What's new in Joomla 5?

Not again...

Can I upgrade from Joomla 4 to 5 at the click of a button?

It would be really nice if I could say YES to that right away, but the answer here still depends on your hosting party and the extensions installed.

To start with the hosting party. It should support the following.
PHP: 8.1+
Database: MySQL 8.0.11+, MariaDB 10.4+ or PostgreSQL 12+
In many cases this will not be a problem, although I see several parties that do not yet offer this. Is it not possible at your hosting party? Then maybe it's time to look further and move your website to another hosting.

Then your extensions. Here goes my advice to install as few extensions as possible. Much can be done just within Joomla itself without using plugins. And if you install something, do so only from known / active developers.

If the extensions work on Joomla 4 (with PHP8.1 or higher) then chances are very good that it will also just work on Joomla 5. Is there in the extension still code that is only suitable for Joomla 3, then it may be that this produces an error message.
But there is something invented, a Compatibility plugin, which ensures that this error is circumvented. More information about this below.

So can you upgrade with 1 push of a button? Most probably yes.

Many new features

Backward Compatibility- Behavioral plugin

If you use extensions that do not use current Joomla coding standards, this plugin, if enabled, will provide backward compatibility with the previous main version. This plugin is automatically activated when you upgrade from Joomla 4 to 5. You can disable this plugin yourself and check if your website is still working properly. Eventually, your website will need to be able to work without this plugin if you need to move to Joomla 6 in the future. If you have extensions that cannot work without this plugin, please contact the developer. On a new installation of Joomla 5, this plugin is off.

Installation progress bar

The current installation is rather opaque when it comes to the actual installation on the server. There is no real progress indicator nor is it clear what Joomla is doing during the installation. Therefore, the moving Joomla logo during installation has been replaced by a progress bar.

Administrator template in Dark Mode

If you use dark mode on your device, the administrator template will automatically adjust itself. It will look like this.

More fonts in Cassiopeia

If you are using the default Joomla template cassiopeia, then there are now more fonts to select. These are system fonts and thus do not use Google Fonts or other external services. These fonts can be used as Header and/or Body text.

You can experiment with the different fonts on this website: https://modernfontstacks.com/

Customizing error 403 and 404 in Cassiopeia

The error page for the 403 and 404 pages is now completely customizable.
To do this you create a new module and place it at the position error-403 or error-404.

And then on the website it will look like this.

It is useful if you use this page to send people to the right page with links, a contact form etc.

Allow Joomla to load from a public folder

In Joomla 5 it is possible to load the website from a public folder, a subfolder in the root. In this folder you will find an index.php, an administrator/index.php and an api/index.php with a few auxiliary files and symlinks. The other files from your Joomla installation can be found in a parent folder.

An advantage of this method of installation (which is currently only possible via the CLI) is that all parent folders and files are protected and can only be executed by Joomla itself. This makes your installation less vulnerable to malware and hackers.

In the video below, Dimitris Grammatikogiannis takes you through the installation.

Rich Snippets - schema.org implementation

Search engine robots like Google's, use structured data to generate rich snippets. Currently, Joomla! offers a feature for generating rich snippets, but it uses inline microdata that is difficult to modify from the backend because it is hard-coded into the HTML.

Joomla 5 allows you to add and configure structured data through the Joomla backend, simplifying the optimization of website content for search engines and improving the visibility of the website in search results.

To start, enter the general (company) data at the System plugin - Schema.org

Furthermore, a Schema tab can be found at articles.
In this tab you can choose a type. There is a choice of: BlogPosting, Book, Event, Vacancy, Organization, Person, Recipe. Depending on your choice, the schema.org fields will now be shown, such as (in the case of recipe) preparation time, preparation, kitchen, diet, instructions, ingredients, etc. The entered information is not visible on the website for visitors but is intended only as structured data for the search engines. The result may look like this on the search engine:

Search in Custom Fields

Finally! Custom Fields is one of the most powerful applications within Joomla and you can now search in these custom fields. To do this, you do have to specify for each field whether you are allowed to search or filter on the values entered. You do this in the options of the field.

You can choose from:

• Do not search
• Make searchable
• Add as taxonomy (filter within smart search)
• Make searchable and add as taxonomy

Then you need to re-index the smart search - results.

Searchable:

Taxonomy:

Photos of contacts in search results

In the (smart) search results it was already possible to show the intro images of articles, now you can also add the photos of contacts to the search results.

Hide/show archived articles in search results

The Smart Search - Content plugin includes a new option to show or hide archived articles in search results.

SQL field customization

The SQL custom field is extended to include a header. This text is used to select no value.

Menu order in the sidebar customization

You could always customize the menu items to suit your needs, but now it is also possible to move an entire menu. This is especially useful when you use many different menus. In this video by Brian Teeman you can see how this works.

Fontawesome 6 in Joomla 5

The icons used in the administrator have been converted from Fontawesome 5 to 6. This may cause them to look slightly different. The icons that are very different like the dashboard icon in the left menu have been replaced with custom svg files.

300 characters for meta description

In Joomla 4 is a restriction imposed for the meta description of 160 characters, the remaining text was cut off hard. This was done because Google uses about 160 characters. Some users had trouble with this limitation so the number of characters was increased to 300 characters. Personally, I would stick to the 160 characters, although you can deviate from it a little more now.

Codemirror 6

The text editor Codemirror has been updated from version 5.65.12 to 6.0.0

TinyMCE editor 6.7

The standard TinyMCE text editor has been updated to version 6.7. This gives it a more modern look and makes use of the latest features.

Aligning images in TinyMCE

Based on user feedback, the ability to add "Left, Right & Center" alignment for images using the tinymce image button has been added. This way you don't use inline styles. You can see how this works in this video by Brian Teeman.

Password requirements and meter in profile page

The profile page on the website allows the user to change their password. In Joomla 5 you can now see the minimum requirements of the password and see the indicator whether your entered password meets these requirements.

Rights for user columns

In the screen for user rights of a specific user, by a clever modification, 5 columns have been removed. They are "website login", "management login", "web services login", "offline access" and "Superuser". This information has been moved to the top of the table. Since these settings apply to all options, there was no need to display these columns in their entirety.

Action Logs

The following features have been added to the action logs

• User creates new custom field
• User edits custom field
• User is blocked
• User is unblocked

User not found

When an author/user is removed from the website, you will see the message "user x not found". This error message is hidden from Joomla 5.0 onwards. It is not the case that an article is linked to another user, so technically an author is still missing.

WebAuthn is renamed to Passkey

"WebAuthn" is generic and confusing to end users. Passkeys are expected to become the standard way to log in. Microsoft, Apple and Google have already started offering passkey-only logins to their services. Joomla will therefore also use this term.

AVIF support in media manager

Avif files (an alternative to WebP) can now be uploaded in Joomla's media manager.