Two And A Half of Joomla – New Features of Joomla 2.5

Good news, our dear Joomloids! The latest version of Joomla CMS has been demonstrated to the world (even though in beta so far) and now we can savour all its new features and improvements. We all know that Joomla has one of the greatest communities in the world and many of the new features were implemented due to the work of devoted community members.

Soon you'll be able to download the stable version of Joomla 2.5 by yourself - official Joomla blog informs that the Joomla 2.5.0 GA (general availability) is due to be released on 24 January 2012. Also there is a solution for the lazy Joomla fans that have no time or just don't want to do that manually - there is an one-click upgrade message that you will be able to find in the administrator page.

Below you'll find a list of the most significant features of Joomla 2.5 release. Some of these will melt web developers' hearts because there is nothing more charming than finding out that Joomla has released the support for other types of databases or some useful core improvements. Anyway, one thing that is 100% clear concerning this release is that everybody will receive some "sweet" new features for sure.

Core Features

Databases Support

Finally! Yes, you've read it right - from now on Joomla supports not only MySQL database but also MS SQL, PostgreSQL. Joomla drivers have been rewritten so they could work with different versions of databases. As it has been said before now Joomla drivers support MS SQL, PostgreSQL databases. Also Oracle, SQLite and PDO drivers are in its final stage and almost ready for release. We assume that they'll be added in the next release of Joomla version which is planned for Sept 2012.

Also there is a small but interesting feature concerning databases. Now you can use new shiny button "fix database version". This option will help you update your database during the upgrade process. This is very important for those who update Joomla releases by uploading release files via FTP. You may know that FTP doesn't apply any changes to databases so you have to do it manually and this little button will help you to do that.

More Advanced Search

According to Joomla developers, new Joomla search is based on Finder, an algorithm that was developed by jXtended. Finder makes pre-search through your content, adds auto-completion and stemming into your search. Search results are provided by analyzing the content and frequency of search terms. New Joomla search suggests alternative words or phrases (similar to Google search). This new search is much faster and allows installing special adapters that enhance search by supporting standard Joomla content and various types of documents.

CAPTCHA power!

Joomla 2.5 is armed with CAPTCHA plugin that has been built into the core. It means that all your website forms are protected with CAPTCHA. Basically this feature is mostly used for registration of the new users but you can enable it for other extensions that need it. Usually CAPTCHA has been available in non-core extensions, but this time this feature is enabled in core.

Additional New Features for Admins

• Images and Links menu - this is a feature that would be useful for content creators and web site admins because it allows you to set up simple standardized layout for blogs, news reports, etc. This feature will help you to customize the back end article editor to limit content creator and content editor options.
• Custom Text Filters - the filtering system has been improved and you can create your own blacklists (which are much easier to manage due to the fact that they contain only the forbidden tags and attributes). Also you can choose your own options for filtering process.
• New Menus are linked with a Modules - considering some peculiarities that Joomla users have faced in version 1.7 and 1.6 where menus did not automatically create a module, developers decided to make a very important improvement. In Joomla 2.5 there is a link that creates a new module in case if your menu doesn't have any.
• Manager for Language Overrides - you are able to make text changes in a label, tooltip or email notifications by using new language manager. Now you may not disturb your developers with some small tasks like "Please change the Company's name in the email that goes out with the standard password recovery email".
• Flexible Newsfeed Order - now you can choose the order of the feed items. There are two options available that you can choose to display either the most recent first or the oldest first.
• SEO: languagecode is another great feature for SEO experts using Joomla. It shows the search engine "spiders" the language and country code they expect even if the Joomla language pack has a different one.

We've tried to highlight mostly new and interesting features and improvements but this is just a top of the iceberg. So once Joomla 2.5 is out we suggest you to update your Joomla CMS and check out by yourself all those goodies that are waiting for you inside 2.5 release. We hope that our post inflames your interest to this update. And you know what else? We've tested our Joomla 1.7 templates with the beta release of Joomla 2.5 and we assure you that all our Joomla 1.7 templates are 100% compatible with Joomla 2.5 version which means that you can enjoy the beauty of our designs spiced up with awesome functionality of Joomla 2.5.