The next major release of Joomla! CMS is version 4.0. As of this writing, the latest version is 4.0.0 Alpha 12 (released on 17 October 2019). The beta version is expected in November 2019, so it's getting close.
The date for the Release Candidate version is yet to be determined, but the Stable version of Joomla 4.0 is planned for release in the beginning of 2020. As the progress of Joomla development is dependent on the efforts of volunteers, this timeframe may or may not be realistic, Regardless, the project seems to be coming along nicely, and we have some great features to look forward to.
Main Features of Joomla! 4.0
The following are the primary features introduced to Joomla! 4.0.
- Install Joomla in the blink of an eye. An easier, faster and more user friendly install process
- Brand new User Interfaces (backend and frontend) to provide a new and improved experience
- The web is for all. We aim to ensure that the templates are accessible (Level AA of WCAG 2.1)
- A fully rebuilt Media Manager with a cleaner User Interface and new image editing capabilities
- A new Publishing Workflow to manage your articles in an advanced and customisable way
- Web Services to allow you to make your content accessible to other websites and for easy mobile app creation
- New security features such as support for prepared SQL statements
- HTML Mail Templates to allow easy customisation of the emails your site sends
- An improved and expanded Command Line Interface (CLI)
- A cleaner and more powerful codebase. With the removal of deprecated functions from Joomla 3.x and the use of PHP namespaces that allows developers to deliver more robust and innovative applications than ever before
- The power of the Joomla Framework merged into the CMS
- An enhanced event dispatching system
- And much more!
Proposed Features
The following are suggested improvements which would be highly favored during the 4.x lifecycle.
- Final Router Improvements.
- Features to improve SEO.
- Hypermedia API (webservices).
- Improvements to installation process:
- Ability to install extensions (at minimum core supported extensions)
- Rework sample data installation
- Continued work on the GSoC Multilingual editing proposal.
- A new administrator template with minimal options.
Minimum requirements for Joomla! 4.0
As of Alpha 12, the minimum technical requirements for Joomla 4 are the following:
- PHP 7.2
- MySQL 5.6 (Note: The minimum MySQL version can be subject to change during the lifetime of Joomla 4 if necessary)
- PostgreSQL 11.0
- Minimum browser version set to n-2
- End of support of Internet Explorer
You can read more about why these requirements were chosen in this blog post.
How can you help Joomla 4 development?
If you're a developer, you can help ensure that the 4.0 release and the major features are “production ready”. The project needs your help testing releases and reporting any bugs you may find at issues.joomla.org.
Roll up your sleeves, seek out bugs and test their extensions with Joomla 4.0 and communicate your experience to the project!
What will be the last release of the Joomla 3.x series?
According to Joomla.org, the last release of the Joomla 3.x series will be version 3.10. This last release will mostly containg backports of APO changes from the Joomla 4.0 development branch to help ease transition to the next major version.
When is the final release of Joomla! 4.0 due?
The plan of the Joomla project is to release one pre-release version every 6 weeks and share the progress with the community. They intend the Alpha 12 release to be the last alpha of Joomla 4 and to present Joomla 4 Beta 1 in early November 2019. The stable release of Joomla! 4.0 is expected to be ready early in 2020.
The most up-to-date information regarding the timeline will be found in the project roadmap.
. The beta version is expected in November 2019, so it's getting close.
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