Thanks for using Joomla and Joomlashack.
In January and February, we posted a round-up of news from around the Joomla community. You told us this was useful, so we're back again for March! Here's our guide to what's interesting in Joomla right now.
I try to post one of these helpful items every day in the Joomlashack Facebook group, so join if you do want daily Joomla updates.
Your favorite free Joomla extension?
We asked the Joomlashack community a simple question ... what's your favorite free Joomla extension? The only rule was that you couldn't name your own work. I started with Quantum Manager, which is a complete replacement and upgrade for the media manager. Click below to see other answers in our Facebook group. See the discussion on favorite free extensions.
Video introduction to the Conditional Content extension
Customizing and personalizing your Joomla site is incredibly easy with the Conditional Content plugin from RegularLabs. Rod from OSTraining has a video demonstrating a few ways you can use this powerful Joomla add-on. We use this all over Joomlashack to show different content to different users. Watch the video guide to Conditional Content.
Make your Joomla 4 admin area look like Joomla 3
This may come in useful when you start building Joomla 4 sites. Joomla 4 has a vertical sidebar menu like WordPress. But if you like the Joomla 3 approach, you can also get horizontal menus in Joomla 4 using a new module from the Phoca team. Get the Top Menu module for Joomla 4.
Check out a beautiful new site using Joomla
This is a really cool new Joomla site: "MindSphere World". It's a worldwide association for businesses in the IOT sector. According to the designer, Elisa Sophia Foltyn, they chose Joomla because of the “Community” factor. See Mindsphereworld.org.
Joomla in the Google Summer of Code
Joomla is in Google's Summer of Code program again. This is the 13th year that Joomla has taken part. A lot of cool Joomla features have been developed by these young developers and their mentors. More about Joomla in the GSOC program.
Start quickly with the Joomla 4 template
Maarten Blokdijk has made a customization module with a ton of features for the Cassiopeia template that comes with Joomla 4. You can change colors, center your logo, set backgrounds, add share buttons, include Google analytics code and much more. Get the module at KickstartCassiopeia.com.
Joomla Day USA is one month away
The Joomla Day USA speaker list is up and includes a lot of people you may have seen posting in the Joomlashack Facebook group. The event takes place in about one month, on April 23 and 24. Joomlashack is sponsoring and we'll have a virtual booth. See the Joomla Day USA speakers.
Joomla 4 CLI for creating extensions
Sajeeb Ahamed has developed a command-line interface (CLI) application for making Joomla 4 components. This tool allows you to create the admin component and frontend view. It's a good example of the power tools that may come with Joomla 4. There's extensive documentation on the project's Github repo. Test out the new Joomla 4 CLI for extension building
Should you use Google Analytics 4?
A few weeks ago, we promoted Google Analytics 4 support in the Shack Analytics extension. Well, sometimes people disagree with me! My friend Victor Drover has a note of caution and recommends either waiting a few months, or running GA4 alongside the old version for a while. The pros and cons of Google Analytics 4
Other Joomlashack updates
Here are other updates and tutorials from the Joomlashack team in March:
- How to Show All Joomla Articles With a Specific Tag
- How to Embed Google Sheets in Joomla
- How to Create Custom Administrator Menus in Joomla
- How to Add Font Awesome Icons to Joomla Menu Links
- Simple Renew Has Improved Checkout Options
- How to Use Google Analytics 4 in Joomla
- Remove Joomla's Forget Username and Forget Password Links
- How to Remove the Pagination Numbers from Joomla