Kuneze (blog)
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Is the writing on the wall for Joomla in 2025?
What’s the point?
Who uses Joomla today?
No news has become news
Is the writing on the wall for Joomla in 2025?
I’ve had the idea of writing about the future of Joomla for a couple of years but, each time I think about starting to write, I have this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and give up. The main reason I can’t get motivated to write about Joomla is that I can’t answer the question, “What’s the point?” Would anything I write or, for that matter, anything anyone else writes about Joomla change the direction of the product or change anyone’s decision to use it?
What’s happening with Joomla? Does anyone know? To be honest, no-one knows what’s happening or, if there are people who do know, they’re not saying. One clear sign of what’s happening is summed-up in the following infographic{footnote}source: Google Trends{/footnote}:
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How to quickly tell what version of Joomla you’re using
How to find out what version of Joomla a website uses
An online “fast check" method for every version from J! 1.5.0 to J! 5.x
The normal way to discover the exact version of Joomla that a website is to login to the backend.{footnote}How to check the Joomla version?, Joomla Documentation, updated 16-Nov-2021{footnote} This is fine if you have some kind of access to the website but there may be other reasons why you need to know if a website uses Joomla and, perhaps importantly, what is the exact version it uses.
As we saw before in my last article, there are browser tools (e.g. Wappalyzer) that may give a general indication about the underlying technology that a website uses. While it may or may not be a good thing that people can discover the technology that a website uses, there are also methods that website managers can use to conceal that information from prying eyes; this is usually achieved by writing .htaccess and rules and strategically locating them in those folders you want to keep secure from prying eyes. We will not discuss how to do that in this article but, it’s fair to say that most website managers are either (a) unaware of these possible exposures or (b) do not use additional security methods.
The internet is full of websites that explain how to discover the identity of Joomla websites.{footnote}Examples include: How to Detect Joomla Websites, Thorsten Frommen, 2-Feb-2017; How to check the version of Joomla without hacking?, GavickPro, 11-Aug-2016{/footnote}
One of my favourite resources is an article written about a long time ago entitled How to quickly know the version of any Joomla website. I’ve been meaning to preserve this information in case the website is unavailable but I strongly encourage people to visit https://www.itoctopus.com; furthermore, if you live in North America and you need help with your Joomla website, contact the site owner and get his expert help. In the meantime, I've written a small form below that “automates” the copy-and-paste method I’ve been using for years.
Method 1:
Method 2:
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The “well known businesses that use Joomla” scam
Can you believe claims about well known businesses that use Joomla?
How to detect if these reviews are true or just fake news
Important note: This article mentions several instantly recognisable brand names; there’s nothing inherently wrong with the companies or organisations behind those names. The purpose of this article is to warn readers about fraudulent “research” claiming that these businesses use Joomla.
If you’re wondering what “well known” organisations—recognisable, iconic brands—are currently using Joomla to power their websites, you’ll probably do what most people do: use your favourite search engine and search for “businesses using Joomla”. Joomla is used to power a lot of websites on the internet but, when you look at the results of your query you may be wondering if what you’re seeing is for real.
“What?”, you ask, “eBay uses Joomla to power their websites!”.{footnote}source: https://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/ebay-chooses-joomla.html. This announcement—in 2010—is used as “authoritative research” by other commentators. The eBay community portal uses Lithium CMS today.{/footnote} Well of course eBay—a $27 billion company with twelve and-a-half thousand employees—doesn’t use Joomla to power one of the largest global online marketplaces in the world. eBay doesn’t use Joomla; nor does the Harvard University, Lipton Tea, Holiday Inn hotels, the Guggenheim museum, General Electric or, would you believe, Linux. These organisations and businesses do not use Joomla; we cannot verify if any of them have ever used Joomla. But that’s not what dozens of websites are saying. We’ll look at what’s really at play here and so that you understand the truth behind these long-playing scams.
