Sensory Changelog

Updated 7 November 2026 · in Changelog

• 7 November 2026

  Version 6.2.0

  First Joomla 6 native release. Sensory has been converted from Joomla 3 and rebuilt for Joomla 6.2.0 + PHP 8 + Bootstrap 5. The previous download is the Joomla 3 package (sensory_template_package.01.10.2022 3.10.11.zip, template version 3.0.1 from 2012), and everything below is measured against it. Every Joomla 3 class call is gone (236), the template options use Joomla’s own on/off switches and colour pickers, every template setting written into the page is escaped, desktop pages are 1170 px wide instead of a fixed 960 px, and there is a new phone layout with a slide-out menu and a row of fingertip-sized buttons. Joomla 6’s Bootstrap 5 replaces the template’s Bootstrap 2; the template’s own markup keeps its Bootstrap 2 classes and renders through a compatibility stylesheet. The Camera slideshow stays. Template files: 250 → 236, with 10 added, 24 removed and 31 modified. The template version is now 6.2.0, matching the Joomla version it ships with.

  Added

  Bootstrap 5 rendering through a compatibility stylesheet

  • index.php and component.php load Joomla 6’s bundled Bootstrap 5 (/media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css) in place of the template’s own Bootstrap 2 sheet (css/bootstrap.css).
  • New css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css (canonical revision 2026-10-24.163), linked last in the page head with a file-time version marker. It lets Sensory’s Bootstrap 2 markup render correctly on Bootstrap 5:
    • Bootstrap 2 grid: .row-fluid / .spanN widths and gutters, nested spans and phone stacking of every column; the Bootstrap 2 responsive utilities (hidden-phone, visible-desktop and the rest).
    • Joomla 4+ icon classes (pagination arrows, the password eye and others) mapped to Font Awesome 6 glyphs.
    • Two Sensory-specific blocks: sensory-std-20261103 (login fields, colour contrast, search box, phone header and inset rules) and sensory-rel-20261107 (the phone menu button fill and the phone sidebar menu, below).
  • New js/cs-jq-compat.js: restores the jQuery 1.x calls that Joomla 6’s jQuery 3.7 removed but the bundled Camera slideshow still uses. Joomla 6 does not load jQuery by itself, so index.php now asks Joomla for it (Jquery::framework()) before the page starts; without it the slideshow had no height and the page’s inline scripts stopped.
  • Font Awesome 6.5.2 (all.min.css + v4-shims.min.css from cdnjs) on the front end; the template had no icon font loader at all. The template’s existing fa fa-* class names keep working through the shims.

  New phone layout

  • Phones now get a phone layout. The old css/responsive.css fixed the page container at 960 px at every screen size, so a phone drew the desktop page and shrank it. That stylesheet is no longer loaded, and on phones the content stacks to the screen width.
  • New js/cs-mobile-generic.js. On phones (up to 767 px) a menu button in the header opens the main menu as a slide-out panel. The button is filled in the same sky blue as the row of buttons under the logo (rgb(0, 181, 248)) with black bars, so the header reads as one set.
  • A phone button row of 44×44 px buttons in that sky blue with black icons: Section menu, Log in, Register, Search and the social links. Each opens its own panel; tapping outside an open panel closes it.
  • Section menu opens the sidebar’s Main Menu (Home, Site Map, Login, Sample Sites, Example Pages). On phones the sidebar copy of that menu is hidden, so the page does not show the same links a second time further down. Desktop and tablet are unchanged.
  • Opening a phone panel dims the page below the button row only; the logo, menu button and button row stay clear.
  • On phones the slogan image sits under the logo, page headings start on the same edge as the page text, and blog and category page numbers wrap onto a second line instead of running off the screen.
  • Login fields use 16 px text on phones, so iPhones no longer zoom the page in when you tap them.

  Favicon

  • New Favicon tab in the template options (fieldset faviconsettings, fields favicon and favicontool, field class fields/favicontool.php). Pick one image, crop a square from it, and the template builds the icon set (a multi-size .ico and PNG icons from 32 to 512 px, including the 180 px Apple touch icon) and prints the matching tags in the page head (phFaviconSet(), phIcoBytes() in index.php). With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
  • 10 new language strings (TPL_SENSORY_FAVICON_*, TPL_SENSORY_FAVICONTOOL_*). language/en-GB/en-GB.tpl_sensory.ini goes from 66 to 76 strings.

