Joomla 3.0 was released at the end of last month. The release marks a major milestone for the popular content management system, which recently celebrated its seventh anniversary. Not only did the release add several new features and enhancements to the CMS in general, it also positioned Joomla in a space where it can compete as a mobile platform.
Joomla is now ready to deliver content targeted for mobile devices, including tablets and smartphones – and considering the near ubiquity of those web-capable devices, it’s about time too!
The biggest changes to Joomla come thanks to the project’s choice to adopt the Twitter Bootstrap framework, which unifies design elements across the CMS. Bootstrap makes the platform look neater and tidier, and makes it easier for extension developers to keep their extensions looking good, no matter what theme the site is using.
Another change that’s worth noting is the addition of PostrgreSQL support. This should come as good news to people who are concerned about the future of MySQL under Oracle. While Oracle haven’t spoken out about their plans for MySQL, and many people are still quite happily using it, it’s always good to have other options.
Joomla 3.0 has a new admin panel, and some people are not a fan of this, because it’s quite a departure from the original horizontal web design. However, it shouldn’t take long to get used to the new version, and the vertical layout is far more mobile device/small screen friendly.
For end users, Joomla 3.0 has a lot of benefits. The new version should look good at any screen size, and content and control elements should look and behave consistently on any platform and in any browser.
It will take a while for developers to adopt to Bootstrap, but the move has been well publicised for several months now, so the most popular extensions should move over without too much friction, and if your favourite plugin isn’t updated, you’re still no worse off than you were before.
