It's been promised, it's been hyped, and it's been awaited by legions of Joomla! enthusiasts the world over. Joomla! 1.5 has finally landed and Efiplus, foreseeing a tidal wave of upgrade requests from our faithful customers, decided to schedule a close encounter of the third kind to see what the fuss is all about. To bring you the verdict, here's your humble template sculptor, tamer of the browser bugs and glitches and the narrator of this highly subjective review.

To be honest with you, I didn't expect much. At least not in that little garden that I like to get my hands dirty in - the template. I knew the whole code of the CMS has been rewritten and optimized, and that the admin panel experience will be very much enhanced. But this all doesn't necessarily mean serious changes in the front-end. And the first impression was just that. I took a peek into the default template - the same file structure, the same filenames, the same friendly faces I know so well. There were some new bits but hey, those default templates are always so bloated with extra junk for all possible occassions, even those you'll never experience in your entire life. Or so I thought, scanning it quickly with the arrogant confidence that I could be writing Joomla templates in my sleep, so what could possibly 1.5 surprise me with?

Started opening the files, templateDetails.xml turned out to be a lot more lengthy but I decided to worry about it later. Index.php - the same old story, the module positions looked different but the principle remained exactly the same. Now they even look a bit more friendly, a bit more human. I might even learn them by heart instead of copy-pasting them from previous projects. I finally came across the first change that wasn't formal or cosmetic but brought some actual functional advantage - the footer and the breadcrumb are now modules. At least now one doesn't even have to know where the template files are to switch them on and off. I find it a bit sneaky to have the banner module published by default in the same position as the footer, submitting the user to the temptation of the goodies from the Joomla! store until he figures out how to unpublish it. But I think it can be forgiven, after all Joomla! is free for everyone to enjoy.

By that time I decided that the best way to tame the beast is to build a 1.5-compatible template of my own. I was very pleasantly surprised that finally all menus are based on lists by default, as God and W3C intended. And not only that, now the submenus are also lists, nicely embedded in the main ones, just asking to add those fancy drop-downs and fly-outs that the customers enjoy so much. It's a huge improvement over the 1.0.x versions. Back then flat list menus couldn't even have subitems, and all menus by default were based on tables. The only remedy was the mod_exmenu that saved me many times from having to use those heavy javascript-based SEO-killing menu components. Mod_exmenu, rest in peace my friend. You will be remembered.

Speaking of SEO... I must express my disappointment that some basic improvements, that could have easily been implemented, were neglected. Is that really so hard to insert H2 tags inside the contentheading elements? I know it's not, I can go and hack one file to make it happen. And then go there and hack it again each time a new version of Joomla! is released. It seems that certain SEO-enhancing patches will still come in very much handy.

Generally speaking, it is now much easier to build a template that will look great on a vanilla Joomla! installation, without having to lift a finger in the admin panel. It has a lot to do with choosing the default parameters wisely. As I already mentioned, all menus are flat lists by default. Not only that, from now on all menus in position 'left' have by defalt a module suffix, therefore the person creating the template can assign different styles to menus and to other modules and not worry about explaining to the buyer how to add suffixes for the template to display as intended.

Also, a minor shuffling in the contents area might bring a great shift in how the site's owner may decide to organize the layout of the articles. One of the headaches until now has been to organize the content articles displaying in more than one column. The columns had either no space between them or the spacing was mismatching the one of the 1-column articles above them, that's why most people would decide to go with a safe and dull one column aproach. Now it's solved with one additional class added where it was very much needed - to all columns except for the first one. Add a different padding, add borders between columns, it's all a breeze.

But yet again I am a bit disappointed. Between the article heading and the article intro, there are all those bits like the author, date and category. Each is tightly locked in a table cell that, with the exception of the date, doesn't have any class. Sure, the author has a span around it with a class, but that class does appear elsewhere throughout the Joomla front-end, so you need to be cautious not to go overboard with styling and mess up other sections of the site. You know what would make my bliss? All these wrapped in one single TD and each in a DIV with a unique class. Then I could decide exactly what spacing to apply, to put them vertically or horizontally, or even if to put little cute icons next to each value. "But you have these here already, so what's the deal?" you might ask. Well again, I had to hack. And one last detail - I would love to have the search module button enabled by default. Everybody goes to the back-end and turns it on anyway. If it's on by default, it at least forces the template's designer to think how to lay it out. But this way it will still be neglected most of the time.

And now going back to the lengthy templateDetails.xml. In the previous Joomla series this file was idle most of the time, it was only useful when installing the template in the template manager... or should I say it was messing it when installing the template in the template manager. If you forgot to include a file name or commited a typo, you had to repeat the process using FTP anyway. Oh, and of course to hold the precious author data and template's license. Remember that for example in WordPress, the same function is handled by something as simple and primary as a properly formatted comment in the stylesheet. But now you can finally make some practical use of this file.

You rarely need more than the default 26 module positions Joomla provides. But you might need ones that for example have more meaningful names for your particular project. Recently I came across a 1.0.x-compatible template with positions such as 'mainmenu', 'topmenu' etc. The problem was that after installing it, you had to actually create those module positions in the back-end. In Joomla 1.5 creating additional custom module positions is as easy as adding their names to the templateDetails file between <position></position> tags. They become automatically available in the back-end and you can start assigning modules to them, provided that proper module calls with their names are inserted in the template itself.

And last, but definitely not least, the revelation of the 1.5 templating system - the parameters. Imagine giving the template's buyer the opportunity to decide between multiple colour schemes, template widths, side column positions, etc. Imagine that the buyer has no idea about mark-up and scripting but now can make such choices in the admin panel by simply selecting self-explanatory values from drop-down lists. Not only that, those values can be selected in any available combination, for example a green background in a 1000px-wide template with the side column on the right, or a black background in a flexible template with the side column on the left, etc. Of course as long as the template's designer provides him with those choices. It's all simple yet tightly-controlled, no space for error or mess. And all with the parameters and their options properly listed in templateDetails.xml, a small params.ini file and a few additional small stylesheets.

In conclusion, Joomla! 1.5 was evidently redesigned with one purpose in mind - making it as simple as possible for someone without programming knowledge to manage the site. With a well-designed template and the already mentioned wisely chosen default settings, the site's admin won't even have to ever touch the module parameters. The global configuration has been stripped from most of its options, which actually worries me a bit as it might be good for the newbies but might also make a developer feel a bit suffocated. But the developer will always find his way and the non-programmer admin will surely apreciate all the unquestionable effort to make the whole admin panel experience as user-friendly as possible. And as for me, your template sculptor and this review's humble narrator, I think you've already figured out the Joomla developers made my day 95% of the time.