Joomla! 5: review and answers

In October 2023, a new major version of Joomla 5 was released, afterward, an informative update, version 5.1, was released. In this article, we will try to answer as many questions as possible about Joomla 5, and also consider all the innovations of the CMS.

Why did Joomla 5 come out so quickly?

A legitimate question! Many sites haven't had time to update from Joomla 3 to 4 yet, and here's the stable version of Joomla 5! Why so unexpectedly fast? After all, almost 9 years passed from the release of Joomla 3 to the release of Joomla 4, and between the releases of Joomla 4 and 5, barely two years passed!

Indeed, this seems unusual to webmasters and site owners who aren't keeping up with Joomla updates and are used to major versions being released quite infrequently. But everything has changed, and now new major versions will be released every two years. There was a news story about this a year ago, and I must admit that I was initially skeptical about the promises of more frequent major releases. However, with Joomla 5 arriving on schedule, it's now clear that:

1. New major versions of Joomla will be released every 2 years.
2. Each new major version of Joomla will receive updates for 4 years from the date of release (2 years before the release of the next version and 2 years after).
3. Thus, Joomla 6 is planned for release in 2025, with Joomla 4 continuing to receive updates until then.

So why did these changes in the release dates of major versions occur? There are 2 main reasons for this:

Reason 1: Keep up with the times

Web technologies that Joomla CMS integrates are evolving rapidly. In addition, new trends are emerging in website building, the demands of both users and search engines for modern websites are increasing, and standards are changing. Websites should be as fast, functional, secure and convenient as possible not only for visitors, but also for administrators. As a result, the Joomla team decided to release a new major version every two years.

Reason 2: Simplify the update process

Previously, the process of upgrading a major version of Joomla (for example, moving from Joomla 3 to 4) was a complex migration that required a special approach. It was almost impossible to avoid unsuccessful upgrade attempts, and their number depended on a number of factors, including the number of third-party extensions used on the site, their compatibility with the new version of the CMS, as well as the notorious "steady hands". In order for Joomla site owners and administrators to no longer face the need to go through the "circles of hell" that imply unsuccessful migration attempts, it was decided to simply not allow it anymore. Thus, the process of upgrading from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 is no longer a migration and is essentially similar to the process of upgrading a minor version, such as from Joomla 5.0.3 to 5.1.

How different is Joomla 5 from Joomla 4?

At first glance, it is difficult to distinguish Joomla 5 from Joomla 4 without focusing on the details:

Does this mean that the difference between the versions is not significant? Of course not! The first difference is a significant increase in technical requirements, which means that the code base has been significantly reworked for modern versions of the software in order to improve the performance and security of the CMS, and this will also facilitate the transition to new technological changes that are yet to happen in subsequent versions of Joomla.

In other words, the control panel interface has remained the same, as well as the main Cassiopeia frontend template, but the backend code has been significantly reworked.

Of course, in addition to increasing system requirements, Joomla 5 has a number of new interesting and useful features, which we will consider below.

Joomla 5 Innovations

Joomla 5 continues to improve in such aspects of website quality as SEO, usability, design, functionality, performance and security. Let's take a closer look at those that administrators should know.

Joomla 5 SEO Improvements

Perhaps these are the most "tasty" innovations that can somehow contribute to the growth of a website's position in search engines. As an active SEO specialist, I can note that the improvements listed below put Joomla noticeably ahead of all competitors.

New Schema.org Plugins

Schema.org standard structured data, or, as they are more often called, micro-markup, has been an effective SEO optimization tool for many years. Sites that use this tool, all other factors being equal, have an advantage over their competitors.

In short, structured data is the “finger” that tells search algorithms what is what on a web page. For example, microdata can indicate that the current page is an article, and what exactly on this page is the article title, who the author is, when the article was published, etc. Without structured data, search algorithms have to independently determine what the page and its individual elements are. In addition to allowing search algorithms to more clearly understand the essence of a web page, microdata also helps to form more specific and attractive search results snippets that clearly stand out from the less informative snippets of competitors.

Already in Joomla 3 templates, microdata format micromarkup was implemented. This format implies the use of special attributes in HTML tags, so the markup was static in the template code and without editing the code it was not possible to adjust it. This approach continued in Joomla 4:

Starting with Joomla 5, the system provides special schema.org plugins that allow you to manage structured data for entities of individual components (currently only articles and contacts) in the JSON-LD format. This format serves the same purpose as Microdata but represents structured data within the <head> tag as follows:

New Joomla plugins generate this data automatically for entities selected in their component settings:

At the time of release, Joomla 5 contained plugins for microdata markup of the following entities:

With the release of Joomla 5.1, the following were added to this list:

New settings for the System - SEF plugin

Starting with version 5.1, Joomla now has the ability to merge unnecessary duplicate pages without relying on third-party extensions or "home-made" methods like redirects in .htaccess. In version 5.2, new features were added, including "Enforce a suffix by redirect" and "Strict Routing." Here are the settings for the System - SEF plugin:

Exclude index.php

Activating this parameter removes 'index.php' from all URLs, ensuring cleaner, more user-friendly links. Of course, it is recommended to activate it on a working site.

