Are you searching for a professional Joomla website maintenance service to alleviate your business's daily website management burden? Look no further than The Joomla Expert. Our comprehensive support ensures your Joomla site operates smoothly, securely, and efficiently.

Why Choose Us?

• Reliable Hosting Management: We handle all hosting tasks, ensuring your site is up-to-date with the latest core updates and configured for optimal performance.
• Regular Updates & Monitoring: Our dedicated team performs routine updates to Joomla CMS and third-party extensions, plus constant monitoring to prevent security breaches or downtime.
• Responsive Support: Whether you need immediate assistance or prefer scheduled support sessions, our experts are available to address any technical issues promptly.

A client has messaged us to tell us their ReCaptcha keeps on loading when a user tries to reset their password, retrieve their lost username or use any form that has ReCaptcha installed. Once the user clicked the "I'm not a robot" it simply loads forever.

The reason this happens is that even on the latest (and final) version of Joomla 3, which is version 3.10.12 the MooTools libraries that are loaded is v1.4.x and this version is no longer supported by Google reCaptcha. Joomla 4 has moved to a jQuery based solution, but how do we solve for Joomla 3 legacy sites that still use Google ReCaptcha?

The hit counter mechanism in Joomla is used to display content by popularity or most viewed via modules or menu links. In most smaller sites, it doesn't pose an issue but on large content sites, because the hit counting feature locks the content table, this can be a problem - especially during heavy traffic periods. If you run a large content site on Joomla and still want to use this feature, we can modify the code to solve this issue and/or offer alternatives solutions. Get in touch

To disable hit counting for Joomla articles and categories, we navigate into the Options area for the articles section. When logged in as an administrator, navigate to Content > Articles and on the Articles page, click the Options button in the top right. On the Options page, in teh first tab named Articles scroll down to find the Record Hits toggle and switch it to off.

Congratulations! You have just disabled the counter mechanism that tracks hits in Joomla 4. 

Do you need help with a Joomla issue? Get in touch for specialist help.

 

Recently we had a client project where we used Virtuemart 4 Custom Fields extensively for product attributes along with CSV Improved for product data import. Despite haaving the Custom Field setup for Show Labels set to yes, we would find that the labels were not showing up after importing new data. To solve this we accessed the database directly to find the setting which controls the visibility of the labels in for the custom field dropdowns we see on the single product page for Virtuemart.  

If we view the database table #__virtuemart_product_customfields we can see the field customfield_params contains a boolean variable showlabels=0 which we we need to switch to showlabels=1 for teh labels to appear on the frontend single product page again. If you have many records to update you could do this with a query, or manually if you have only a few to update. Remember to always have backups before running queries directly on your database or better yet, create a development or staging version to test your work on before deploying to a production environment. 

In this case we had just a few to change so we manually updated the variable to showlabel=1 and the resulting labels then showed as expected on the front end. 

Do you need help with a Joomla or Virtuemart problem? Get in touch for specialist help.

 

Support for Joomla 3.10 has officially ended and now all Joomla 3 sites warn administrators to migrate to Joomla 4 as soon as possible. In this article we'll show you what that process entails, so you can decide to start migrating directly or ask for help where you need it. Here at The Joomla Expert, we provide fixed price proposals for Joomla migrations! We have been offering Joomla development services since the very beginning of Joomla, from 1.0 through to today's Joomla 4 migration needs. 

Can we skip the Joomla 4 migration?

In the short term - Yes - Joomla 3 is a very stable CMS and over the years we have noted that Joomla CMS tends to degrade quite gracefully. Typically, when there is a failure it typically presents a message that tells us what the problem is. However. the main reason we find customer require Joomla 3 to Joomla 4 migrations are because hosting companies are now also upgrading server software, such as updating PHP to PHP8. This often causes PHP to throw errors, as code is deprecated. Typically, this is code in the template or a 3rd party extension rather than Joomla core itself. This is a pretty bad scenario because typically it will mean your business website is either entirely offline, or is showing serious errors to your customer base. 

Joomla 3.10 is soon to be at its End of Life (EoL) stage and so all Joomla 3.10 sites are now warning administrators to migrate to Joomla 4 as soon as possible. In this article we'll quickly run you through the scope of that process so you can get started migrating or ask for help where needed. At The Joomla Expert, we have provided Joomla migration services since the very beginning of Joomla, from 1.0 through to today's Joomla 4 migration needs. 

Warning
Support ends on 17 August 2023 for Joomla 3.10. Migrate to Joomla 4 as soon as possible.

Do we really need to migrate our Joomla website?

The short answer is no - the Joomla 3 CMS is very stable and tends to degrade gracefully - i.e. when there is a failure it typically presents a message that tells us what the problem is. In fact, we even have some past clients still running Joomla 1.5 sites, the codebase for which has been EoL since January 1st 2012, and is still running 11 years later! That said, older versions of Joomla are slower and can be vulnerable to malware because no new security patches are to be released for these versions. The main reason we find people requesting Joomla 4 migrations are when their hosting company upgrade the PHP or MySQL version on the server, which causes PHP code deprecation to run and either display issues or make the software throw a server error. This is really the worst scenario, when your live site is no longer available. Which leads us to the long answer.

Are you seeing a warning message in your Joomla administrator panel? This is because the Joomla 3 major version has now entered its security only phase. After August 2023, no new patches will be released. Its time to plan a migration to Joomla 4 but you still have plenty of time. Even if you are reading this after August 2023, a Joomla 4 migration can be implemented so your Joomla site can be back on a stable, supported production version.

Warning
Joomla 3.10 has entered security only mode. Support ends 17 August 2023. Start planning to migrate to Joomla 4 today.

When changing Order Status in Virtuemart you may see an error vmError: updateStatusForOneOrder unknown virtuemart_order_id which is caused by a small bug in the Virtuemart 4.0.4 package. It will be patched in the next version but in the meantime here's how you fix this Virtuemart Error.

vmError: updateStatusForOneOrder unknown virtuemart_order_id

Before you start, always remember to backup - make sure you have a verified backup of your Joomla Virtuemart software

Recently we have been upgrading and migrating lots of Joomla 3 websites over to Joomla 4 and from time to time, the Joomla Update screen does not show the Joomla 4 upgrade information. In most cases, this is because the Joomla 3 Update Channel is set to the Default Channel. To check and change this, while you are on the Joomla Update screen, press the Options button in the top right hand corner and see what Update Channel you are on. To see Joomla 4, this needs to be set to the Joomla Next Update Channel. 

However, in some instances we have found that even with that setting correct - the Joomla 4 update does now show. 

Well managed Joomla upgrades can mean you keep the same valuable content you have curated, the same valuable links, SEO effort, software and extensions working hard for you and your business. Trying to update too early or without correct precautions is asking for a headache. In this article we take you through deciding when to update to Joomla 4 and how to ensure a safe & smooth process so you can enjoy Joomla 4 working for you for years.

TL;DR Wait until lots of the community have switched over, and all the bugs have been found. Summer 2022 is a good bet, but watch the Joomla release roadmap for changes.

 

Do you need help with a Joomla update or migration? Get in touch for a free assessment.

 

Upgrading from Joomla 3.x to Joomla 4.x should be a carefully managed process. It should not be done directly on a live website because that is a very risky option. Instead, we prefer to test the migration on a development clone. This way, if an issue arises we can solve it and move forward without scrambling to manage a site down situation. This sort of risk averse approach is the gold standard for good web development.