Joomla! 2.5, the long-term-support release of the open source content management system that is the successor to version 1.7, is now available. It will be supported for at least 18 months.
Whereas previous versions were only compatible with the MySQL database, Joomla! 2.5 has been extended to include support for Microsoft SQL Server. Commenting on this in the release announcement, Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organization, legal and financial support to the Joomla project said:
“No longer will Joomla developers be tied down to a particular database or have to spend more money and time integrating other software to get Joomla to communicate with their database. This enhances Joomla’s scalability immensely.”
Other key features in Joomla 2.5 includes:
Automatic notification when a Joomla or extension update is available. When logged into the control panel, site administrators will instantly have access to new notification buttons that allows them to see and act on the latest updates. In addition to updates for the Joomla CMS, a second button offers third party extension notification updates.
A better natural language search engine to the Joomla core. Complete with auto-completion and stemming (for example if you type “running” in a search field you also see run), it is faster and more versatile than the standard search.
The update also addresses two medium priority cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities and two low priority information disclosure holes.
A security update (Version 1.7.4) has also been released to deal with the same issue but, as Version 1.7 will reach end of life on 24 February 2012, users of version 1.7 are being advised to update to version 2.5.0 before then.
