Joomla 1.6 – Administrator’s Perspective–Part 1

 

Joomla! 1.6 is out on 10th January 2011. This is my first attempt to explore the new release. Chill out!

1. Installation

• Download the installer here - http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReleaseBrowse&frs_package_id=5696
• Extract the zip file to a folder in the webroot. In my case I’m using XAMPP, so the webroot folder is at htdocs.

• Nothing much different about the installation interface. The default database type is MySQLi, compared to MySQL in the 1.5 version.

• And the option to change the admin username. Previous version the default admin username is admin. Now you can opt to change it immediately. This is good feature for the beginner.

2. Default theme.

• WaH!!! A new default theme.

3. Administration panel.

• The Global Configuration – the Search Engine Friendly URLs feature is turned ON by default. That’s great!

• New icons for the administration panel.

• Not much new features in article editor. Very similar to the old version.
• Menu editor – this is a cool revamp. It eliminates the confusion that occur in the old version. Notice there’s no menu editor icon in the menu list.

• The menu type selector – this is better selector compared to the old one. Listing all the type in this view is way better than the previous hidden tree.

• Page menu link – notice the link is SEO Friendly URL as default. That’s awesome!

These are as far my review for the time being. As a conclusion, I’d like to pin-point that, from my humble opinion, Joomla! 1.6 is better in the sense of administrator user interface and SEO.

To be continued…