Below you’ll find a list of the most significant features of Joomla 2.5 release. Some of these will melt web developers’ hearts because there is nothing more charming than finding out that Joomla has released the support for other types of databases or some useful core improvements. Anyway, one thing that is 100% clear concerning this release is that everybody will receive some “sweet” new features for sure.

Core Features

Databases Support

Finally! Yes, you’ve read it right – from now on Joomla supports not only MySQL database but also MS SQL, PostgreSQL. Joomla drivers have been rewritten so they could work with different versions of databases. As it has been said before now Joomla drivers support MS SQL, PostgreSQL databases. Also Oracle, SQLite and PDO drivers are in its final stage and almost ready for release. We assume that they’ll be added in the next release of Joomla version which is planned for Sept 2012.

Also there is a small but interesting feature concerning databases. Now you can use new shiny button “fix database version”. This option will help you update your database during the upgrade process. This is very important for those who update Joomla releases by uploading release files via FTP. You may know that FTP doesn’t apply any changes to databases so you have to do it manually and this little button will help you to do that.

More Advanced Search

According to Joomla developers, new Joomla search is based on Finder, an algorithm that was developed by jXtended. Finder makes pre-search through your content, adds auto-completion and stemming into your search. Search results are provided by analyzing the content and frequency of search terms. New Joomla search suggests alternative words or phrases (similar to Google search). This new search is much faster and allows installing special adapters that enhance search by supporting standard Joomla content and various types of documents.

CAPTCHA power!

Joomla 2.5 is armed with CAPTCHA plugin that has been built into the core. It means that all your website forms are protected with CAPTCHA. Basically this feature is mostly used for registration of the new users but you can enable it for other extensions that need it. Usually CAPTCHA has been available in non-core extensions, but this time this feature is enabled in core.

Additional New Features for Admins

• Images and Links menu – this is a feature that would be useful for content creators and web site admins because it allows you to set up simple standardized layout for blogs, news reports, etc. This feature will help you to customize the back end article editor to limit content creator and content editor options.
• Custom Text Filters – the filtering system has been improved and you can create your own blacklists (which are much easier to manage due to the fact that they contain only the forbidden tags and attributes). Also you can choose your own options for filtering process.
• New Menus are linked with a Modules – considering some peculiarities that Joomla users have faced in version 1.7 and 1.6 where menus did not automatically create a module, developers decided to make a very important improvement. In Joomla 2.5 there is a link that creates a new module in case if your menu doesn’t have any.
• Manager for Language Overrides – you are able to make text changes in a label, tooltip or email notifications by using new language manager. Now you may not disturb your developers with some small tasks like “Please change the Company’s name in the email that goes out with the standard password recovery email”.
• Flexible Newsfeed Order – now you can choose the order of the feed items. There are two options available that you can choose to display either the most recent first or the oldest first.
• SEO: languagecode is another great feature for SEO experts using Joomla. It shows the search engine “spiders” the language and country code they expect even if the Joomla language pack has a different one.

We’ve tried to highlight mostly new and interesting features and improvements but this is just a top of the iceberg. So once Joomla 2.5 is out we suggest you to update your Joomla CMS and check out by yourself all those goodies that are waiting for you inside 2.5 release. We hope that our post inflames your interest to this update. And you know what else? We’ve tested our Joomla 1.7 templates with the beta release of Joomla 2.5 and we assure you that all our Joomla 1.7 templates are 100% compatible with Joomla 2.5 version which means that you can enjoy the beauty of our designs spiced up with awesome functionality of Joomla 2.5.

The e-Commerce widget includes 7 feature-rich components: Category Menu, Products List, Banner Rotator, Shopping Cart, Shopping Cart List, Product Details and Add to Cart Button. We have a couple of words on each of them.

Category Menu

This component is a basic one in the e-Commerce widget because it allows to create shop categories and to complete them with products. It will be connected with other components within the e-Commerce Connection ID, so be attentive while arranging the ‘Category Menu’.

Products List

A well done products list will always grab visitors attention. This component perfectly displays all products you’ve created into the ‘Category Menu’. All you need to do is to find the right place for the ‘Products List’ element and adjust its settings at your liking.

Banner Rotator

A website section like this is presented almost on every online store’s home page. It showcases featured products of the shop and is always a powerful advertising tool. And now this tool is also presented in MotoCMS e-Commerce widget.

