The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the availability of Joomla 3.9 Beta release. Community members and extension developers are asked to download and install the package in order to provide quality assurance for the forthcoming 3.9 release.

Joomla 3 is the latest major version of the Joomla CMS, with 3.9 being the tenth minor release in this series.

Please note that going from 3.8 to 3.9 is a one-click upgrade and is NOT a migration. The same is true for any subsequent versions in the 3 series of the CMS. That being said, please do not upgrade any of your production sites to the beta version as this beta is ONLY intended for testing and there is no upgrade path from beta.

What’s new in Joomla 3.9?

Joomla 3.9 main purpose is to introduce a Privacy Tool Suite into Joomla CMS to facilitate the compliance of your sites and to make developers’ life easier to get their extensions compliant with laws and regulations such as GDPR.

To make your life easier, we are pleased to inform you that you can also test Joomla 3.9 Beta directly at launch.joomla.org

The Privacy Tool Suite Extensions

• The Privacy System
  This is the heart of law and regulation related capabilities and provides several subsystems which will help with the compliance of your Joomla websites. Among other things, you’ll be able to display a consent checkbox on your forms, export and/or remove personal data further to an information request and check the privacy related capabilities of extensions.
• The Action Logging System
  This system provides an infrastructure to create an audit log of activity performed on a website and can be fine tuned to the site admin's preferences. You’ll be able to review the action log, export it and purge the entries.

To learn more about the new extensions linked to the Privacy Tool Suite, we invite you to read the Alpha blog post and GitHub.
Don’t forget to browse our dedicated documentation to learn to use these new features.

Joomla 3.9, it’s even more new features

• Use Google Invisible reCAPTCHA on your websites #18146
• Add notes to your articles in the backend, and filter them #19134
• A new search feature in the backend: search for a specific article content #20083
• 2 new options for custom fields: A repeatable custom field (#20243) is now available, and you can create alternative layouts (#18571)
• New frontend options: Display the intro or full image in your newsflash module (#20169), show only the articles from a specific author in your latest articles module (#20687), and more!
• Load a module by ID into your article #19362
• Display your tags per language #19509
• And more...

A full list of Joomla 3.9 features and issues resolved can be found on GitHub.

What is this release for?

This is a BETA release, that should only be used on test sites. Beta releases cannot be upgraded.

Extension and template developers are encouraged to work with this release in order to prepare extensions for the stable release of Joomla 3.9, though there shouldn't be any backward compatibility issues.
Users are encouraged to test the package for issues and to report them in the Joomla CMS Issue Tracker.

When is the stable release due?

The present expected schedule is this:

• October 2018 - 3.9 Release Candidate
• October 2018 - 3.9 Stable

Please note that the specific date of releases depends on availability of volunteers and circumstances beyond our control.
The most up-to-date information regarding this timeline can be found in our project roadmap.You can join the testing and reporting to help ensure a solid, timely delivery (see “How can you help…” below).

How can you help Joomla development?

There are a variety of ways in which you can get actively involved with Joomla. It doesn't matter if you are a coder, an integrator, or merely a user of Joomla. You can contact any one of our Production members, to get more information, or if you are ready you can jump right into the Joomla! Bug Squad.
The Joomla Bug Squad is one of the most active teams in the CMS development process and is always looking for people (not just developers) that can help with sorting bug reports, coding patches and testing solutions. A great way for increasing your working knowledge of the Joomla code base, and also a great way to meet new people from all around the world.
If you are interested, please read about us on the Joomla Documentation. If you wish to join, email Niels Braczek (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), our Bug Squad coordinator.

You can also help Joomla development by thanking those involved in the many areas of the process.

A huge Thank You to our volunteers!

This Beta release is the result of thousands of hours of work by dozen of volunteers.
A big thank you goes out to everyone that contributed to the 3.9 release.
A special massive thank you goes to Michael Babker, Tuan Pham Ngoc, Nicola Galgano, Brian Teeman and Hannes Papenberg who did an amazing work on making the Privacy Tool Suite a reality.

Help the Joomla 3.9 Marketing Team!

The copywriting for the forthcoming landing page for Joomla 3.9 will be soon available for translation at Crowdin. Stay tuned!
We have also a wide range of “coming soon” imagery you can share and translate, which can be found here. We would love you to spread the Joomla love and get the word out to your network.