Alphard Premium Changelog

Added

Phone header and menus

• A phone header (js/cs-mobile.js, wired from index.php): the logo with a menu button beside it, and below it a row of square buttons for the second menu, Login, Register, Search and the social links. Each button opens its own panel; tapping outside a panel closes it, and the logo row stays clear while a panel is open. The previous download had no phone header at all, only a selectnav drop-down list built by a jQuery plug-in.
• The menu button opens a full-width drawer with the main menu; items with sub-menus get a + button that expands them in place.
• The second menu button opens the site’s sidebar Main Menu (Home, Site Map, Login, Sample Sites, Example Pages, with their sub-levels) instead of a second copy of the top menu. It reads a new hidden module position, cs-secondary, declared in templateDetails.xml; any menu module assigned to that position appears there.
• The phone buttons are 44 × 44 px in the template’s blue (#1f77ae) with white icons, and the menu button uses the same blue so the header reads as one set. The menu button is centred on the logo.
• The login page’s username and password fields use 16 px text on phones, so iPhones no longer zoom into the page when they are tapped.

Template Options screen

• 71 colour settings now use a colour picker (Coloris: fields/colorpicker.php, js/coloris.min.js, css/coloris.min.css). They were plain text boxes where a hex value had to be typed by hand.
• 32 on/off settings converted to Joomla’s native switchers (layout="joomla.form.field.radio.switcher"), replacing the legacy class="switch" type="checkbox" fields that no longer render as switches on Joomla 4+.
• New Favicon tab (fields/favicontool.php): choose an image, crop a square from it in the browser, and the template builds the favicon set from it (a 16/32/48 px .ico, a 32 px PNG and a 180 px Apple touch icon) and prints the matching tags in the page head. With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
• A hidden admin field (fields/adminui.php) that styles the Options screen’s help banners, loaded only on that screen.
• The Options screen’s icons load again: templateDetails.xml pointed at Font Awesome 4.6.3 on MaxCDN, which no longer serves it. It now uses Font Awesome 6.5.2 from cdnjs with the v4 shims.

Social links

• Eight new social services in the Community settings: Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, TikTok, Pinterest, Discord, Instagram and YouTube.
• The Twitter link now shows the X logo (fa-x-twitter).
• All 13 social links open with rel="noopener".

Joomla 6 compatibility files

• js/cs-jq-compat.js restores the two jQuery 1.x functions the built-in slideshow (camera.js) still calls, which Joomla 6’s jQuery 3.7 no longer has. Without it the slideshow controls stop working.
• js/menu-vanilla.js: the desktop drop-down menus in plain JavaScript, with the original 500 ms hover-out delay (replaces superfish.js + supersubs.js).
• html/layouts/chromes/vmdefaultlogin.php: the module style the login pop-up asks for (style="vmdefaultlogin"). It was never defined, so on Joomla 4+ the login module inside the pop-up rendered without its wrapper.

Changed

Joomla 3 → Joomla 6 API

• All 48 Joomla 3 class calls in 6 files moved to the namespaced API: JText (26) → Text, JRoute (7) → Route, JModuleHelper (4) → ModuleHelper, JHtml (3) → HTMLHelper, JFactory (3) → Factory, JComponentHelper (2), JPluginHelper, JDocumentHTML, and JError::raiseWarning() → new \Exception(…, 404). These aliases only existed while the Behaviour - Backward Compatibility plugin was on, and Joomla 6 has none of them. The last jimport() call is gone too.
• Module positions meant to sit side by side now do: index.php asked countModules('header-left && header-right') and countModules('footer-left && footer-right') (3 calls). Joomla 4+ reads that string as one position name, so the test always failed and the two footer columns stacked. Each position is now counted on its own.
• html/mod_menu/default.php: JModuleHelper → ModuleHelper, and the selectnav() call removed with the library.
• html/mod_search/default.php and html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php: the module class suffix is read from the module’s own parameters. Joomla 4+ no longer passes $moduleclass_sfx to overrides, so PHP 8 logged an undefined-variable warning on every page.
• The Joomla 3 chrome functions in html/modules.php are gone; Joomla 4+ reads module chromes only from html/layouts/chromes/, where vmdefault.php and slides.php already were and vmdefaultlogin.php is now added.

