Joomla! 4 in production
2022 so far is really good to me, in spite of all craziness in the world, well let’s begin.
Prepare yourself, because there would be a lot of ton technical information.
Why Joomla! ?
You probably know me for being a Java, C# or even type script with Angular or mobile development with Flutter.
I pick Joomla! , because I unconsciously knew, that I would be very quick and run my business without any additional interruptions, that was my intention, which is true in 2022.
Where I saw Joomla for the first time?
It was really like 4 or 5 years ago at one of my clients, they wanted to switch to java based solution and my responsibility was to implement the solution and do requirements analysis of theirs project state.
To make this story short, after my analysis and going in deep with Joomla!
I suggested to the client to do refactoring first and upgrading to newer template version of Joomla! , it was really great experience one of kind.
Then I continued with my Java projects and done many Java based projects, because I wasn’t ready to see opportunities with Joomla! as businessman. Even back in the past, there were already many web technologies and it was hard to see other solutions.
In 2022 my choice was obvious I pick Joomla with my team and we done some prototyping and decided to do it!
Very important question was where to host our Joomla project?
There so many options, for me really was important the amount of services and limitations of particular webhoster and I too did have budget concerns.
You need to compare and speak to the webhosting providers and see for yourself, the price isn’t important enough to have later disruptions for your business site.
Does Cloud offers any good deals?
Besides Oracle and Google for me there were less good deals, AWS last year did have outage , but Azure too was problematic and for the folks who follows me , they know , that I most certainly “onpremices” guy.
What about outage and ability to be able to go on premises?
Sell me server with good hardware for running Joomla! with MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MS-SQL or even Oracle.
With price range up to 200 EU. Such server should be not noise up to 20db have integrated UPS or alternative and it should be no bigger than a sat receiver size dimensions case look up GigaBlue UHD Quad 4K and power supply very efficient like max 100w AC and a one or 2 Gigabit integrated lans, 500GB SSD 16GB DDR4 and 8 or 16 core 4 Ghz CPU.
So such hardware not available and cloud was not an option, so I decided to pick one big good German Webhoster and it was enough for me and my team.
How big the community behind Joomla!?
Joomla! community is very active there more than 200K supporters exist!
So it’s not weak, Google supports Joomla and I think this is enough to say that make the future of Joomla! very bright.
Sure in the past they did experienced a community split, but it was natural and I think they did recover from it.
What are most recent security concerns about Joomla?
404 redirects: this can be potentially danger, but if you install proper extension, this is actually not a problem.
Of course with any PHP based projects you will get some nasty PHP bugs, but I did not experienced that and I run on PHP8.
How long it would take it to production?
It depends, for me it was basic simple business site with few forms possible and it took us 2 weeks to get it fully operational ( this due that I and my team members very professional experts).
Some stuff always need customized and takes time to figure out how to do it properly one bad example Quix , which almost stop us to deliver into production.
Many extension which we use are free, but this mean a lot of maintenance work must be put in.
Geo blocking is rather easy but it can cost up to 1000 dollars for year cloud service subscription.
Here we decided just to block countries via Apache server configuration.
What other services we need to consider?
At some point it sound reasonable to put a cloudfare antibot protection, but it would downgrade the user experience.
Google translator is a must for modern sites and ability to read a site (text to speech) is too very important (for some clients it’s not), still there were service providers which offers it for free so took the offer.
How was actual experience during implementation?
Now this is a fun part, i try to describe what you really need to do before going to production:
You need webhosting, after that you need a SSL certificate, you can get all at one webhosting provider or buy SSL certificate from services providers like ZeroSSL, then you need to install a certificate to a server.
Server is up and mail server is up, take time and create email boxes for your Joomla! installation.
The installation of Joomla itself was really easy and fast, if you do it manually read the documentation on official Joomla website.
So your Joomla is running,
than first of first setup your 2FA , because nobody wants to be hacked during setup.
Here you can decide if you need recaptcha, I personally recommend it, but the choice is yours.
It is time to pick the template , one word of caution if you don’t use default template of Joomla you will 100% depend on template vendor, so think about this good twice!
My favorite template is Helix Ultimate https://www.joomshaper.com/joomla-templ ... ixultimate .
Template installed?
It’s time to install extensions!
Here I will mention some useful extension, some of them official and some not, before installing them on server make sure , that they are compatible with your Joomla! version.
Good practice, always back up your current database , before installing new extension.
Here is the list of extension:
- Ark Editor Very good, but it lucks the feature of selecting color for text and the background, still it is useful.
- JCE Editor It is the best, almost everything what you need for editing, code review and preview options.
- GDPR / DSGVO just pick one from Joomla official extensions site and use it!
- Forms balboa, if you need really contact forms or order forms , this is it , it allow you pretty fast to connect fields and other html input elements and it have even captcha support!
- fix-404-error-links use it from official Joomla extensions site, this would allow you to see any missing 404s and even fix it, its not automatic in free version, but it’s really useful.
- JEvent , this would allow you to add Google calendar to your Joomla site, but it’s not directly connected to Google calendar , you take a snapshot from Google calendar and import it in icalc format to JEvent and this is it. I think it’s a good workaround, because working with Google APIs can be somehow messy and difficult.
- If you need to see visitors counter on your site, then use jsvisit I found it rather per random search
- Google translator use , one of word of caution in a free version the position of this component is fixed: left. I like that it works!
- If you use Helix Ultimate template you can use a web widget from and configure nice feature which would allow to read the page.
- OSMETA , it simple yet flexible and no configuration needed, very cool for SEO!
- https://cms2cms.com/ this is not a extension, but a useful service for migrating from other blogs platforms, it can fetch your blogs into the format which you currently use and then you can easy import it to Joomla!
- Jlogs , allows to see logs of your Joomla installation , you can install it from official Joomla site.
- Put advertisements from google use Phoca GAE for footer or for custom places on your page.
- Inner Content allows to deliver advertisements in article, like between <p> paragraphs, please notice this works if you don’t use Google automatic adverts placements.
If you serious about security and you should:
Spoiler!
Summary and future:
Taking Joomla! Into production wasn’t really big challenge, but it took some time to understand how it can be used and how to customize it.
One thing I didn’t liked, about Joomla! that they used Gravatar for avatars and per default its disabled , so I took alternative and use custom field for adding a picture as avatar, sure it adds additional work (adding picture each time when you creating an article), but its free!
Modelling of the menu and working with youtube was a challenge too (just buy Youtube extension), but as soon as all definitions were understood there were no further work delays!
I can definitely imagine, that for small and middle enterprises Joomla! is a right and best free solution!
Still notice, that in any case before doing implementation work a requirements analysis must be done first.
After it’s done, then only the implementations should follow!
If you interested how we Orlovsky Consulting GbR work read following article.