In short, the most important features of the service are realtime comments, inline media embedding, mobile commenting, social integration with Twitter, Facebook & other services and great moderation & anti-spam tools.

You can learn more about all Disqus features here.

Signup for a free account at https://disqus.com.

USING DISQUS ON YOUR JOOMLA! WEBSITE

After you signup for an account and add your website or blog at the Disqus dashboard, all you have to do to integrate Disqus in your Joomla website is copy your subdomain name (shortname) over to the (content) plugin's related field.

FEATURES

- Options for comments counter/anchor link for listing and article pages
- Choose to integrate Disqus comments in specific categories and/or menu items
- Neutral design for easy integration on any template design
- Fully MVC skinnable. Just copy the /plugins/content/jw_disqus/tmpl folder (in Joomla 1.5) or /plugins/content/jw_disqus/jw_disqus/tmpl (in Joomla 2.5 or newer) inside your Joomla template's /html folder, rename to /html/jw_disqus and start tweaking the HTML and CSS!
- Scrolling effects for anchor links
- Option for testing Disqus comments plugin locally before going live.

COMPATIBILITY

Disqus Comments (for Joomla) is compatible with Joomla versions 1.5, 2.5 & 3.x on servers running PHP versions 5, 7 and 8.

A version for Joomla 4 will also be released soon.

LICENSE

Disqus Comments (for Joomla) is a Joomla plugin developed by JoomlaWorks, released under the GNU General Public License.

FEATURES

• Less clicks to important content management and admin tasks in the Joomla 4 backend... duh!
• Neatly organize the menu in 2 columns (for admins), one to access common content management tasks and one to access common admin tasks. Keep in mind that not everything is included and for good reason: keep things simple.
• Respects configured backend access permissions for your user groups. In other words, plain content managers will see menu options for what they can only access, whereas Super Admins will see menu options for everything.

PREVIEW

HOW TO USE

• Install the module.
• After installation, locate the module in Administrator Modules and click to edit it.
• Assign the "status" module position & publish.
• Done!

Updating is easy as future releases will show up in the extension updates page in Joomla.

COMPATIBILITY

Quick Menu is compatible with Joomla version 4.x on servers running PHP 7 or 8.

LICENSE

Quick Menu is a Joomla module developed by JoomlaWorks, released under the GNU General Public License.

DISCUSS - SHARE IDEAS/FEATURES

Discuss or share ideas/features about this extension in our forum:

https://www.joomlaworks.net/forum/other-free-extensions

And as we venture into Joomla 4 territory, instead of seeing performance improvements (finally) for the entire database scheme, we actually witness new ways to mess up performance (if that was even possible). Apparently the Joomla core team likes to exercise who knows PHP's syntax better instead of actually building working code that doesn't break for extension developers every so.

Oh well, we're used to the mess.

Back to our topic.

Wanna improve the performance of the Joomla article system, especially in sites that filter/order content in various ways? Well, for starters add a few indices to the "content" table, e.g. using phpMyAdmin.

ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_publishup` (`publish_up`);
ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_publishdown` (`publish_down`);
ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_modifiedby` (`modified_by`);
ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_created` (`created`);
ALTER TABLE `#__content` ADD INDEX `idx_modified` (`modified`);

Just remember to replace #__ with your actual database prefix for Joomla.

But what's the measurable improvement? Well, something like this after you apply the above changes (on a really busy site that sorts articles by published date, aka 99% of Joomla sites)...

Yeap.

And that's performance tip no.1. We'll come back with more in the future as we delve into the software architectural wonder that is Joomla 4.

Or do yourself a favour & switch to K2 which recently passed 4 million downloads, yeah! :)

To those who might say, hey why aren't you contributing that back to Joomla, well, our answer is that if you've ever contributed in Joomla, you know the painful process & bureaucracy and you juuuust might wish to keep your sanity.

Until next time.

The main features of this new admin module are:

• Less clicks to important content management and admin tasks in the Joomla 4 backend... duh!
• Neatly organize the menu in 2 columns (for admins), one to access common content management tasks and one to access common admin tasks. Keep in mind that not everything is included and for good reason: keep things simple.
• Respects configured backend access permissions for your user groups. In other words, plain content managers will see menu options for what they can only access, whereas Super Admins will see menu options for everything.