Bootstrap 5

• The template now loads Joomla’s bundled Bootstrap 5 (media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css) plus css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css (revision 2026-10-24.163), which maps the template’s Bootstrap 2 grid, buttons, forms, navigation and modal classes onto Bootstrap 5 and carries the template-specific rules listed in this row. The local Bootstrap 2 copy is no longer loaded.
• Login pop-up rebuilt as a Bootstrap 5 modal (data-bs-toggle / data-bs-target / data-bs-dismiss, .modal-dialog-centered > .modal-content, a real close button). The old markup used Bootstrap 2’s data-toggle="modal" and a jQuery .hide() handler. It opens centred and closes on the ×, Escape or a click outside it.
• component.php (print views and pop-ups) loads Bootstrap 5 and the bridge instead of the Bootstrap 2 and IE stylesheets.

Fonts, icons and scripts

• Font Awesome 4.6.3 (MaxCDN) → 6.5.2 (cdnjs) with the v4 shims, so the template’s existing fa fa-* icons keep working.
• Google Fonts load directly from a stylesheet link with preconnect hints, instead of the WebFontConfig / webfont.js loader script; text no longer waits for a second script before it can use the web font.
• The page background image is drawn with CSS background-size: cover instead of the jquery.backstretch plug-in.
• jQuery is still loaded, by Joomla (Jquery::framework()), because the built-in slideshow is still camera.js. Everything else the template ran on jQuery plug-ins now runs without them.

Defaults for a fresh install

• A standalone install now links the logo / site name to the home page and starts with the built-in slideshow on and advancing, on desktop and phone (logoLinked, cam_turnOn, cam_autoAdvance, cam_mobileAutoAdvance default to 1 in templateDetails.xml; they were 0).

Accessibility and layout

• Text contrast raised to at least 4.5:1 where the template’s colours fell short: the “Support Department Call:” line (grey #8d8d8d on #333) and the footer copyright line (grey #878787 on #efefef).
• Every field of the login and registration forms is the same height, drop-downs included, and the Remember Me box lines up with its label.
• On phones, headings, the breadcrumb and the footer titles start at the same 20 px inset as the page text (two paddings had stacked).
• Desktop drop-down menus are wide enough for their labels, so items no longer wrap onto two lines.

Fixed

• Every 404 was served as a 500 on Joomla 6, and on Joomla 5 whenever the Backward Compatibility plugin was off. error.php called JError and JText (11 calls); when the error page itself fails, Joomla cannot show any error page. It now uses the Joomla 4+ API.
• The error page is the template’s own and readable on phones. It had no viewport tag and css/presets/style-error.css fixed the page at 960 px, so on a phone the message ran 229 px past the screen edge. It now has a viewport tag, fits the screen with a 20 px margin, and shows the message first.
• Login and registration fields at their full width. The template’s contact-form rule input.required{width:60%} also caught Joomla 5/6’s login and registration fields, so the username was 480 px beside an 800 px password field. Joomla’s user forms now fill their column; the contact form keeps its 60 %.
• Pagination arrows: Joomla 4+ prints icon-angle-left / -right / -double-left / -double-right on the Prev / Next / First / Last buttons, and the template had no glyph for any of them. They are now mapped to Font Awesome.
• Featured articles in one column are guarded against Joomla 6’s featured-view grid, which clips a tall single-column intro article to its title. With thanks to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to this maintenance pass across our templates.
• index.php no longer requests css/template-rtl.css on right-to-left sites (the file never shipped, so it was a 404), and component.php no longer requests css/ie8.css, which did not exist.

Removed

Bootstrap 2 and IE files (14)

• css/bootstrap.css and the whole css/bootstrap/ folder (7 files: bootstrap.css, bootstrap.min.css, bootstrap-extended.css, bootstrap-responsive.css, bootstrap-responsive.min.css, bootstrap-rtl.css, bootstrap-tooltip-extended.css).
• css/ie.css, css/ie6.css, css/ie9-10.css, css/reset.css, css/responsive.css, css/slideshow.css, and the IE conditional comments in index.php and component.php that loaded them.

jQuery 1.x plug-ins (23 files)

• jQuery 1.8.1 (js/jquery-1.8.1.min.js, jquery.noConflict.js), Bootstrap 2’s bootstrap.min.js, superfish.js, supersubs.js, selectnav.min.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js (it throws under jQuery 3.7), jquery.backstretch.min.js, dropkick.js and jquery.dropkick-1.0.0.js, jquery.selectric.js, jquery.nicescroll.min.js, jquery.equalHeights.js, jquery.plusanchor.js, jquery.elevateZoom-3.0.8.min.js, owl.carousel.min.js, scrollReveal.min.js, easypaginate.js, imgSizer.js, flexibility.js, modernizr.js, selectivizr-min.js and jquery-eu-cookie-law-popup.js.
• The calls to them in index.php and html/mod_menu/default.php (superfish/supersubs, selectnav, backstretch and the jQuery.browser IE check), which would throw on Joomla 6’s jQuery and stop the rest of each script block.

Other

• The old colour-changer (utils/admin-js.js and utils/js_colourchanger/, 5 files); it is replaced by the colour pickers above and threw jQuery is not defined on the Options screen.
• html/modules.php (the Joomla 3 chrome functions, now layout files).
• Retired social services: Google+, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg and Blogger.

Security

• Template settings are escaped or validated before they reach the page. index.php printed 125 settings raw; 2 remain, the two Custom Code fields whose job is to add raw HTML. The rest go through small helpers defined at the top of index.php: phCssToken() (108 uses: colours and other values inside inline CSS), phEsc() (36: text and attributes), phJsStr() (13: values inside inline scripts), phRichText() (4), phCssUrl() (3: background images), phCssDim(), phCssNum() and phCssFont() (2 each) and phHexColor(). A setting like red;}body{background:url(//x) can no longer rewrite the page’s styles.
• Module titles printed by index.php (the login pop-up’s heading among them) are escaped, and html/mod_menu/default.php escapes the menu’s tag_id.
• Error pages no longer show server details. A missing page now shows the normal error page instead of the server’s file paths and a technical trace, and a missing article or contact answers with the proper 404 page.
• component.php defines the same phEsc() helper, so print and pop-up views escape their output too.

Quickstart

The quickstart is a complete Joomla 6.2.0 site with Alphard Premium installed and configured as on the demo.

• Bundled extensions: Akeeba Backup Core 10.5.0, StageIt 6.6.2, Web Links 5.2.0, MCP for Joomla 2.11.0, and the en-GB language pack 6.2.0.1.
• The phone second menu is set up: a “Phone Second Menu (Main Menu)” module in the cs-secondary position.
• Smart Search is indexed (155 items), so the search box returns results on a new site.
• Two demo articles (“Professionals” and “Upgraders”) no longer point at intro images that were never shipped.
• Page-view counters start at zero, the post-install messages are reduced to Joomla’s five core ones, and the unused legacy bluestork admin template is gone.

Package

• Standalone template: pkg_alphard-6.2.0.zip, a Joomla package that installs tpl_alphard and registers it under pkg_alphard; <blockChildUninstall> means the template is removed by uninstalling the package. method="upgrade" lets an existing site update in place.
• Quickstart: the full Joomla 6.2.0 site described above.
• The template version follows the Joomla release it is built on: 6.2.0.