Joomla 2.5.0 released

Multi-database support is a huge step forward for Joomla, which is already powering more than 1.6 million websites worldwide. It ensures companies and organization, both large and small, will save even more money and time by adopting Joomla," said Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project. "No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate with their database. This enhances Joomla's scalability immensely.

Other key features in Joomla 2.5 include:

Automatic notification when a Joomla or extension update is available. When logged into the control panel, site administrators will instantly have access to new notification buttons that allows them to see and act on the latest updates. In addition to updates for the Joomla CMS, a second button offers third party extension notification updates.

A better natural language search engine to the Joomla core. Complete with auto-completion and stemming (for example if you type "running" in a search field you also see run), it is faster and more versatile than the standard search.

We literally received thousands of pieces of input at ideas.joomla.org into what functionality should be added to Joomla 2.5, and overwhelmingly enhanced notifications and more elegant search topped the list," said Mark Dexter of the Joomla Production Leadership Team. "In fact, the automatic notification for core and extension updates received the most votes for a feature that people wanted in 2.5. But we didn't stop with just those two. Joomla 2.5 is a major overhaul with more than 24 new features that we have highlighted at joom.la/25features.

Joomla 2.5 adheres to Joomla's newly-adopted six-month release cycle that began with the previous Joomla CMS release of Joomla 1.7 in July, 2011. Downloading the latest version of Joomla is the best way to ensure organizational and personal security needs are being met since it will have the most recent updates to protect against the latest security threats.

Joomla 2.5 is truly a collaborative community-driven software project developed with the feedback gathered from more than 2.5 million Joomla forum posts, 540,000 Joomla forum members and data from more than 8,800 Joomla extensions. To download Joomla 2.5, go to http://www.joomla.org/download.html.

Check the Joomla 2.5.0 Post-Release FAQs to see if there are important items and helpful hints discovered after the release.

You should also read Brian Teeman's excellent write-up on things to look out for when upgrading to Joomla 2.5.

Statistics for the 2.5.0 release period (14 November 2011 to 24 January 2012)

Joomla 2.5.0 contains:

• 26 new features added
• 4 security issues fixed
• 356 tracker issues fixed
• Joomla 2.5.0 uses version 11.4 of the Joomlal Platform.

New Features Added

In addition to the new Joomla Platform, the following new features have been added:

• Add ablility to turn off the email to user when an Admin creates a user (Andrea Tarr)
• Improvements for batch processing (Michael Babker)
• Menu item parameter "Note" (Marcell van Geest)
• No "new user notification" email sent to admin (Kenny Wickstrom)
• Implementing default text per language in syndicate module (Jean-Marie Simonet)
• Implementing image option for the offline.php default page (Jean-Marie Simonet)
• Joomla! update notification button in the quickicons module (Nicholas Dionysopoulos)
• Debug Plugin Reloaded (Nikolai Plath)
• *Option to set Joomla to Site Offline (YES) during installation (fade2grey)
• Patch to enable change of newsfeed display direction (Mathieu Cattin)
• Add a true autoloader to the CMS (Rouven Weßling)
• Database Version Check (Mark Dexter)
• "Select a Menu Item Type" in modal box in menu item edit page (Dennis Hermatski)
• Improving SEO: New system plugin: languagecode (Jean-Marie Simonet)
• Manager for Language Overrides (Patrick Alt)
• Easier workflow by linking Menu Manager: Add Menu to Module Manager: Module Menu (Andrew Eddie, Jacques Rentzke)
• Add an option to filter the mod_whosonline by groups of the connected user (Christophe Demko)
• Add a check for native ZIP support to the Installation (Rouven Weßling)
• Add ability to support other databases starting with Microsoft SQL Server / Windows Azure (Hooduku Team)
• mod_status optimization (Kyle Ledbetter)
• Category filtering on content doesn't including sub-categories (Ofer Cohen)
• User Notes (Andrew Eddie)
• Use the images and urls fields to create simple standardized layouts (Elin Waring)
• Custom Black List in Text Filters - Ready to test - Makes it possible to overwrite default blacklist - Joomla 1.7 (Tore B. Krudtaa, Denise McLaurin)
• Captcha in the core (Jonnathan S. Lima, Rouven Weßling, Nicola Galgano)
• Finder Integration (Rob Schley, Michael Babker, Elin Waring, Chris Davenport, Omar Ramos, Viet Hoang Vu, Jean Marie Simonet, Rouven Weßling, Louis Landry, Gabriele Pongelli)