Grab the module from https://www.joomlaworks.net/extensions/free/quickmenu and install like any other Joomla extension.

Afterwards, look it up under Administrator Modules in the Joomla 4 backend, click to edit it, assign the module position "status" and publish the module. Done!

You new backend quick menu will now be available to use.

Quick Menu is compatible with Joomla version 4.x on servers running PHP 7 or 8.

DOWNLOAD

You can download this version by visiting the extension's page at: https://www.joomlaworks.net/extensions/free/quickmenu

UPGRADING

Updating is easy as future releases will show up in the extension updates page in Joomla.

They account for around 0.3% of ALL Joomla sites according to W3Techs (https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-joomla).

Joomla's official stats (which were introduced near the end of life of Joomla 3 - https://developer.joomla.org/about/stats.html) are far less accurate obviously (e.g. they don't account for Joomla 1.5 > 2.5 sites or older Joomla 3 releases) but still show around 10% of sites use Joomla 4/5, after 3 years of their release. And these stats can be disabled by users of Joomla sites (most do).

This means adoption for these versions is close to non-existent. A sad reality, but an understandable one (read my posts on May 30th at https://x.com/joomlaworks for additional context).

There is literally nothing to say about how things have evolved for Joomla.

At this rate, it will probably be a dead software project within the next couple of years.

It's not just the users that are de-motivated, it's the developers too (the Joomla core developers). Few people will enjoy working on Joomla if no one uses it. It just makes sense.

As such, and given that we're strongly invested in Joomla 3 (in some of the largest news/media site implementations worldwide with Joomla), we don't plan on giving up on K2 (or Joomla 3). In fact, our goal is to pivot and work on a possible fork, unless a miracle happens and the Joomla core team gets their shit together and works on a true/seamless Joomla 3 to Joomla 5 (or 6?) upgrade.

The fork is a reasonable path for us for many reasons but I'd list the following ones here (for now):

• It'll be exciting to go from K2 (a "half" CMS so to speak) to a full CMS. Any crap that didn't work or half-worked on J3 will be fixed.
• Sky's the limit. Really. No stupid politics, irrelevant conventions, idiotic patterns to follow. We have a clear goal for K2 (and Joomla) and that's what we're gonna work on. That goal is a fast, reliable. modern CMS that leaves people asking "why WordPress?"
• Some will nag Joomla 3 uses old code. No it doesn't. It uses a certain design that was popular at the time it was introduced. The only change that is required is for it to be updated so it catches up with PHP's latest versions (for the record, we actively run sites with Joomla 3 / K2 on PHP 8.2). It's a mature code base that can be gradually improved.
• The fork could be introduced in 2 phases. Phase 1: A re-branding for existing sites to move over their content from com_content to K2 (far less work than switching to Joomla 4/5) and existing Joomla/K2 sites to freshen up their backend. Phase 2: This would be the part we lighten up the core. This means com_content & components like banners, newsfeeds, messages etc., their respective modules and plugins and generally other accumulated crap (like User Notes) that literally noone ever used will be stripped off Joomla. Either way K2 can reproduce most of these stuff far better.
• Any design changes will be subtle and NOT affect existing Joomla extensions that respected the Joomla UI design. It will also certainly NOT affect extensions that brought in their own design/MVC and so on (think AcyMailing, page builders etc. etc.).
• If our friend Ryan provides his blessing, we would also love to swap the current Joomla WYSIWYG editor with JCE Core. If not, it's always available either way. We will just upgrade TinyMCE and still install our beloved JCE. This would also be a good time to standardize things like "editor xtd" buttons in a way that they better integrate with the WYSIWYG editor...
• Features and custom extensions we've used for large scale projects could be integrated in the new CMS, if it makes sense for most users to have. E.g. fast search powered by Elasticsearch is a no-brainer (and we can throw that Smart Search crap out for good).

The point is to do something that's fun, while professional at the same time.

Backward compatibility will be our holy grail. Anyone that tells it can't are either lazy or just plain bad programmers (hell, we've maintained K2 for Joomla 1.5 to 3 for 15 damn years).

We're already in touch with partners to finance this move. On the long term, all we need is a couple of devs, working full time.

The next big phase will be infrastructure as required for any modern CMS. That means rebuilding something like the JED, working on documenting use and code etc. At the same time, it's practical to keep everything to a minimum. E.g. there is no reason to use our own forum, but probably go for something like GitHub so we can have everything in a single place: code and discussion, coupled with solid anti-spam (cause let's face it, that's what forums suffer from these days).

By keeping things lean and simple, we will work less on infrastructure and more on the CMS's code and features.

If you ask "why now", I can respond with 2 things:

1) There's been plenty of time for people to switch to Joomla 4/5. Very few did.

2) It's MUCH worse waiting things out to chart their predefined course than actually fucking doing something about it, even if it fails or doesn't work out.

Follow up blog posts will provide more insight into how things will play out in the coming months and how others can join this effort.

P.S.

If you have any questions, please use Twitter/X to communicate these to us (@joomlaworks).

Here's what's been added or changed in Simple Image Gallery (free) with the release of v4.0.0:

• Fully compatible with the upcoming Joomla version 4 (currently in "beta"). As with every beta software, Joomla 4 should not be used on production websites, but rather for preparing your skills for when it's officially released as the next "stable" Joomla version. You can download the nightly build of Joomla 4.0.0 "Beta 1" here: https://developer.joomla.org/nightly-builds.html
• Fancybox has been updated to its latest release (v3.5.7) and it's now loaded off the jsDelivr CDN (which is also "GFW" friendly).
• Localization has been extended to support all language strings used by the plugin as well as Fancybox. So it's now possible to fully translate Simple Image Gallery (free) to your language of choice.
• Updated the plugin's default parameter values to use larger thumbnails by default and longer caching.
• Still rocking Joomla 1.5, 2.5, 3.x and now 4.x compatiblity, for PHP 5 and 7 (tested up to PHP 7.4 to be exact).

In the coming weeks we wil gradually roll out updates for our smaller extensions (e.g. AllVideos, Simple RSS Feed Reader etc.) to also support Joomla 4.

DEMO

The JoomlaWorks demo site has been updated to use the latest Simple Image Gallery (free) release. See here: https://demo.joomlaworks.net/simple-image-gallery

DOWNLOAD

You can download this version by visiting the extension's page at: https://www.joomlaworks.net/extensions/free/simple-image-gallery

UPGRADING

If you use Joomla 2.5 and 3.x releases, this new update will appear in the Joomla extension updater. If you're using Joomla 1.5 or have started to test out the beta releases of Joomla 4, you can simply upload the new version and it will overwrite the old one. After that step, visit the plugin's parameters page, check if everything is OK or adjust as needed and save the parameters.

Here's what's been added or changed in this new release of AllVideos:

• Fully compatible with the upcoming Joomla version 4 (currently in "beta"). As with every beta software, Joomla 4 should not be used on production websites, but rather for preparing your skills for when it's officially released as the next "stable" Joomla version. You can download the nightly build of Joomla 4.0.0 "Beta 1" here: https://developer.joomla.org/nightly-builds.html
• Added new "muted" option for initial playback of video files. This option allows you to use AllVideos to embed background videos without sound, either hosted files or videos from YouTube, Vimeo etc.
  
• Need a simple way to have random preview images for your hosted audio files? Enable the new Unsplash.com integration and your audio files will use random music/audio related images as previews from the popular stock image service.
• AllVideos plugin parameters now follow a new unified design (inspired by K2's recent re-design) across all supported Joomla versions.
• Various code cleanups and improvements.

If you use K2 v2.10.x, we highly recommend you upgrade to this new version of AllVideos.

DEMO

The JoomlaWorks demo site has been updated to use the latest AllVideos release. See here: https://demo.joomlaworks.net/allvideos

DOWNLOAD

You can download this version by visiting the extension's page at: https://www.joomlaworks.net/allvideos/

UPGRADING

If you use the latest Joomla 3.x releases (or Joomla 2.5), this new update will appear in the Joomla extension updater. If you're using Joomla 1.5, you can simply upload the new version and it will overwrite the old one. After that step, visit the plugin's parameters page, check if everything is OK or adjust as needed and save the parameters.