Joomla 6 is here. It’s faster, cleaner, and built for the future. And, as always with a new major Joomla release, the big question is simple: are my extensions ready?

At Joomlashack, we’re already on it. We’re updating our extensions to work properly with Joomla 6 and testing them on real sites.

In this post, you’ll find a regularly updated overview of Joomlashack extensions that are already compatible with Joomla 6.

Wow, time really flies. This February marks the 20th anniversary of our OSDownloads extension. It feels like just yesterday that we created this Joomla extension to make it easy for people to download ebooks in exchange for an email address.

The OSCampus Pro Search Module helps users quickly find Pathways, Courses, and Lessons, making your site more user-friendly.

In this guide, you will learn how to use it and how to hide its Advanced filter if you prefer a minimalist design.

One of our customers asked how to open a Shack Forms Pro contact form module with a button. Every form module you create in the Shack Forms Pro component provides you with an HTML code for a hyperlink that will open this particular form module.

You can then add some basic inline CSS code to this HTML link to convert it to a button and style its design as you see fit. In this blog post, you will learn how to add a Shack Forms Pro button inside a Joomla article.

JCal Pro is a powerful extension for Joomla that allows you to create and manage events on your website. One of its great features is the ability for your viewers to export future events directly from the front end of your site.

This functionality is incredibly useful for users who want to add your upcoming events to their desktop, mobile, or online calendars, ensuring they never miss an important date. Here is a birds-eye view of this feature.

We are thrilled to share some exciting news with our Dutch community!

Our OSCampus Pro, OSEmbed, OSVimeo, and OSYouTube extensions now fully support the Dutch language, thanks to the dedicated efforts of René Kreijveld, a phenomenal contributor to our translation projects.

If you have been using Joomla 4, it's time to update to Joomla 5.

Joomla 5 is a smooth, one-click update for Joomla 4 users. There are no major changes in this version. All Joomlashack extensions are fully compatible with Joomla 5.

Joomla 3 support was officially retired by the Joomla team in August 2023. The Joomla community is moving forward with Joomla 4, and soon, Joomla 5.

In another post, we outlined our future plans for Joomla 4. In this post, I'll look backwards and explain our plans for Joomla 3.

In that original Joomla 4 post, I said this:

"[Our] goal is to support as many of our customers, as well as we can, for as long as we can."

We still have a good number of Joomlashack customers using Joomla 3. So to meet our goal, we've decided to support those Joomla 3 users for at least one more year.

Over the last two years, we've been hard at work upgrading Joomlashack products for Joomla 4 and 5.

Some of the extension updates were done in an afternoon. Some of the biggest extensions took over a year to update.

As we learned more about the Joomla 4 and 5 update process, we came to decisions about each product. We evaluated how many people were using it, how difficult it was to upgrade, and whether the product still had value for users in 2023.

Here is a list of the Joomlashack products which we will continue to develop and support, plus a separate list of those that are discontinued.

OSpam-a-not is the easiest way to protect your Joomla site from spam bots filling out your forms. The OSpam-a-not plugin uses a clever and unobtrusive technique to protect your forms from a flood of spam.

We created OSpam-a-not because we needed better Joomla spam prevention. We use OSpam-a-not ourselves, so we maintain it and update it regularly. OSpam-a-not supports all the forms in the Joomla core and many from third-party extensions.

For a long time, there was only a Free version of OSpam-a-not. This limited how much support we gave to the product. So this week, we've released a Pro version of OSpam-a-not.

The new Pro features aren't huge, but this is a first step and it means that OSpam-a-not will be supported into the future. This Pro version is now available to Everything Club members and is also available for individual purchase.

This is our 25th Pro extension. All the extensions we have for sale are now ready for Joomla 4, except for Simple Renew.

JCal Pro is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download JCal Pro version 5.0 and it will work on your Joomla 4 sites.

This is the 24th extension that we've updated for Joomla 4!

JCal Pro is the best calendar and event registration extension for Joomla. JCal Pro offers simplicity, flexibility, event moderation, and a robust feature set. From private and community calendars to commercial events, JCal Pro is sure to fit your calendar needs.

This week, we were really happy to announce the release of JCal Pro for Joomla 4.

