The Joomla! Project is pleased to announce the availability of Joomla! CMS 3 Beta1. Community members are asked to download and install the package in order to provide quality assurance for Joomla 3.0 scheduled for release on September 27, 2012.
Joomla 3 will be the next major release of the Joomla CMS, with Joomla 3.0 the first short term support release in its life cycle. The beta release follows two alpha releases.
What is this release for?
This is a beta release and not for use on production sites.
Extension developers are encouraged to work with this release in order to prepare extensions for the General Availability release of Joomla 3.0. Users are encouraged to test the package for issues and to report issues in the Joomla! issue tracker.
What is the status of Joomla! 2.5?
Version 2.5 of the Joomla! CMS is a Long Term Support release and support for it will continue until shortly after the release of Joomla 3.5 scheduled for Spring 2014. Users do not need to migrate to Joomla 3.0.
What is the status of Joomla! 1.5?
Support for Joomla 1.5 will end shortly after the release of Joomla 3.0. It is currently supported only for security issues.
Will I be able to update directly to Joomla! 3?
Moving to Joomla 3.0 from Joomla 2.5 will be a migration not an upgrade, although for the core of Joomla! the migration should be simple. However it is likely that templates for Joomla 2.5 will need modification to work with Joomla 3 as will many extensions. Always test prior to migrating and consult with the developers of any extensions and templates you use.
What are the new features of Joomla! 3?
- Incorporation of Twitter Bootstrap into a jui media package.
- A new responsive administrator template–Isis– and interface.
- A new front end template–Protostar– built using Twitter Bootstrap Updated accessible template called Beez3
- PostgreSQL Driver. You will be able to run Joomla 3.0 sites using the PostgreSQL database.
- PHP Memcached Driver
- Use of JFeed for feed management rather than SimplePie
- Installation of language packages directly from the extension manager
- Guest user group present by default
- Saving blank articles allowed
- New administrator statistics module
- Update TinyMCE to version 3.5.6
- Continued clean up of older unused code, files and database fields and tables and improved standardization of tables.
- Improvements to Smart Search
- Extensive work on code style standardisation and consistency
- Unit testing in the CMS
- Updated system tests in the CMS
In addition the beta release of CMS includes the current version of the Joomla! Platform, which includes a large number of new and improved packages.
How can you help Joomla development?
The great news is you don’t have to be a developer to help build Joomla. The Joomla Bug Squad is one of the most active teams in the Joomla development process and is always looking for people (not just developers) that can help with sorting bug reports, coding patches and testing solutions. It’s a great way for increasing your working knowledge of Joomla, 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 Wiki and, if you wish to join, email the Bug Squad coordinator.
You can also help Joomla development by thanking those involved in the many areas of the process. Since the release of Joomla 1.6, a whopping 375 issues have been fixed by the JBS. The project also wants to thank all of the people that have taken the time to prepare and submit work to be included in Joomla 1.7 & 2.5, and to those that have worked very hard on the Joomla Platform separation project.
Related information
If you are an extension developer, please make sure you subscribe to the general developer mailing list as this is a place where you can discuss extension development and news that may affect custom development will be posted from time to time.
Following is a list of previous news and information about Joomla 2.5 and other sites of interest:
- Working with the Joomla Feature Tracker
- General developer mailing list
- Joomla developer network
- Joomla development strategy
A Huge Thank You to Our Volunteers!
This beta release is the result of thousands of hours of work by dozens of volunteers. Thank you so very much for making Joomla the best CMS on the planet!