  Template Options screen

  • 45 colour settings now use a colour picker (Coloris: fields/colorpicker.php, js/coloris.min.js, css/coloris.min.css). They were plain text boxes with the old jscolor colour changer.
  • New fields/adminui.php: help rows in the options run the full width of the form, and the template’s Details panel follows Joomla’s light or dark admin theme.
  • The icons in the template description load again: templateDetails.xml pointed at Font Awesome on MaxCDN, which no longer serves it; it now uses Font Awesome 6.5.2 from cdnjs.
  • Template options: 131 → 135 fields, 7 → 8 tabs.

  Modern social network support

  • Eight new social services, each with its own URL field and show/hide switch: Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, YouTube, TikTok, Pinterest and Discord.
  • The Twitter slot is now X (formerly Twitter) with the X logo (fa-x-twitter). The full set is X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Pinterest, Discord and RSS (13), drawn as white Font Awesome 6 glyphs in the template’s grey circles, each with a screen-reader label.

  Module style

  • New html/layouts/chromes/vmdefault.php: the module style the top, bottom and content rows ask for (style="vmdefault"). Joomla 4+ reads module styles only from html/layouts/chromes/ and ignores the Joomla 3 html/modules.php it used to live in.

  Changed

  Joomla 6 platform

  • Built for Joomla 6.2.0 (previous download: Joomla 3 only), with no need for Joomla’s Backward Compatibility plugin.
  • templateDetails.xml: version 3.0.1 → 6.2.0, creation date 29/11/2012 → 2026-11-07, and the version shown in the template description is 6.2.0 (2026-11-07). A stray second <version>01.10.2022 3.10.11</version> element left in the vendor manifest is gone. method="upgrade" is kept, so an existing install updates in place.

  Page width

  • Desktop pages are 1170 px wide on wide screens, like every current Energize Themes template; the template was a fixed 960 px page.

  J3 → J6 API migration

  • 236 Joomla 3 static class calls → 0. Each moved to its namespaced Joomla 4+ form (JText → Text, JRoute → Route, JHtml → HTMLHelper, JFactory → Factory, JModuleHelper → ModuleHelper and the rest).
  • Heaviest files: html/com_content/featured/default_item.php (37), html/com_content/category/blog_item.php (36), html/com_content/article/default.php (27), html/com_content/category/default_articles.php (27), html/com_content/archive/default_items.php (25), html/mod_login/default.php (20). In total 22 of the 24 PHP overrides changed.
  • The article overrides build their links with Joomla 4+’s RouteHelper instead of Joomla 3’s ContentHelperRoute, the menu overrides read item settings through getParams(), and the archive view no longer looks for its layout in Joomla 3’s views/ folder.
  • Joomla 3 JHtml behaviour calls: 6 → 1 (behavior.caption and the others Joomla 4 removed are gone).

  Template options (administrator)

  • 32 on/off settings that were legacy class="switch" type="checkbox" fields are now Joomla’s radio switcher (for example logoLinked, H1TitleImgText, H2TitleImgText, RSSON, cam_turnOn, cam_autoAdvance). The template has no legacy checkboxes left.

  Defaults for a fresh install

  • The slogan under the logo links to the home page, like the logo. It looks the same (colour inherited, no underline), and the home link is / on a site installed at the domain root, where it used to be an empty link to the current page.
  • The site name / logo links to the home page and the built-in slideshow is switched on, with autoplay on desktop and phones (logoLinked, cam_turnOn, cam_autoAdvance, cam_mobileAutoAdvance default to on in templateDetails.xml; as checkboxes they had no default, so a fresh install had them off). Existing sites keep their saved settings.

  Search

  • Joomla 5 removed the old Search component and module, so the template’s html/mod_search override is gone. The search position now takes Joomla’s Smart Search box, styled like the original grey search field with its magnifier image (images/search-button.png).

  Menus, scripts and fonts

  • The desktop drop-down menus are driven by CSS instead of the Superfish / Supersubs / hoverIntent scripts, and drop-downs size to their labels (12–27 em) so items no longer wrap onto two lines.
  • The slideshow loads jquery.easing.1.3.js and camera.min.js only; jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, which throws under Joomla 6’s jQuery, is no longer loaded.
  • component.php and error.php load their Google web font from a direct stylesheet link with preconnect hints instead of the WebFontConfig loader script (2 → 0).
  • The html5shiv script from Google Code, selectivizr-min.js, modernizr.js and imgSizer.js are no longer loaded.

  Print view

  • component.php (print views and pop-ups) has a viewport tag so it fits a phone, and loads Bootstrap 5, then the template’s stylesheets, then the compatibility stylesheet, so the template’s own colours and styles apply.