Shopping Cart

The ‘Shopping Cart’ element shows how many items the customer chose to buy. It’s always connected with the ‘Shopping Cart List’ which clearly displays detailed information about every chosen item. To achieve the best results you should place the ‘Shopping Cart’ component within the entire website.

Shopping Cart List

The ‘Shopping Cart List’ component allows to review the list of purchases once again before a checkout. It gives a short information about every item and allows to edit the list. MotoCMS recommends to place it on a separate popup.

Product Details

The ‘Product Details’ component will open a new popup with a product description every time you click on its image.

This component is connected with the ‘Category Menu’ and ‘Products List’ that’s why all these elements should be placed together.

Add to Cart Button

And the ‘Add to Cart Button’ is the last component of the e-Commerce widget we want to present you right now. As any other element of the control panel it’s easy editable and all you need to do is to specify its product and button settings.

We (and MotoCMS) hope that you’ll be satisfied with this new e-Commerce widget for your Flash CMS websites. To find more info on the widget, plus some tips on its customization and installation please feel free to check out the eCommerce widget post on official MotoCMS blog. We wish you the best of luck in your initiatives and we’ll be glad to get your feedback about this innovative online store solution from MotoCMS.

Yes, we break that price down for you! But a special deal like this just cannot last for long. Expert designer’s bundle is now on sale until January 2nd, 2012. The next day after this date it will no longer be available – so be sure to act quickly and get your bundle today!

The bundle itself comes packed with a gazillion of your favorite design goodies including vectors, web elements, Photoshop patterns, gradients, and layer styles, hi-res textures, stock photos, 3D clipart and iconsets.

• You get ultimate designer toolkit (reg. $99):
  • 27,000 Photoshop gradients;
  • 18,000 Photoshop layer styles;
  • 815 Photoshop patterns;
  • high-quality vectors;
  • hi-res textures;
  • icons and tutorials;
• ProClipart.com 1 year membership (reg. $19):
  • 1600 3D clip art items;
  • 2200 illustrations;
  • 380 iconsets;
• IconDenom.com 1 year membership (reg. $19):
  • any 500 items from the total amount of 5,300+ premium icons;
• 15 stock photos from DepositPhotos (reg. $30):
  • any hi-res 15 images from the huge collection of 4,000,000+ stock photos.

And all that you get for as low as $49 (regular price of all the resources included in the bundle is $167 although they’re really worth thousands of dollars). So there’re lots of reasons to go shopping! Those of you who love graphics and design would buy this bundle in a heartbeat. The elements it contains can be combined to awesome effect and they will actually save you tons of time and effort, especially when you get stuck just before the deadline searching for the right items to polish off your work. This bundle will help you out – save up to $118 when you buy it today!

To get the special price just add any TemplateMonster’s product to shopping cart and from there you’ll be able to add the bundle to your order and pay for it along with a template payment.

The closing date for participation in our Christmas lottery was December 26th, so entries posted after the corresponding date are now deemed invalid. We’ve just randomly picked the winners with a help of a nice little widget from Random.org.

So the lucky customer whose name is Mike Saad from Raleigh, North Carolina, will happily make away with a valuable gift – iPad2 (64Gb, WiFi only version, $699 value). We also offered you a chance to win one of five TemplateMonster gift certificates. Customers whose names are Kristen Gusler, Alexey Chesnok, Brennan Robinson, Spyros Iliopoulos, and Todd Chant will bring home the awesome gift certificates that will enable them to get any template from TemplateMonster for free. Other 10 lucky runner-ups we’ve randomly chosen will get sweet 50% discounts for any purchase at TemplateMonster.

All winners will be notified at registered emails based on the customer’s contact details indicated in their winning entry. Once the information of the ongoing promo results reached them, we’d appreciate if they share their impressions in the comments to this blog entry.

We hope you have been having fun with our Christmas promo, we certainly enjoyed making it. Next time join in and be part of the good things coming from TemplateMonster. Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New year!

Adobe Edge has been offered as a free beta public preview and is now available for download through the Adobe website. If you want to know more about this web animation software, please check out the Introduction to Adobe Edge – the post has a brief overview of Edge technology and offers a more in-depth look at its major features and functions. And don’t forget to check back often our templates collection as more Adobe Edge Templates will be added.

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Online Store Facebook Reveal Template

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Nova Business Template

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Model Agency Facebook Template

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Supreme Business Website Template

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