Joomla! is a content management system which is gaining popularity and massive user base at a very fast pace. The reason being its ease-of-use and extensibility of the features. On the top of it, it is an open source solution which is freely available to all. It allows developers to build inventory control systems, data reporting tools, application bridges, integrated eCommerce applications, reservation tools, communication systems and other applications very easily.

What about Joomla 1.6?

Joomla 1.6 is the next generation of Joomla!. The principal changes introduced in Joomla 1.6 are:-

• New Access Control System - Allows site administrators control over who can view and manage content.
• Unlimited Depth Organizational Model - Gives site administrators and content creators user-defined category levels that allow for the creation of a category tree with as many or as few levels for organizing articles and other content as needed.
• One-Click Extension Updates - Allows users to keep sites secure and controlled by simplifying the process of updating extensions.
• Semantic XHTML Layouts - Provides a better baseline for content presentation.

What’s new in Joomla 1.6 Beta 13 this time?

The Joomla! project team is proud to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6 Beta 13. Since it is a beta version, so it is not meant to be used for production sites but for evaluation purpose only. Joomla 1.6 Beta 12 was released on October 18. Since then, 71 issues have been fixed in the tracker. This is truly amazing and could possible due to hard work done by the Joomla! Bug Squad team. It is quite interesting and appreciating to note that large number of Joomla website developers and users have joined the bug squad to improve Joomla!

The following is a more complete list of changes as announced by Joomla Team:

Introduction

• Consistent UI
• Consistent Features
• Richer sample data
• IE 7+, Firefox 3.x, Safari 4.x
• PHP 5.2.4+
• MySQL 5.0.4 (allows for wide varchars)

Administrator

• Menu Changes
• Submenu consistency

Toolbar Features

• Save
• Save & Close
• Save & New
• Save as Copy
• Expired session will return to the page you were on then you got logged out (can be hit and miss)
• Most search filters allow you to search for a record id via [ id:123 ]
• "Parameters" are now referred to as "Options"
• Template Styles
• Integrated Trash Management
• Consistent archive support for most content
• Extension Installer Improvements

Module Enhancements

• Publish up and down
• Add option to display on all pages "except" selected
• Expanded Category System
• 404 Page Redirection
• Better Menu Management
• Alternative layouts for content, modules and menus (taken from the home template)

New Templates

• Atomic
• Beez2
• (Administrator) Bluestork (replaces Khephri)
• (Administrator) Hathor
• Legacy layer in Milkyway
• Backend supports layout overrides
• New Modules
• New Plugins
• Content Languages
• User Login Permissions
• Activate selected users from the user list now (and filter)
• Administrator registration approval
• Polls component removed
• New codemirror editor

SEO Improvements

• Meta decription and keywords for categories
• Articles can change the page title and page header separately

Global Configuration

• Add site name to titles
• Default Access Level
• Set Metadata Language (buggy)
• Unicode Aliases
• Cookie domain and path
• User Setting moved to User Manager -> Options
• Media Settings moved to Media Manager -> Options
• Debug Modules - allows you to enabled to disable the tp=1 feature
• Server Timezone now a location, not an integer offset
• New Global Permissions tab

User Manager

• Can activate a user from the list now
• User can be assigned to multiple groups
• Manage user groups
• Manager content access levels

Media Manager

• Flash uploader fixed

Menu Manager

Menus List

• Rebuild button to press when you brick the menu
• Clicking the menu name brings up the menu items list rather than going into Edit Menu. To edit the menu, click on the check box next to the name and click on the Edit icon in the toolbar.

Items List

• Menus support the language filter
• Default now called Home
• Home is now clickable in the menu item list
• A separate home can be set for different languages

New batch operations

• Set access level
• Copy or move to another part of this or another menu

Edit Item

• Improved "Type" selector with human readable view and layout names
• Note field added
• New window target
• New Language assignment
• New Template style
• Ability to add & edit Module assignments from this page

New options for the menu links and pages themselves

• Link title attribute
• Link CSS style
• Menu image is changed to a modal selector
• CSS class for page heading
• Page meta description
• Page meta keywords
• Robots options

Articles Manager

• Frontpage is now referred to as Featured
• Article manager uses submenu to quickly skip between articles , categories and featured
• Sections and categories are now merged.

Articles List

• "Missing move and copy; filter by author"
• New column to show language
• Filtering by language available

Article Edit

• Created by user now selected by modal popup
• New ability to set the page title from the article
• Define create, delete, edit and publishing permissions

Archived Articles

• In 1.5, Archived Articles had to first be changed to Published or Unpublished before update.
• In 1.6, an Article with an Archived Status *can* be changed without changing the State first.

Categories

Category List

• Nested view
• Filtering on language

Edit Category

• New note field
• Section replaced with ability to assign a parent category
• Ability to assign content language

New Options (not previously available in 1.5)

• Assign alternate layout
• Define create, delete, edit and publishing permissions
• Meta description
• Meta keywords
• Alternative page title
• Meta author
• Meta robots

Banners

Banners list

• Missing copy toolbar button
• New archive toolbar button
• New columns to show meta keywords, purchase type and language
• New filtering by client and language

Edit Banner

• New type toggle for Image or Custom (dynamically changes the available form fields)
• New alt text field for image
• New language field

New Options

• Ability to set the created date
• Ability to set start and finish publishing times
• Ability to set the purchase type
• Ability to track impressions
• Ability to track clicks
• Use own prefix ?
• Tags renamed to meta
• Contacts
• Messaging
• Newsfeeds
• Search
• Weblinks
• Redirect

Download Joomla 1.6 Beta 13!