Joomla 5.1.0 and Joomla 4.4.4 stable

Let’s celebrate! Today is an important day for the Joomla! Project. We’re celebrating six months of hard work by our volunteers, who had the vision to produce a new minor version. Today, we are proud to announce the release of our new minor version, Joomla 5.1, alongside Joomla 4.4.4,

 

What is Joomla 5.1?

Joomla 5.1 is a minor version. We’re bringing plenty of new features, security and code improvements and increased speed with those improvements.

Whether you’re an individual, blogger, charity, web agency or multinational, Joomla is a great choice for you!

Want to know how Joomla 5 will benefit you? Visit joomla.org/5

What new features are in Joomla 5.1?

  • Implement TUF updater (#42799)
  • Heavily improve dark mode (#42986)
  • Implement backend dark mode switch (#42221)
  • Implement a Welcome Tour (#41659)
  • SEO: Add trailing slash behaviour (#42702)
  • SEO: Improve URL behaviour with index.php (#42704)
  • Adding notice to global configuration for additional options in SEF plugin (#42832)
  • Update Jooa11y Accessibility Checker Plugin with latest Sa11y (#42780)
  • Improve Guided Tours with new features for required field handling and support for checkbox / radio / select lists as target (#40994)
  • Add regex validation for fields (#42657)
  • Add schema.org Generic type (#42699)
  • Add schema.org Article type (#42402)
  • Allow custom fields form be manipulates like category form (#42510)
  • Replace bootstrap modal with new dialog in backend for
  • Add main region and better support for modules in Cassiopeia error page (#42719)
  • Joomla Update: Improving error handling when writing files (#41096)
  • Update FontAwesome to 6.5.1 (#42721)
  • Update TinyMCE to 6.8.3 (#42930)
  • Strip attributes from images in HTML mails (#42448)
  • Change type of field "value" in table #_fields_values from text to mediumtext (#42606)
  • Add support for subcategory levels in contacts category view (#41618)
  • Add “New Article” button to blog view (#39506)
  • CLI Improvements
    • Add command to manage Joomla core update channels (#42597)
    • Renaming and improving output of core:update:check (#42594)
    • Improve output of Core Update command (#42601)
    • Update:extension:check command (#42844)
    • maintenance database update db structure (42568)
  • Module conversion to service provider
  • Add toolbar buttons in language installation toolbar to go directly to language management views (#42610)
  • Improve long description output for templates (#42651)
  • Add possibility to sort subform rows with buttons "up" and "down" (#42334)
  • Add rebuild button in Tags (#42586)
  • Improve uninstall of package children extension (#42607)
  • Improve webservices filter (#42519)
  • Improve webservice event classes (#42092)
  • Use generic icon for documents in media manager (#42527)
  • Rewrite com_associations in vanilla JS (#42771)
  • Implementing Event classes for PageCache events (#41965)
  • Fix actionlogs information emails containing HTML links (#40033)
  • Load plugin group when executing batch tasks (#39013)
  • Add Global Setting for Form Layout option to custom fields (#37320)
  • Add SVG support to mod_banners (#41854)
  • Several JS improvements (#42756, #42755, #42776, #42784)
  • Update Code style fixer (#42603)
  • Unit test for WebAsset (#42885)

Where can I download Joomla 5.1?

On the Downloads site, of course :)

New Installations

New installation instructions and technical requirements

Install 5.1.0

Install 4.4.4

Upgrade

Upgrade 5.1.0

Upgrade 4.4.4

Would you like to make a tour of Joomla 5 without having to install it? We have a solution for you: Try Joomla 5.1 at launch.joomla.org

How can I upgrade my site to Joomla 5.1?

Good news for Joomla 4.4.x to 5.x, it’s an upgrade, not a migration. Why? Two main reasons:

  1. Joomla 4 (J4) extensions that have removed all deprecations of code and are using up-to date Joomla code, will work in Joomla 5 (J5)
  2. Most others will work with the new Behaviour - Backward Compatibility Plugin enabled

The full details are found here: https://docs.joomla.org/Joomla_4.4.x_to_5.x_Planning_and_Upgrade_Step_by_Step

Note: we advise you to first test the upgrade on a copy of your production site.

You may also wonder if you have to migrate ASAP. You can take your time; we’ll support 4.4 for 1.5 more years. So your site is not at risk if you don’t upgrade now. And don’t forget that some of your extensions may not be yet ready for Joomla 5 (even though most developers have done a great job offering a Joomla 5 test version for a while. You can filter by version in the Joomla Extensions Directory so you can see which are ready for J5 and which are J5 ready with the b/c plugin enabled.

Joomla 5.1 is out. Make some noise!

Let the world know Joomla 5.1.0 is released.

Use the hashtag #Joomla5, share the Joomla 5 video, send the Joomla 5 landing page to your clients or add it to your pro site.

What about Joomla 4.4.4?

Joomla 4.4.4 has no new features. However, you are required to upgrade from Joomla 4.x to Joomla 5.x
It contains updates to allow for a smoother upgrade path but no new features.

Who is Joomla! for?

Web agencies, large and small companies, online shops, bloggers, communities, and all kinds of organisations (for example, NGOs, schools, charities and governments) all use Joomla as their preferred CMS.

Joomla is written by committed volunteers. Many of those volunteers use it in their everyday web design, building and hosting. So, unlike many other systems, Joomla is built by those using it on a daily basis. That is reflected in its secure, robust nature.

Is there help for extension developers with Joomla 5?

Yes, a growing manual is aimed at those who code and maintain their extensions. The manual can be found at https://manual.joomla.org/migrations/44-50/ and is a growing work to help developers get ahead of any changes.

How can you help develop Joomla?

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 a user of Joomla. You can join the community on Mattermost and look through the teams to join, or if you are ready, you can jump right into the Joomla! Bug Squad.

The Joomla! Bug Squad and the CMS Release Team are some of the most active teams in the CMS development process and are always looking for people (not just developers) who can help with sorting bug reports, coding patches and testing solutions. It is a great way to increase your working knowledge of the Joomla code base and also a great way to meet new people from all around the world.

You can also help Joomla development by thanking those involved in the many areas of the process. The Project also wants to thank all the contributors who have taken the time to prepare and submit work to be included in the Joomla CMS and Framework.

Where can I find documentation about Joomla 5?

There are some tutorials to help you with Joomla 4. You can find the existing ones, like creating a Plugin or a Module for Joomla 4, 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 see the existing documentation and the documentation still needed.

We invite you to check it regularly, update it and provide the missing content.

Related information

If you are an extension developer, please make sure you subscribe to the extension developer channel https://joomlacommunity.cloud.mattermost.com/main/channels/extension-development-room

Where you can join the community of extension developers.

A Huge Thank You to Our Volunteers!

Joomla 5.1.0 results from thousands of hours of work by dozens of volunteers.

A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the 5.1.0 and the 4.4.4 releases!

A special mention to the Joomla 5.1 release managers: Martina Scholz, who worked tirelessly to get this release out, and Benjamin Trenkle, who stepped in to assist when needed.

And Martin Kopp and Allon Moritz, who worked to get Joomla 4.4.4 ready for release.

We had 4 new contributors, 41+ contributors and 317+ Pull Requests have been merged
Full details are on GitHub

A huge shout out to our teams, who have done an amazing job. In particular, the CMS maintenance team, CMS release team, docs team and Marketing team all did their utmost to make this release happen.

Thank you all.

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