It took us around a year to update this extension. Overall, it has taken us nearly two years to prepare all our extensions for Joomla 4, and we're not finished yet.

I wrote a little about this process in our 2022 review: "We found that it was possible to move a simple extension from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4 in a couple of hours. Our first upgrades were easy, and we migrated several basic extensions in one day. With bigger extensions, the upgrade time increased exponentially. Our medium-sized extensions took three or four months each to migrate to Joomla 4. The largest and most complex extensions have taken us up to a year."

We're delighted to say that we've nearly finished completing our last major extension upgrade for Joomla 4.

There is a Release Candidate available for JCal Pro on Joomla 4.

If you are launching a new Joomla 4 site, you can install and use this latest version.

We would love to hear your real-world feedback. The more feedback we get, the faster this release can be officially marked as "Stable".

Thank you all for your support of Joomlashack.

Joomlashack started in 2005, but our team took over the site in 2016. 

At the end of every year we write a review of what happened at Joomlashack. If you want to look back, here is our 2016 review, 2017 review, 2018 review, 2019 review, 2020 review and 2021 review.

We always aim to avoid writing "everything was awesome" posts. We try and give you honesty and insight into Joomlashack's year. There are always plenty of ups and downs. You'll find plenty of stories of both success and failure in these posts.

OSCampus is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download OSCampus version 3.0 and it will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 23rd extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

OSCampus is the best way to build an online training site with Joomla.

OSCampus allows you to publish online classes. You can use OSCampus to create classes with multiple lessons and quizzes. The lessons can consist of anything from videos or text, to presentations and PDFs. Your lessons can be YouTube or Vimeo Videos, Slideshare or Google presentations, simple text or complex code.

Do you want to test and rewards your users? When users finish your classes, you can let them take a quiz, and earn certificates when they pass.

If you want a Joomla LMS, then OSCampus is absolutely your best choice!

Over the last few weeks we've spent some time updating our extensions to use the new Smart Search feature in Joomla 4.

Both OSDownloads Pro and Shack Locations Pro have new releases with Smart Search integration.

Because of this work, those two extensions also now support the Smart Search feature in Joomla 3.

In the next couple of months, OSCampus and JCal Pro will both be available for Joomla 4 and they'll be ready for Smart Search.

Google Analytics 4 is the newest version of Google's ultra-popular tracking platform.

Google is encouraging users to move to this new version of the platform in the next few months. This is because the older version, called Universal Analytics, will stop working in the summer of 2023, and it not backward-compatible. This post has more background on the new Google Analytics 4.

So, if you want to keep using Google Analytics, you will need to actively update your sites in the next year.

We've heard from Joomla users who plan to run both Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics on their site at the same time. This is a perfectly valid approach, and will make for a smooth handover. In this guide, I'll show you how to run both versions on your site.

PS. If you don't want to use Google Analytics at all, Joomlashack still has you covered!

Shack Icons is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Icons version 4 and it will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 22nd extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

We have changed the name of this extension from "Easy Social Icons" to "Shack Icons".

The Shack Icons module is a simple way to add icons for all of your social network accounts. You just need to add a link to your accounts, select the icon style that best matches the look of your site, and publish the module. Shack Icons Pro supports 18 different social networks.

Shack Article Sharing is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Article Sharing version 2 and it will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 21st extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

Shack Article Sharing is a Joomla social sharing extension. This plugin allows you to add easy-to-use social sharing buttons to your site. Shack Article Sharing supports the most popular share buttons, including Facebook and Twitter.

Shack Forms is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Forms version 5 and it will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 20th extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

Shack Forms is the easiest and most powerful way to add forms for your Joomla site. This extension allows you to create forms and then show them in your articles, inside pop-ups, in modules, or anywhere you want.

Please note: This is a very big update that took many months work. We expect to release several updates as we find and fix some bugs. There is no need to update your sites to Shack Forms 5 immediately.

Shack Article Layouts is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Article Layouts version 4.0 and it will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 19th extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

Shack Article Layouts is an extension that can display your Joomla articles in flexible and beautiful layouts. This extension is perfect for creating homepages, or landing pages for blogs, portfolios, testimonials and other content.

