR compliance for your Joomla site
• Invalidate Cache - A Joomla module to refresh the mediaversion hash. This effectively invalidates the browsers caches
• Phoca Filter Options - It adds the ability to filter parameters in configuration options or selected component edit views for Joomla 4
• Tubeflix - module that displays the content (playlists & videos) of a Youtube channel to your visitors.
• Phoca Desktop - pugin which adds a desktop with shortcuts to the main administration panel
• JStats - Track your core Joomla!® metrics & keep your finger on the pulse of your site
• W7 Read Time - Let your users know an estimate of how much time the are going to spend reading your article.
• JMG Glossary - Easily create a glossary, encyclopedia or dictionary of your terms and show responsive tooltips when users hover over the terms.
• JMG Article Slider - This module shows your Joomla! articles as sliders
• RegAuth - A user plugin that causes an authorization code to be required on the registration form
• JPageLocker - simple joomla plugin for password locking pages

📖 Articles

• Joomla 4: The new Workflow feature
• Joomla and the Art of Solving Infinite Problems
• Getting extensions ready for Joomla 4 - Jan Pavelka
• Getting extensions ready for Joomla 4 - Yiannis Christodoulou
• Getting extensions ready for Joomla 4: Alexandre Derocq
• Meet a Joomler - Josean Telleria
• Tooling up to write good software. We had it so easy in the early days!
• How I learned Joomla - Dénes Székely
• Community Openings: March 2021
• Joomla’s decline illustrated in one chart

📑 Tutorials

• How To Use Dates in Joomla [For developers]
• Using Bootstrap 5 Components in Joomla 4 [For Developers]
• How to Use the Guest Feature in Joomla
• The Complete Guide to Joomla Role-Based User Access
• Ultimate Guide to High Google PageSpeed Score for Websites on Joomla
• Explore the core! Create your pages with Menus
• Joomla Security Best Practices to Follow in 2021
• Remove Joomla's Forget Username and Forget Password Links

📹 Videos

• Joomla Development Tutorials Using JCB - Series of tutorials to show step by step how to develop Joomla extensions using JCB Extension
• Joomla development with Visual Studio Code
• A talk by Brian Teaman on the importance of cultural understanding in web forms
• Improve Your Search Ranking by Adding Schema.org Metadata to Your Joomla Template
• Is Joomla relevant in 2021?
• How to Group Tabs in Chrome when Working on Joomla
• A Look at Simple Access Keys for Joomla
• Test Your Joomla Site Colors with APCA: Advanced Perceptual Contrast Algorithm
• Use Accessibility Insights for Web to Test your Joomla Site
• A Look at UP - Universal Plugin for Joomla 👀
• Conditional Content In Any Article or Module in Joomla

✅ Stats

• 159 Pull requests merged by 37 people at Github
• 1 Release published
• Alexa Ranking:
  • Wordpress: 420
  • Joomla: 5645
  • Drupal: 11359

🗣 Active Social Groups

• Facebook Groups:
  • JoomlaShack VIP - This is a group for Joomlashack and Joomla users to have a positive conversation about Joomla.
  • Joomla! Extensions - Discuss, share and find free and paid joomla! extensions (components, modules, plugins, templates)
• Youtube Channels:
  • Basic Joomla Tutorials - The Basic Joomla Tutorials channel features Joomla tutorials and live streams
  • Joomla! London - Joomla! User Group London (#JUGL - http://www.joomlalondon.co.uk) regularly provides Joomlers with content relating to Joomla! and surrounding subjects.
  • Joomla! Dallas - Meeting videos of the Joomla User Group in Dallas, Texas.
  • Joomla & More - Tips and tricks about Joomla and more
• More:
  • Joomla! Discussions at Reddit
  • Joomla! Discussions at Github

👨‍💻 PHP

• PHP 8.0.3, PHP 7.4.16 – Regular bug-fix updates of the supported branches.
• xDebug.cloud
  A new paid service from the author of Xdebug, which aims to simplify the debugging of PHP applications in more complex network configurations, such as when using Docker, Vagrant, or cloud services.
• Setup Step Debugging in PHP with Xdebug 3, Docker Compose, and PhpStorm
• RoadRunner – A major release of the PHP application server written in Golang.
• PSL – A standard library for PHP, inspired by hhvm/hsl.
• php-k8s – The package allows managing Kubernetes resources from within PHP.
• Comparison of markdown libraries for PHP: erusev/parsedown, thephpleague/commonmark, cebe/markdown, michelf/php-markdown.
• phpize.online – A tool for sharing PHP code, similar to 3v4l.org but with SQL support.
• Complete guide to FFI in PHP.
• Character escape sequences and numeric notations in PHP.
• Unit testing tips by examples in PHP.
• When to use empty in PHP? Benjamin Eberlei says never.
• PHP 8: Observability Baked Right In – Article about internal API for tracing functions.
• When Objects Are Not Enough – Interesting thoughts on OOP.
• PHP benchmarks on arm64 vs x86_64 – AWS with ARM is 20% cheaper and in some cases faster.
• Moving From Nginx+FPM to Swoole Has Increased Our PHP API Performance by 91% – The story of github.com/appwrite.
• How Laminas CI automation works – GitHub Actions to support, test, and release 200+ packages.

👨‍💻 JavaScript

• HTMX - library that allows you to access modern browser features directly from HTML, rather than using javascript.
• Hyperscript - scripting language for doing front end web development
• VanillaJS vs jQuery vs Hyperscript - Comparisons of how to implement various common UI patterns in vanilla javascript, jQuery and hyperscript