The source of much of this false narrative was an article published on the Joomla! Community Magazine™ in 2012.{footnote}10 Most Popular Websites Using Joomla!, Joomla! Community Magazine, 1-Jul-2012.{/footnote}. Let’s look at the websites listed there:
Site NameClaimActualUses Joomla
today?1Harvard University - The Graduate School of Arts and SciencesJoomla 2.5Drupal 10✗2The Alliance for Catholic Education - University of Notre DameJoomla 2.5Drupal 8✗3Joomla!Joomla 1.5Joomla 4✓4The HillJoomla 1.5Wordpress 6.4.5✗5LinuxJoomla 1.5Wordpress 6.1.1✗6iTwireJoomla 1.5Joomla 3.10.12✓7GuggenheimJoomla 1.5Wordpress 6.4.3✗8MTV GreeceJoomla 1.5☠{footnote}https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV_(Greek_TV_channel){/footnote}✗9The Fashion SpotJoomla 1.5Wordpress 6.4.5✗10United Nations Regional Information Centre for Western Europe UNRICJoomla 1.5Wordpress✗ -
Are we now being forced to upgrade to J! 5.x?
Are these “End of Support” notifications useful or are they just nuisances?
Enough’s enough! How do I make these EOS notices go away?
In my previous article “No one is forcing anyone to use Joomla 4.x”, we discussed how a series of End of Support [EoS] notices—their tone increasing in seriousness from “informational” to “error” severity—were sending jitters up the spines of some people who use the Joomla CMS. Well, to be fair, these notices were only worrying those people who occasionally visit their websites once every few years and discover there is some “news” and who mostly dismiss the “news” because it’s too technically complicated. I don’t wish to imply that the people who read my blog are lazy or incompetent but the facts are that people are clueluess about how to migrate from one major version of J! to another. That’s why, every day, we read half a dozen new questions on the J! forum about how to upgrade from one version of J! to another.
When people who use J! 4.4.x visit the backend of their websites, they will be greeted with a message at the top of the screen like this:
{loadposition j4-eos-notice}All “nice and friendly”: there’s even a big orange button to let you “snooze” a little longer, for the time being anyway, but from 17 October next year you will be nagged every time you visit the backend of your J! website until you do something about them … like upgrading your website from J! 4.x to J! 5.x … or wishing you could throw the alarm clock out the window … or wishing you never used J! in the first place, perhaps. Nag, nag, nag.
These message escalate in severity, from benign “informational” reminders, then becoming “warnings”, and ultimately “errors”. The images at the right of the screen show how those messages will appear over time, starting on 17-Dec-2023, changing every six months, until the last message will appear on 17-Oct-2025. These messages can be temporarily hidden, by clicking the close icon located in the top right corner, these messages will reappear every time you visit the backend “home page”. The informational and warning messages can be “snoozed” by clicking the orange button but the final “error” phase cannot be snoozed.
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“Search” vs. “Smart Search”
What is Joomla’s “Smart Search” facility?
How to set up smart search on your Joomla website
Estimating the size of the finder tables
Finder space estimator
The J! CMS always had a basic search component and, with the release of Joomla! 2.5{footnote}New Features in Joomla! 2.5{/footnote}—if anyone can remember that far back—the J! CMS has incorporated a Google-like content indexing/predictive text feature that allows users to “guess” for what you may be looking for. With the release of J! 4.x, the basic search component was retired leaving only the “smart” search component.
I’ve just migrated from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4. Read all the articles concerning smart search and deleted the old Jooma 3 search package. I followed the steps concerning the indexation of the contents with the smart search component and, suddenly, my database exceeded the limit because of a rise in 97 Mb for the indexation of more than 300 articles. Is there a way to dodge this or am I “condemned” to buy more disk space from my provider?a forum user, Joomla forum, 27-Jun-2023
This article will attempt to answer some of the misgivings and concerns that people have about using Joomla’s “new” smart search component. Bear in mind that there’s actually nothing new about this feature; it’s been around since 2012. The only news here is that the old basic search component was removed from J! 4.0 in 2021. Various attempts{footnote}https://github.com/joomla-extensions/search{/footnote} to resuscitate that component seem to have been abandoned and it’s unlikely efforts will be made in future. While some people may be disappointed that the old search component no longer exists from J! 4.x, or they may feel that a “smart” search tool is overkill for their needs, let’s look at what people need to know before they implement smart search indexing, what options impact on the indexer, or whether other (i.e. external) searching may be better.