Security

One of the most exciting new features in the upcoming Joomla 3.2 is two factor authentication, when enabled this feature, beside the username you will be required to enter your password + a time based secret key (this key is changed every 30 seconds), that is the reason why it is called “two factor”. This feature enhances your website’s security because a single password is considered not security enough nowadays.

Alongside Solidres 4.5.0 come 36 releases of add-ons, modules and the Lumina template. Hub partners get the new reports for their own properties, two new plugins arrive (Reports and Conversion tracking), the Channel Manager drops MyAllocator and takes in the Inventory grid, and Stripe works on Joomla 6. Above all, every Solidres add-on now updates through Joomla’s own updater.

Alongside Solidres 4.4.0, eleven add-ons and the Lumina template have new releases. Three more add-ons now install as Joomla packages, the Hub and the invoices take up the new tourist tax, iCal sync stops losing imported dates when a download fails, the Experience booking form is rewritten, and Lumina now works in right-to-left languages.

According to Joomla official website, Joomla 2.5 will reach its end of life on Dec 31, 2014, that means all Joomla 2.5 websites will not receive any updates including security updates. If your website still runs Joomla 2.5, make sure that you upgrade it as soon as possible. If you are planning to start a new Joomla site, make sure that you choose Joomla 3 to avoid unnecessary upgrade later.

You should be careful when choosing a 3rd extensions to install into your Joomla site, avoid all Joomla 2.5 compatible only extensions: there is no point to choose them, we’ve seen a lot of users who stuck with Joomla 2.5 because of some 3rd extension developers do not upgrade their extensions for Joomla 3.

Below is a nice tutorial which cover the process of upgrading from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3:

https://www.ostraining.com/blog/joomla/how-to-upgrade-from-joomla-2-5-to-joomla-3/

Solidres 4.3.0 is out. It is a polish and hardening release: cleaner URLs, better headings and accessibility, a smoother booking flow and two security fixes. The Hub, Experience and Feedback add-ons also now ship as packages. Every fix is in Solidres itself, so every site benefits, whichever template it runs.

Solidres 4.4.0 is out, and its headline is tourist tax. Until now a property had one tourist tax setting: an adult rate, a child rate and a night cap. That fitted some towns and not many others. It could not hold two levies, every new rate had to be typed in on the day it started, and two of its charge types did not compute what they promised.

In 4.4.0 tourist tax is a feature of its own, built into Solidres itself. The release also brings a set of booking and payment fixes, two security fixes, and pages that print properly from a device in dark mode.

Solidres 4.5.0 is out, and its headline is a Reports screen. Occupancy, ADR, RevPAR and revenue are worked out night by night, so a stay that runs across the end of a month counts in both months, as an accountant or a revenue manager would count it. Every figure can be charted, compared with the period before and exported to CSV.

It also puts online booking on the website a property already has: Solidres can now run as a booking site beside that website, and the booking form that sends guests to it is free.

The release also gives Solidres a place in Joomla’s own administrator menu and a dashboard that opens on today’s arrivals and departures, moves every Solidres update to Joomla’s updater, and makes Solidres pages follow your template’s light or dark mode. It fixes a security issue with bookings made without an account, so we recommend updating. And it starts a clear-out: Complex Tariff and Statistics leave in 4.6.0, and support for Falang is on its way out.

Speedy Translate 3.0 is out, and it is the biggest release since the first one. It now comes in two editions: Speedy Translate Lite, free, which translates a whole Joomla 6 site and adds nothing to your pages, and Speedy Translate Pro, for large sites and agencies. It is also fast. On every page we measured, it served translated pages faster than Falang, up to 5.8 times as fast.

Behind that sits a rebuilt translation engine, hreflang tags and translated URLs, a setup check that makes a site multilingual from the dashboard, and a one-click import from Falang. Pro adds bulk translation with ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini that runs in the background. The release also closes several security issues, so every site on Speedy Translate 2 should update.