The outstanding enhancements in Joomla 4 admin template

Thanks for the hard work of Joomla Team, users can try out the latest version of Joomla, Joomla 4. Comparing with the old Joomla 3, it’s undeniable that Joomla 4 has incredible improvements in both features and interfaces. You can read more about the difference between Joomla 3 and Joomla 4 in our previous post.

Joomla 4 admin template has significantly changed in the interface, which is more user-friendly. Thus, it brings a premium look to your control panel.

Now, let’s see the differences between them.

The design in Joomla 4 admin template

The new Joomla pattern

This new pattern is introduced by Chiara Aliotta on 30 November 2017. As you can see in this introduction, the design focuses on 5 values: evolution, network, development, open-source, and unicity. It means this pattern optimizes the capacity of creating a business website and the online network.

The Login Page and the background of Joomla 4 admin template are applied to this new pattern.

The Login Page

This image below is the new look of the login page. After integrating with the new pattern, the login page becomes more elegant than the old one, and users can set the logo and site name for their website. If you don’t want to change the logo, it still has the white banner above the login form.When you look at the old login form in Joomla 3, we can see that Joomla 4’s login form has a more appealing look than the Joomla 3 one.You can change the site name by adjusting the setting in the Global Configuration.So your new website name will be changed and presented in the white banner.

The Background of Joomla 4 Administration template

In Joomla 4, you can modify the background of the backend admin by adding a specific image in the Joomla template manager. Meanwhile, the default backend in Joomla 3 is a cool blue background and cannot be changed.

The Style

Typography

The new base font, Roboto, is used in Joomla 4 admin template, because this font offers enough readability factors, which are Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black weight Style.

Colors

The text color has changed in both foreground and background to ensure the contrast ratio between them to be at least 4:5:1, or even higher, according to the WCAG 2.0 guidelines.

To be more specific, the side bar’s color is changed into Dark Blue, replacing Cool Blue. Plus, Light Gray is used for the whole user interface instead of the Pale Blue background in Joomla 3. The combination makes the backend less glacial, while Light Grey the text more outstanding.Joomla 4 backend template user interface and features

Control Panel

Control Panel can be called in another name “Admin Dashboard” which is included many default Joomla functions and features.

With the change of color and layout, the Joomla 4’s interface has a more appealing look than Joomla 3’s one. The two pictures below will paint a compelling view of the outstanding change in Joomla 4’s Control Panel.

Admin menu management

The admin menu is switched into the vertical side with the collapsible option. There is an icon beside each menu task, so viewers can navigate easily between tasks in the menu bar.Besides, at the top right corner, there are 4 icons representing 4 options: preview, private messages, notifications, and user menu. It’s apparent that the change in two main menus brings a better experience for the user.

Comparing with Joomla 3 backend, we can see that the main menu bar is horizontal, which is inconvenient when extending the menu. The top right menu is lack of necessary options such as notifications or messages, unlike Joomla 4. The expanded menu is on the Control Panel Page only.

Content Management

The article editing screen comes with a clean look and adds a “CMS content” option, which includes all other features about editing content. When comparing to the editing screen in Joomla 3, it can be sure that the new interface brings a greater experience. The toolbar becomes more concise and cleaner when displays functional options only.Moreover, now the articles can be managed with a new feature in Joomla 4: Publishing Workflow. Therefore, users can control the status of the articles by the workflow. Follow the post to read more detailed information about the workflow feature.

Media

Joomla 4 has upgraded features in the Media Manager. Comparing to Joomla 3, the new Media Manager adds more additional features to help users manage media files such as:

- Edit, crop, rotate, resize

For example, in the crop option, user can customize the photo not only in both X and Y Axis but also rectify width and height.- See the image properties.

Module

In Joomla 4, the extension menu is removed, so the Module menu moves into the “Content” option and changes its name to “Site Modules". Also, you can change the status of the module by clicking on the check icon. In Joomla 3, the module option is under the Extension menu.

Component

The component page consists of all default Joomla components, such as Banner, Contacts, Search, etc. There is not much change in the Components menu between Joomla 3 and Joomla 4, but the design is totally changed.

User

The User manager in Joomla 4 admin template has a similar structure to Joomla 3. You can create and manage your users, users notes, user custom fields, and add messages as usual.

However, it comes with a fresh interface and user can access User Groups and Levels throughout System Setting.

Help

The help page provides the user with a favorable condition to discover more information about Joomla, as well as to ask for help when they meet troubles. Here, the interface of the help page is upgraded remarkably. The layout becomes more concise and easy-to-breathe.

System settings

This system setting page is the Joomla administrative interface where contains all the configuration options for setup, install, templates, access levels, cache, update and manage. On this page, you can look up and change all the information quickly and seamlessly. Each system setting is grouped by their tasks.In Joomla 3, there is no page to set up data like Joomla 4. It only has a System menu and an item menu System Information includes all detailed information about the website.

Experience Demo Joomla 4 website

Check it out. We just publish a new demo website about Joomla 4.

This website has full new features of Joomla 4. Therefore, you can come to visit and try out our website to have the most realistic experiences about Joomla 4. You can clearly see the differences in the admin template between Joomla 3 and Joomla 4. And let's be a tester to verify what we mentioned above true or not.

Or if you want to test Joomla 4 freshly, you can install Joomla 4 through the localhost.

View Joomla 4 demo

To sum up,

The interface of Joomla 4 admin template has created a strong impression on Joomla users, especially in its elegant design and friendly backend user template. However, Joomla 4 has released the alpha versions for users to try out and experiment with. In the long run, there will still be a lot of great improvements until the stable version.

We will continue updating new information about Joomla 4. Make sure to stay in touch with us so you won’t miss anything.