You have the freedom to choose how to display your articles, as well as what to display from the articles. You can display images from articles, some or part of the article's content, links and read more buttons included in the article, or authors, dates, and so much more. Additionally, you can pick from several stylish layouts and organize the number of columns and rows to fit your needs.

OSContent is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download OSContent version 2.0 and it will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 18th extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

OSContent is designed for managing, adding, creating, and deleting articles, categories and menu links. OSContent is a wonderful time-saver if you need to quickly add content to a Joomla site.

With a few clicks, you create all the categories, articles and menu links you need for your Joomla site. Why waste time repeating steps over and over again, when you can do the same thing with just a few clicks?

Shack Toolbox is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Toolbox version 4.0 and the same package file will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 17th extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

Shack Toolbox is the best way to show pop-ups and modals on your Joomla site. Shack Toolbox has over a dozen media and marketing integrations, including Twitter, Google Maps, Joomla articles, and much more.

Shack Toolbox has many different design and layout options for your content. You can choose from many different themes. You can also select from effects that include pop-ups, lightboxes, slide-in, bottom bars, fade-ins and sidebars.

Please note: Unlike all our other Joomla 4 updates, there are some feature changes in this release. We have removed some media integrations that were outdated, including Freshmail and Seblod, plus some themes with outdated designs. Click here for the full changelog. ]]> Steve Burge Thu, 17 Mar 2022 12:10:36 -0400 http://www.joomlashack.com/blog/joomlashack/shack-toolbox-joomla-4/ http://www.joomlashack.com/blog/joomlashack/shack-locations-joomla-4/

Shack Locations is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Locations version 2.0 and the same package file will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 16th extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

Shack Locations is the best way to create a location-based directory in Joomla.

With Shack Locations you can create advanced directories with custom maps, markers, infoboxes and hundreds of locations. You can add details to your locations using custom fields. And, you can give your users the ability to search and filter through the locations.

Thank you all for your support of Joomlashack.

Joomlashack started in 2005, but our team took over the site in 2016. 

At the end of every year we write a review of what happened at Joomlashack. If you want to look back, here is our 2016 review, 2017 review, 2018 review, 2019 review, and 2020 review.

We always aim to avoid writing "everything was awesome" posts. We try and give you honesty and insight into Joomlashack's year. There are always plenty of ups and downs. You'll find plenty of stories of both success and failure in these posts.

Shack Analytics is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Analytics version 1.0.8 and the same package file will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. This is the 15th extension that we've updated for Joomla 4.

Shack Analytics is a single extension to manage all the analytics code on your sites. 

Joomla site owners often have scripts from services such as Google Analytics, Adwords, Clicky, Facebook, and MailChimp. But those scripts are hidden away inside random modules, plugins or template files.

OSMeta is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download OSMeta version 2.0 and the same package file will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4.

OSMeta is the easiest way to manage metadata for your Joomla site.

With OSMeta you will be able to easily control page titles, meta descriptions and URLs for all your articles via a single screen, which makes editing fast. There's also a character counter to make it easy to see when your metadata is just right or too long.

Shack Article Manager is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Article Manager version 2.0 and the same package file will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4.

Shack Article Manager is an extension that allows anyone to write, edit, publish and manage articles from the frontend of Joomla sites.

Shack Article Manager is perfect for sites that don't want to allow users into the Joomla administrator area. Using Shack Article Manager, you can allow both guest and registered users to create content for your Joomla site.

Shack Error Notify is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack Error Notify version 2.0 and the same package file will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4.

Shack Error Notify will rescue you from serious site problems. This plugin will send automatic notifications if anything goes wrong with your Joomla site.

We have used this plugin at Joomlashack for years, and it has saved us on many occasions. It is easy to miss site errors, but Shack Error Notify catches them all! You will get an email describing what went wrong on your site, and showing you where to fix it.

Shack User Switching is now available for Joomla 4 users! You can download Shack User Switching version 2.0 and the same package file will work on both Joomla 3 and Joomla 4.

Shack User Switching allows you to test any user account on your sites, without compromising their passwords. With one click, you can browse your site and see exactly what your users see. This is a safe and useful way to troubleshoot problems for your site's users.