Site Updates

With the passage of time various changes in software levels have occurred.  This includes Joomla itself, the version level of PHP and also the underlying database.

With so many things changing we have decided that we will upgrade directly from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5.  This is not quite the immediate jump one would assume since Joomla 5 is an upgrade from Joomla 4, using the same front and back end templates.  Our old site template that was based on Bootstrap 3 is no longer supported and wil not be an easy upgrade. Since the Joomla 5 (and 4) site template Cassiopeia  is based on Bootstrap 5, the current plan is to produce a child template of Cassiopeia.

The version of PHP we used formally was 7.4 but since PHP 8.0 is due to come out of support is November 2023, we might as well move directy to PHP 8.1.

The database version we were using was MySQL 5.7 and ideally we would move directly to MySQL 8.1, but since the web host does not currently support this version we will use MySQL 8.0.

Our own software which we have started converting to support Joomla 4 (and 5) had temporarily come to  halt until such time as we have converted the web site itself.

There are a few other changes which we are still considering. These include abandoning the site forums which had a very small usage on the old site. Also under review are the various plugin that we employed on the old site.

31st October: Changes to Cassiopeia are proceeding. Most articles have been transferred over and configuration of the site is prceeding. 

2nd November: Changes are proceeding with the aim of being able to switch over to Joomla 5 by the end of the month.  We are also reviewing the components. modules and plugins that we actually use on the new site. For exampe we will probably not use a forum on the new site. Experience showed that very little use was made of it so it seems an unrequired overhead. There are also a few identified plugins that we will not look to replace.

We are encountering a few problems with some components which are giving PHP errors which are currently being ignored until such time as we can take a few look at it, by which time there may well be an update that fixes the problems.

May 2024: More changes as we make a move to Joomla 5. There seems to be constant changes with PHP 8.0 going out of support, and there is a limit to how long one can keep modifying the Joomla 3.x code to make the main site continue functioning without it complaining about unsupported code.  Using Cassiopia as our main site template has shown a few problems as well, so we have decided to make our own site template. Are having a few problem now with site dropdown site menus.  The official docs do not seem to help much but we perservere.

Another problem is how to right justify the top menu. All attempts do not seem to make any difference. Hmmmm.

Resolved the menu issue by using the 'Main Menu' rather than the 'Top Menu'.  Need to upload web link information and the News Feeds. Also concentrating for the moment on the Cassiopia template, now that the drop down menu issue is resolved.

Need to load Kbase component for FAQs, now that the main Joomla 5 updates have been applied.

Also now updated to latest Joomla 5 version. 

July 2024: Documentation for our components now added to Joomla 5 site. Also file downloads are operational. Have made a few decisions re what will be used on new Joomla 5 site.  

The following will probably not be installed:

Forum: Never really saw much activity on the original site to justfy the need to install on J5.

Users: Originally we had other non-company employees on the site. This was so that certain downloads could be restricted to registered users. Since we are not intending to restrict downloads in any way there is no real need for non-company users.

Newsletters: We stopped the sending of regular newsletters many years ago and with no intention of restarting them there is no need to install suitable software components.

Donations: Never really received many donations so cannot really see the need just now.

Supported Partners display: Only real supporter now is the web site host which can be displayed separately.

Translations:  To be decided.

Recent closed issues module: To be decided.

Site Search: To be decided.

Newsfeeds: To be completed once they have been carefully checked. Seem to be some problems with the newsfeed links. Look like some links are now redundant.  The future of RSS newsfeeds seenms dubious.

Weblinks: To be completed once they have all been checked.

Need to also check the Joomla download site so that all the links work when we switch over. There appears to be 3 links for each of 5 components we reference from the Joomla site. These are 'download', 'support (which currently references the forum) and 'documentation' which currently throws up an error due to the 'old Joomla 3 site..  The 5 components are 'Issue Tracker',  'IP Mapping', 'Rialto', 'Password Cotrol Plugins' and 'Timesheet'.  Our other components are not registered on the Joomla site.

Ther Issue Tracker documentation is not currently working because I suspect  I have not set up the 'docimport' component correctly. Other docs are fine, but the Issue Tracker docs do not expand out into the individual html files for some reason.  THis was fund to be caused by a couple of erroneous files which once removed fixed the prolem.

Need to look for the 'assetmgr' code and consider its future.

Need to add other Oracle & Unix packages to web site download area.

Acymailing removed from site. If we need it in the future we may need to user version 9.7.1 (or later) so no need to keep the v5 release on our site currently.

Fixed the problem that was preventing the display of the documentation in HTML on the new website. Also resolved the downloads area display problem. Note that is it the old files and docs from the original site, not any updates for the new Joomla 5 versions. I think that means that the new web site is virtually ready to go live, which will resolve the documentation error seen from the Joomla main site.  The first new component that we will update/release will probably be Kbase, since we intent to use it on the new site. Not sure yet whether to go with it straight away or to wait until Kbase 2.0 is ready. Hmmm.

Changed all transifex account links for translators. Some are not registered anymore so just removed the link. 

Ctranifex application by compojoom is not supported after Joomla 3. Not sure there is an alternative.