HIERBENIKTHUIS

For the first time ever I'm going to visit a Joomla event abroad. Having wanting to do so for a couple of years now this time it will happen! Being a member of the Official Social Media Team has also been a part of it. I would like to meet the people I chat with almost every day. Joomla! World Conference - The Italian Bridge will be the place for me in November. Now to start learning a few words of Italian although the language used at the conference will be English.

So, are you going to join the Joomla! World Conference too?

Read more: My first visit to Joomla World Conference

A few nice (new) features were introduced with the release of the Joomla! 3.7.x series, for example Custom Fields, improvement in the multi lingual support and the Admin menu manager. The current version of Joomla! is 3.7.4 and there are some new releases coming our way.

Joomla! 3.8

The first beta release of Joomla! 3.8 is already available. The most important feature for lots of users in this new version will be the new Router so now you will be able to remove those ID's in the URL's. Most of the other changes will take place under the hood. There will be a compatibility layer built in Joomla to make the update towards Joomla! 4 possible.

Joomla! 3.9

The main change in Joomla! 3.9 will be the completing of the compatibility layer for the upgrade towards Joomla! 4. As far as I know no more new features will be added in 3.9.

Joomla! 4

Joomla! 4 will be the new main version of Joomla and it's being developed as we speak (or read), it's still not even in the alpha stage. There are some possible improvements documented for this release:

Read more: Joomla 3.7.4 and onwarts

Some of you might have heard of Velocity. To use the words already stated on the website:

Velocity gives your Windows desktop offline access to over 150 API documentation sets

So this is exactly what it is. You can download the documentation of many documentation sets and use them offline, or for easy access. Velocity is a Windows port of Bash, the original program available on the Mac.

Read more: Velocity - documentation offline

SSL/TLS/HTTPS, what is it exactly?

SSL is the precursor if the present TLS (Transport Layer Security) en both are encryption protocols for the security of communication between computers on the internet. It will take care that your data can't be monitored or faked. HTTPS means you visit a website who is using the TLS security. This is also visible in the address bar where you can see a green lock icon. This is especially important for web shops and web sites where you have to login, so your data is safe.

Required?

When you save personal data in your web site it is required to use a secured connection, at least here in the Netherlands. I don't know how this is arranged in other countries.

I don't have a web shop, why do I need TLS/HTTPS?

So you don't have a web shop or a web site where sensitive data is stored, why would TLS/HTTPS by interesting for you? It secures the data transfer from your web site to the visitor, no one should have the need to monitor this. There can be many companies or agencies interested in just harvesting data and once maybe is it. And also, it might benefit your ranking.

Google Ranking

In 2014 Google announced it will favour web sites in it’s ranking who use HTTPS in it’s ranking. So getting higher (or not dropping) in the ranks is also possible by using TLS/HTTPS.

Free TLS-certificates!!!

Obtaining a SSL/TLS certificate was not cheap a while ago. Depending on the type of certificate you needed it could costs a lot of money. This all changed when Let’s Encrypt started. This organization (not-for-profit) is backed by a lot of large organizations but also small donators and wants to improve the security on the internet by providing free TLS-certificates.

Lot’s of (good) hosting companies are implementing Let’s Encrypt in their environment so if a website owner wants to get a certificate he or she can do so in a few clicks. At least, it was that easy for me!