Accredited Design LLC are experts in the development of Joomla! CMS websites, as well as other CMS's and site frameworks. In our work we pay close attention to developments in technology and upcoming features and systems. This being said, Joomla! version 4 is rumored to be in production. Let's have a look at what it will likely be.
The main details about Joomla 4
The current version of Joomla at the time of this article is 3.7. Joomla 3.8 and 3.9 will be released before Joomla 4 is made available.
Joomla 3.9 will be released mainly as a means to allow easy migration to Joomla 4. Here's the official statement concerning this:
In preparation for Joomla! 4.0, Joomla! 3.9 will primarily be a release containing backports of API changes from the 4.0 development branch to help ease the transition to the next major release for the community. It is planned for 3.9 and 4.0 to release simultaneously.
The release dates for Joomla 3.9 and 4.0 have not yet been decided. From chatter on the internet, It would seem that the first alpha of Joomla 4.0 could be released within the next few weeks.
Click here to view the Joomla 4 project roadmap.
What changes will be in Joomla 4?
If you're a developer you will see some differences from the previous installments of Joomla, but to the average user the only changes you'll notice are in the user interface of the administration area.
Joomla 4 will utilize the Bootstrap 4 framework and Joomla 3 is currently using Bootstrap 2.
Will it be difficult to upgrade my site from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4?
Probably not, but we can't know what exactly lies ahead on this concern until Joomla 4 has been released and we're making our first migration attempts. What is for sure is that the Joomla team is making every effort to ensure that the upgrade to Joomla 4 from Joomla 3 is as smooth as reasonably possible.
Conclusion
Joomla 4 will not be available for a some time yet. There are no alpha versions of Joomla 4 available to the public just yet, and Bootstrap 4 is itself still in early alpha stage.
Joomla 4 will be loaded with great new features and new technology to carry us further into the future of the ever-evolving internet. We look forward to making powerful use of the new Joomla 4 when it is available.
For those of us running Joomla 3 websites, it's a safe bet that we have at least a year of breathing room before we'll need to upgrade to Joomla 4. Bear in mind that at some point in the future, Joomla 3 will be considered obsolete and will become unsupported by the Joomla team concerning updates. The lack of updates means that the framework will eventually become vulnerable to security threats as security holes are discovered by the hacker community. This is currently the situation with Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5, as mentioned in other articles here at AccreditedDesign.com. When Joomla 4 is released and you need expert assistance migrating / upgrading your Joomla website to Joomla 4, contact us for help. We'd be glad to hear from you! It should also be mentioned that if you are actually still running Joomla 1.5 or Joomla 2.5 there's a decent chance that your site is/was already compromised as it's been some time since they've been unsupported. Again, contact us asap so we can get your site upgraded to the latest Joomla version and look for security threats in your current site.