Joomla 5.0 Beta 1 - Feature Freeze

Details: Published: 05 September 2023

Grey marketing image for Joomla 5.0 Beta 1

The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the availability of Joomla 5.0 Beta 1 for testing.

The first in the 5.x series of Joomla! Taking all that's good in Joomla 4.x and taking it to the next level. Making Joomla Fast, accessible, secure, extendable and Yours

What is this release for?

There are two main goals for Beta releases:

Providing developers with the basis to test their extensions and reporting any issues well before the final release
Allowing users to discover the new features introduced to Joomla 5.0

For a complete list of known backward compatibility issues for version 5.0, please see Potential backward compatibility issues in Joomla 5 on the documentation site.

What is this release NOT for?

This beta version of Joomla 5.0 is not suitable for production sites. It is for testing only.

Where to get it?

Download Joomla 5.0.0 Beta 1

To always use the latest build of Joomla 5, we invite you to use the nightly build packages (updated every night).

When is the final release due?

Joomla! 5.0 (general availability) is due to be released on or about 17th October 2023. The planned milestones are:

Alpha releases

Where new features are added and many changes are made.

Dates need to be changed

Alpha 1: 30th May 2023 - Done
Alpha 2: 27th June 2023 - Done
Alpha 3: 25th July 2023 - Done
Alpha 4: 22nd August 2023 - Done

Beta releases

In the Beta stage, we are making a freeze on what features can be added, but minor changes to what is already in can be made.

Beta 1: 5th September 2023 - This release
Beta 2: 19th September 2023

Release candidates

When in the release candidate phase, no more can be added or changed; we are testing and bug fixing, making the product stable for launch day.

Release candidate 1: 3rd October 2023
Final release: 17th October 2023

This whole process relies on people coming forward to help make it happen.

Please note that dates may be subject to change depending on the availability of volunteers and circumstances beyond our control.

What’s new in Joomla 5.0 Beta 1?

Several custom implementation of scheduled tasks have been moved from system plugins to scheduler plugins (Log rotation, Update Notification, delete action logs, session garbage collection, Privacy constants)
Block and Unblock are now logged to the action log
Implemented public directory creation with CLI installer and CLI script #41446
Improved custom defines of JPATH constants
Confirm dialogs uses now the new Joomla modal window
Many Guided tour improvements
First implementation for Darkmode for Backend template done
TinyMCE 6.7 Update and image alignment implemented
Archived content can now be excluded from smart search indexing
Improved Web Installer
Sampledata improvements
ShowOn filter rules are now applied to custom fields
AVIF support for media manager
New Modal window added and used for most of our select buttons like (Article Select), new method uses postMessages for communication between iframe and main window
JSON document will no longer be forced to download #39397
Removed no longer working Recaptcha plugin also on update and and removed from core recaptcha invisible for now installations.
One-Time-Password field has now a proper autocomplete setting
Activated translation repository for Joomla 5
Schema.org implementation improvments
Smart search index now Contact images
Finally all Events have been migrated to own classes
All changes from 4.4
Stabilization & Cleanup

Already included from Alpha 1, 2, 3 and 4?

Indexing Contact Images in Smart Search
Convert of events from simple events to event classes
Introducing a new Joomla modal dialog replacing Boostrap dialog
Toolbar is now available in HTMLDocument
CodeMirror is now used in tinymce again
Deprecation fixes for php 8.2
Many improvements to Schema.org implementation
JS Import map Support for Web Asset Manager
Remove es5 support #39618
Add the possibility serving Joomla from a public folder #40509
Allow custom modules for error messages in cassiopeia and default template
Internal code restructure to use more modern APIs
Tinymce 6.1
Fontawesome 6.4
Webauthn Library has been updated
Many Smart Search improvements (Debugging, Additional Taxonomy options, Indexing custom fields)
Codemirror 6 #41070
Backward Compatibility Plugin #40664
Allow to order the Backend Menu #38149
And many more!

We are firmly committed to making the next generation of Joomla the best. So far, these are the first features that have been committed to version 5.0. We expect to commit other features for the coming alpha releases.

What are the plans for Joomla 5.0?

Currently, we’re at the start of the journey of Joomla! 5.0. With Joomla! 5.0 as a new major version we plan to create a cleaned-up foundation for the future of Joomla!. There are several projects which, with your help, could become part of Joomla! 5.0, if they are release-ready by Joomla 5.0 Beta:

Update the system requirements to PHP 8.1 & MySQL 8.0.13+, MariaDB 10.4+ and PostgreSQL 12+
Bootstrap 5.3
Codemirror 6
B/C plugin for deprecations - #40664
Heavily code cleanups - Check PRs

Couple of small features are possible for the next Beta

Icon Manage based on SVG icons
Dependency updates could lead to additional improvements for Webauthn

To learn more about our development strategy, please read this article.

Who to mention?

A special thanks goes to our Ukrainian CMS maintainer, Fedir Zinchuk, who did an excellent job converting most of our events to their own event classes. Fedir provided the new modal window and fixed an uncountable number of pull requests by other people. Fedir has an incredible response time when help is needed, and all while under attack with electricity, internet and all we would take for granted subject to power cuts and missile attacks; thank you.

Also, a big thank you goes to Richard Fath, who does a fantastic job fixing other people's pull requests and providing the cleaning up for Joomla installations. The last five days before this release were productive, primarily because of Richards and Fedir's engagement.

Also to thank are George Wilson, who spent much time fixing conception issues for beta1 and Dimitris Grammatikogiannis, for help implementing the public folder features for beta1.

Many other people put countless hours into this and other releases. If you recently started in the Pizza Bugs and Fun day, thank you for taking the time to make this release that much better.

How can you help Joomla 5.0 to develop?

To help ensure the 5.0 release and our major features are “production-ready”, we need your help testing releases and reporting any bugs you may find at issues.joomla.org.

Most of all, we encourage extension developers to roll up their sleeves, seek out bugs and test their extensions with Joomla 5.0 and communicate their experience.

Where can I find documentation about Joomla 5?

There are some tutorials to help you with Joomla 5. You can find the existing ones, like creating a Plugin or a Module for Joomla 5, namespaces conventions, prepared statements, using the new web asset classes and many more in https://docs.joomla.org/Category:Joomla!_5.x

We encourage developers to help write the documentation about Joomla 5 on docs.joomla.org to help and guide users and other extension developers.

A JDocs page will help developers to see the existing documentation and the documentation still needed.

We invite you to check it regularly, update it and provide the missing content: https://docs.joomla.org/JDOC:Joomla_5_Tutorials_Project

Most of the feature documentation will be needed once we have reached Beta (feature freeze).

Related information

If you are an extension developer, please make sure you subscribe to the general developer mailing list, where you can discuss extension development. News that may affect custom development will also be posted there from time to time.

Translations

Spanish: Joomla 5.0 Beta 1 ya está disponible