UAB Web team is updating all Joomla sites to the new Joomla5.

Joomla5 is a mandatory CMS update that we are required to make on every Joomla site for security and operational purposes. These updates will be a manual process that require hands-on work on the backend of each site. As we are going through each site, our Web team is making some updates that enhance the User Interface for our Joomla site administrators. Details on these changes are outlined below.

Site Administrator User Interface Changes

We are going to adjust the User Interface on the backend of each Joomla site based on a site administrator's roles and permissions. Site administrators will continue to manage articles, categories, and other core content as usual. Some items you may have previously seen in the administrator menu will no longer appear. The changes are designed to simplify the interface and reduce access to tools that are not needed for day-to-day content management.

After this site upgrade, please expect the following site administrator changes:

• Banners, Contacts, JL Sitemap, Messaging, News Feeds, and Scheduled Tasks will no longer be accessible in the admin menu
• Access to add/disable users has been removed
• The plugin manager is no longer available
• Weblinks have been removed
• JL Sitemap has been replaced by UAB sitemap tool

Updated JCE Editor Version

We are updating the JCE editor to a newer version and toolset. This means the editing toolbar and some features will look different. Below are a few notable differences:

Still available

• Bold, Italic, Strikethrough
• Lists (bulleted/numbered)
• Blockquotes
• Basic text alignment (left, center, right)
• Undo/Redo
• Insert links, remove links
• Insert horizontal rule (line)

No longer available

• Underline (underlining should not be used on web except for links.  Since links are automatically underlined, the ability to underline is not needed.)
• Subscript / Superscript
• Font choice (you can’t pick different fonts anymore)
• Font size choice (everything is one size: 18px. Use heading levels appropriately to create larger font sizes in headings.))
• Text colors and background colors
• Full justify alignment (text stretched across page)
• Table tools (you can’t create or edit tables inside the editor – these tables are not accessible. Use the tables found on Dragon Scale as a starting point for building tables.)

With these changes, you can expect a simpler toolbar with fewer buttons. You also won’t need to worry about fonts, colors, or custom styles — our global styling will take care of this for you.

Media & Files

• What’s new: images now load faster with “lazy loading.”
• Size limits:
  • Images must be under 1 MB
  • Files must be under 10 MB

With these changes, you may need to resize or compress large images or files before uploading.

Content Tools

• New features:
  • Word count at the bottom of the editor
• Still available:
  • Spellcheck (now uses your browser’s built-in spellchecker)
  • Search & Replace
  • Source code view (for advanced users)
  • Preview mode

Site administrators will see helpful tools at the bottom of the editor, and spellcheck will look/act like it does in your browser.

Update Process

We will be conducting this update on a site-by-site basis between now and end of October. When we go to update a website to Joomla5, we will place that site in a content freeze. The freeze should last only a few hours at most. If you are trying to login to make changes to a website and the content freeze notice appears, please come back to the site in a few hours and try again. An end user should not notice any changes to our websites after the update is complete and your site should not experience any down time.

Questions

For any questions related to the Joomla5 update, please reach out to our support staff by going to go.uab.edu/websupport.