Trailing slash in URL

Allows you to merge duplicate pages depending on the trailing slash at the end of the URL. In most cases, you should select the Force exclude at the end option. It's worth noting that Joomla previously lacked this feature, which often drew criticism from SEO professionals.

Enforce a suffix by redirect

This setting works in tandem with the "Add Suffix to URL" option. When enabled, any URL missing the suffix will be redirected to its proper version. Starting from version 6.0, this behavior will be applied automatically without requiring configuration.

Strict Routing

Ensures the router only accepts canonical URLs by blocking and redirecting variations that could be treated as duplicates. This guarantees that only the correct URL is used, with invalid ones redirected via a 301 status code.

Increasing the Character Limit of the Description Meta Tag

Joomla 4 introduced a 140 character limit for the Description meta tag. This limit was valid for any Joomla entity, be it an article, a category of articles, a contact, or any menu item. Of course, 140 characters were not always enough, and this was sometimes annoying. In Joomla 5, the limit was increased to 300 characters, which is now more than enough.

Improvements in the Joomla 5 admin panel

As mentioned earlier, while the interface remains visually unchanged, several components and features have been enhanced and updated:

Dark admin panel theme

A notable innovation of Joomla 5 was the dark theme of the control panel, the use of which depended on the operating system settings without the ability to choose in the admin panel itself. In Joomla 5.1, this feature was implemented along with a significant revision of the dark theme itself. The theme can be switched in the template style settings as follows: System → Control panel styles → Atum → Color options → Template theme.

TinyMCE Editor

TinyMCE made significant strides in Joomla 4 by introducing code highlighting in source view mode, as well as many other useful features, such as character counting and display of block elements. All this reduced the need to install JCE to a minimum, although it still has some advantages in functionality and usability. TinyMCE continues to be updated in Joomla 5 with the release of new versions, for example, in Joomla 5.1 it became possible to align images relative to the content.

Joomla 5 Frontend Improvements

The most significant improvements in the frontend are the new SEO features mentioned above. However, the frontend functionality has been improved in some other ways, such as the ability to search by custom fields (configured on the field editing pages). Other improvements concern the native Cassiopeia template, namely the following features have been implemented:

Is it worth updating the site to Joomla 5?

It makes sense to update the CMS version in the following cases: 

The site is constantly updated

If the site is active, developing and updated in terms of content and functionality. Updating the CMS will allow you to apply all its innovations, which can improve the site and its management in many aspects.

The site needs a redesign

If the appearance of the site is outdated, then it makes sense to first update the CMS, and then apply a modern template, or "pull" the new design onto a universal template.

The site needs to be accelerated

Search engines' requirements for sites are growing, including in terms of loading speed. New versions of Joomla consistently outperform older ones, particularly in terms of speed and efficiency.

The site needs to be SEO optimized

The same story as with loading speed. Joomla improves with each version and in the technical part of SEO.

The site needs new functionality

Improvements are contained not only in the updated CMS "out of the box", but also in third-party extensions for it. Unfortunately, over time, some extensions stop developing and become incompatible with new versions of Joomla, so you should choose and use extensions from time-tested developers, such as Akeeba, Regular Labs and Tassos Marinos.

Updating from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5

As I noted earlier, the transition from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 is no longer a complex migration, but is positioned as an update that can be done in one click. That is, the most difficult thing is to migrate the site to Joomla 4, and then the process of updating major versions will be identical to updating minor versions.

The compatibility of the applied extensions is provided by the new plugin Behavior - Backward Compatibility:

This plugin is automatically activated when upgrading from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 and makes sure that extensions compatible with Joomla 4 work on Joomla 5. Later, when Joomla 6 is released and the question of upgrading the CMS to a new major version arises, you will need to make sure that the site works correctly with the backward compatibility plugin disabled.

Possible Upgrade Difficulties

As you already understood, upgrading from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 is a fairly simple action and will not cause problems if the technical requirements of the server correspond to Joomla 5. It will be just as easy to update all subsequent major versions. However, if your site exists on Joomla 3, then you will first have to migrate it to Joomla 4. The complexity of the migration process from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4 may depend on a number of factors, including: