Every so often with Joomla, every four to six weeks or so, Joomla
puts out a new release.
While I've been recording this course, I've been working with
Joomla! 3.0.1, and just today
Joomla! 3.0.2 was released. I heard about it on Twitter.
I follow a lot of Joomla
people on Twitter, and I have an account there, and this is my method of finding
out what's the latest stuff that's going on inside of Joomla.
If you don't want to follow Twitter, you can always go to Joomla's Facebook
page, and if you Like it, you'll get updates in your feed; that would indicate
that there are new Joomla releases.
Joomla,
of course, always puts out a blog post, something on their homepage, you can get
that my RSS feed, or you can subscribe to an e-mail newsletter
that will e-mail you when there are updates that are available.
So, I know that there is this new version of Joomla
that's out, and I definitely needed to upgrade, because the 3.0.2 release, as I
know, again, from following Twitter, and reading about it, has a couple of
interesting things. It has bug fixes for a number of things, including something
called language overrides, which I'll cover in the next chapter.
And there is also some new functionality for multilanguage Web sites, including
something called associations. I'll cover that in the next chapter.
But those are kind of unusual.
It's fairly unusual to have some new functionality in it. I think that's just
because this is the latest version of Joomla, it's something brand new that's
out, and they were trying to get this working, and so now that it's working, now
they are announcing it.
But usually these updates have got, as I said, bug fixes, or security issues, and
they're very important that you install them. Joomla
has got a great interface for doing this, a very simple one click style
installation type of thing for upgrading your Web site.
What I always recommend you do first is make a backup of your Web site.
If you have a Akeeba Backup installed, which we do here, what I recommended is
you go to Akeeba Backup, and run a backup of your Web site, just in case.
You never know what's going to happen when you upgrade.
If you make your backup first, make sure that backup is stored somewhere outside
of Joomla's file structure.
And if you upgrade, and things go badly, you can always roll back to your backup.
If you've already got your Web site launched, and it's hosted somewhere else, you
can always copy your Web site down to your server that's in front of you, your
WAMP, or your MAMP machine, and you can upgrade your copy of Joomla
there, and make sure that upgrade is going to work. So you sort of test it in advance.
And you can use Akeeba Backup to transfer those files from your local machine to
the Web server, or you can use the zipping your files, and making a copy of your
database, as I've showed you in this course, so either way will work.
Now, right here from the homepage of the Web site, if you scroll on down here, you
will see here that there is some notification buttons down here in the lower
right corner, and these mean two different things.
So one, this is telling me that Joomla
is up to date, which is a little puzzling, because I know that there is Joomla! 3.0.2
is out. I'll go through that in a minute.
The other thing that's here is that there are more updates available, and it
indicates that there is one of these.
If I click on this, this is going to take me into my Extension Manager, and what
this is telling me is that there is an update to the Italian language package.
I may also find updates here for some of my extensions, so new versions of
Akeeba Backup, or new versions of my editors, or any other third-party
extension on my site may show up here, if those third-party extensions have
integrated fully with Joomla,
and they are using Joomla's notification system.
The language packages are a part of Joomla's core functionality; they're sort
of an optional thing that you can install, but they're maintained by joomla.org,
so they are integrated with the updating system.
So I'd like to go ahead and install this update here for Italian.
All I need to do is put a checkmark next to it, and say Update, and this will go
ahead and tell me that it has installed the most recent language package for
Joomla, so that's all set and ready to go.
Now, in terms of Joomla,
and updating it, as I said, I know that there is a new version of Joomla
available, although the icon on the homepage is telling me there isn't anything.
Well, if you to Components > Joomla!
Update, this is where you go to update Joomla,
and as you see here on the screen, it says there's no updates available; you
already have the latest Joomla!
version 3.0.1. Okay, so what am I going to do?
Well, here inside of your Options, if you click this, this is going to give you
some information about what kinds of updates that Joomla
will pull down for you.
So, by default, in Joomla
installations, this item here where it says your Update server, it is always set
to Long Term Support.
Now, I hope some of you who are watching this video sometime in the future, if
you're running Joomla! 3.0, or 3.1,
I would hope that they switch this to Short Term Support, but I
think they've got it set to Long Term Support for a reason, and the reason
is actually Joomla! 2.5.
What they don't want to have happen with people who are running Joomla! 2.5
Web sites is we don't want them to be getting notifications saying Joomla! 3.0.2
is available; you need to upgrade.
And really, once you hit that long term release, which in this case will be Joomla! 3.5,
you don't want to keep updating all the time to the latest versions.
But if you're running Joomla! 3.0,
you need to be getting those updates, and you need to be moving forward to
the next version. It's important for security, and it's important for bug fixing.
So what you need to do here is change your Update server from Long Term Support
to Short Term Support.
And Short Term Support would indicate that you'll be getting support for
Joomla's minor versions. So Joomla! 3.0,
and its releases will become available to you, and Joomla! 3.1,
and its releases will be available to you. Once Joomla! 3.5
comes out, you can move to that, and then switch this dropdown back to Long
Term Support again, and that will put you on the track to just stay on Joomla! 3.5 until
Joomla! 4.5 is available.
Alright, go ahead and say Save & Close, and now when you are returned to your Joomla!
Update screen, which is still under Components > Joomla!
Update, you will have a notification indicating that you can move to the
next version of Joomla.
And so all you need to do is click the button that says Install the update,
and it will go ahead and download the update, install it, and it says that you
are now running Joomla! 3.0.2.
How do you know that that's true?
Well, if you go back to your control panel, we enabled the administrator module
that shows the Joomla
version right here on our control panel. There it is: Joomla! 3.0.2.
Or if you don't have that enabled, go to System > System Information, and this
will tell you what version of Joomla
you're running, so there we: go 3.0.2 Stable.
So now that our upgrade is completed, we can hop over to the front-end of the Web site.
Always refresh; everything should look exactly the same.
Nothing is going to change the look of your Web site when you do these upgrades.
Nothing should change in terms of the functionality that you already have
available, and the pages should look exactly the same.
The links should still work,
you should still see pictures, and so forth.
None of that stuff should change.
If it does change, then something very bad happened as part of the upgrade, and
you need to roll back to a previous version.
In my experience, I've been updating Joomla
sites to these minor versions for years, and years, and years, and it's always gone
very, very smoothly.
The only place I've ever had a hitch is occasionally with some of my third-party
extensions, so that's why I encourage you to make backups, and so that you can
always roll back if something bad happens with your particular Joomla
installation.