Good day to all Joomla lovers,

On September 11th, Joomla 3.9 Beta version is officially released. This version is essentially focused on implementing General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Joomla site. In term of this paper, we will inform you of the most important update and features of this version.

Joomla 3.9 new features and update

In an attempt for best executing the regulation, Joomla 3.9 has specifically made the following development:

• Provide an API for extension developers so they can report the data they collect and this info can be displayed in the new com_privacy extension.
• Gain the consent of the registered users (form plugin), track their consent, log their activities, and take care of the consent retention time.
• Facilitate your workflow related to your user requests.
  • Make it easier for the users to submit information requests.
  • Track the status of the user’s requests.
  • Let the user access and download their data.

Others than developing functions for GDPR, Joomla 3.9 also have some notable updates:

• Able to use Google Invisible reCAPTCHA.
• Add filterable notes to articles in the backend.
• News search function: can be filtered by the content in the article.
• A repeatable custom field.
• Able to create alternative layouts.
• Option to show only the articles from a specific author in the latest article module.
• Load a module by ID into your article.
• Display your tags per language.
• Create multiple language sites faster by adding “Propagate" button in the Associations tab and creating edit association toolbars.
• Improve UI/UX with linking breadcrumb.
• And lots of bugs fixed as well as more improvement which you can see all in Githhub.
  (According to Joomla.org)

Joomla 3.9 most Important updates in detail

The privacy system

The most important change of this version lies in the Users/Privacy settings. In this section, you can create and handle user data requests as following to GDPR in a very simple and straightforward way.

After going to User/Privacy, you can create a new data user request.

You can read the official document for this feature for more information.

However, in the user perspective as well as matching all rule in GDPR, we think that this update still lacks many options like:

• Change option: In case of user says their data is not correct
• Move option: In case of user wants to move to another service, you have to allow it in a usable way.
• Others: In some cases, users have a specials demand related to their data. For example: stop processing their data.

But in this version, you only have the “Remove” and “Export” option to be started.

Note: this feature is only the backend control, where the admin/superuser handles data requests. In order for your user to send this kind of request, you have to create a means for them to input it. Normally, most websites create a form for this function.

The action logging system

Joomla developers have an intent for this function way back in 2016. Up till now, it is officially brought to Joomla core. The system provides users complete control over other admin activities.

Go to Users/Users Action Log and you can see the log activity for each change in your site in case you want to review what when wrong or suspect a mischievous behavior.

It goes with 3 major developments:

Action Logs Component

The component allows site admins to review the action log, export it, and purge entries.

Action Logs Plugin

The "Action Log - Joomla" plugin is used to log CRUD actions for supported content related extensions and miscellaneous actions such as extension management.

Latest Actions Module

An admin module showing the latest logged actions is available.

Small but useful updates in Joomla 3.9

A new content search function in the backend

If you want to search a specific word, phrase or even paragraph in an article, now you can apply the prefix “content:” + “keyword” before searching in the Content/Article area. For example: “content: protostar” will search for all articles that have “protostar” in their content.

Searching for all articles that have “protostar” in their content

New module features

Creating a handy feature without installing hundreds of extension is one of the advantages when using Joomla. Therefore, the more Joomla updates, the more feature Joomla’s module has. In Joomla 3.9, these are some notable changes in module creation:

Grouping articles by author's name

Create an Article/ Latest Module. Choosing “Create by” in the “Authors” line. Then you can choose a specific author name. All the articles that have published by that author will be shown.

Display article published by month/year

Create an Article/ Category Module. In the “Grouping” tab, selecting Year/Month or Year to display all article that publishes in that time.

Improve UI/UX in article breadcrumb

A small change, but it makes a huge improvement in the article breadcrumb’s UX. The information beneath an article title in backend now clickable and it shows full parent category. This improvement makes tracking and editing the whole lot easier.

Joomla 3.9 roadmap

According to Joomla.org, both the RC version and Stable version will be ready by October 2018.

Joomla 3.9 first plan is to be the last version of Joomla 3.x before going to 4.0. But after GDPR is implemented, Joomla decides to expand to 3.10 version. Make Joomla 3.9 main focus are the features support GDPR and leave the bridge to 4.0 to Joomla 3.10.

JoomlaShine’s plan with Joomla 3.9

Making sure JoomlaShine’s extensions and templates are compatible with any Joomla versions is our top priority. The Beta version is a perfect means for us to do that and since its release, we are testing all of our products in Joomla 3.9. In the near future, the testing will soon be for Joomla 4.0.

By the official release of the Stable version, JoomlaShine user will be ready to upgrade to the latest version.

But right now, you can download Joomla 3.9 Beta version here.

If you have any questions related to Joomla 3.9, feel free to ask us in the comment section.

Thank you for reading and have a wonderful day.