  Look

  • Text contrast raised where the template’s colours fell short: the featured articles’ “Read more” links (sky blue on white), the light grey text of a custom-text module on its dark grey background, and menu-module links in sky blue on light grey.
  • On the login page the show password eye sits inside the password field, the password field is the same width and height as the username field, and the “Remember me” box sits clear of its label.
  • Article “Read more” links read “Read more: title”, as on the Joomla 3 template.

  Fixed

  Pages that failed on Joomla 4+

  • Error pages: error.php used JError, JText and JFactory and a Joomla 1.5-era configuration call ($config->getValue('config.sitename')). On Joomla 4 and later the error page itself failed, so Joomla could not show any error page and every “page not found” became a 500. “Page not found” and “access denied” pages now show inside the template’s own page, with the site’s header, menus and phone navigation, a viewport tag and the compatibility stylesheet, and on phones the message comes first. Server errors (5xx) use Joomla’s plain system page.
  • Error pages and server details: an error caused by a missing item no longer prints the server’s file paths and a technical trace, and a missing article or contact answers with the proper 404 page.
  • Article pages on Joomla 6: the “Read more” label called Text::sprintf('COM_CONTENT_READ_MORE_TITLE') with no title, which stops the page on Joomla 6. The blog, featured and article overrides now use JGLOBAL_READ_MORE / JGLOBAL_READ_MORE_TITLE.

  Page layout

  • Module positions: index.php chose its rows and columns with Joomla 3 expressions such as countModules('top-1 or top-2 or top-3 or top-4 or top-5 or top-6') and countModules('position-0 or search') (22 of them). Joomla 4+ reads each as a single position name, so the test always failed: whole rows of modules, the search box and the side columns did not show. Each position is now checked on its own (22 → 0).

  Maintenance pass

  • The @font-face in css/template.css pointing at Joomla 3’s media/jui/fonts/ IcoMoon font, which Joomla 4 removed, is switched off.
  • Pagination arrows: Joomla 4+’s icon-angle-left / -right / -double-left / -double-right buttons had no glyph in the template’s icon CSS; they now show Font Awesome 6 arrows.
  • Featured articles: in a one-column featured (home) view, tall intro articles are no longer clipped to their title by Joomla 6’s featured-view grid.
  • The template version in templateDetails.xml and the version shown in its description now match the release.
  • With thanks to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to this maintenance pass across our templates.

  Removed

  Files removed (24)

  • Bootstrap 2: css/bootstrap.css and js/bootstrap.min.js. Joomla 6’s Bootstrap 5 and the compatibility stylesheet take their place.
  • Internet Explorer files: css/ie.css, css/ie6.css, css/ie8.css, js/selectivizr-min.js, js/modernizr.js, and the IE conditional comments in index.php that loaded them.
  • Old jQuery and MooTools scripts (js/ 13 → 6 files): superfish.js, supersubs.js, hoverIntent.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, imgSizer.js, and the MooTools scripts tipz.js and parallax.js, which nothing loaded.
  • The unused css/slideshow.css.
  • html/modules.php (Joomla 3 module chrome functions with MooTools; the style the template uses is now html/layouts/chromes/vmdefault.php) and the html/mod_search/ override (2 files) for the search module Joomla 5 removed.
  • utils/admin-js.js (a Joomla 3-era admin script for the old checkbox switches) and the old utils/js_colourchanger/ colour picker (jscolor.js and its four images).

  Retired settings (16 fields)

  • Five social slots removed with their switches: Google+, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Digg and Blogger.
  • The settings that went with the old drop-down menu script (dropheight, dropwidth, dropopacity, dropspeed, dropdownhandler1) and the old colour changer (colours_handlers).
  • The Print and Email icons in articles no longer show: Joomla 4 removed both features.

  Security

  • Output helpers added at the top of index.php, with 121 calls in that file. Every template setting written into the page is escaped or validated for where it lands:
    • phEsc() (29 calls): HTML text and attributes.
    • phRichText() (3): the site-name and slogan fields, which may contain simple markup. Joomla’s input filter keeps the markup but strips scripts, styles, iframes and on* event handlers.
    • phCssToken() (65), phCssNum() and phCssDim() (1 each): colours, sizes and other values written into the page’s CSS. A setting like red;}body{background:url(//x) can no longer rewrite the page’s styles.
    • phJsStr() and phJsLit() (11 each): values written into the slideshow’s inline JavaScript.
  • Raw echo $this->params->get(…) output in index.php: 114 → 2 occurrences. The two left are on purpose: Header Custom Code (headcode) and Footer Custom Code (footercode) still print exactly what an administrator enters, because they exist to add scripts and HTML to the page.
  • The logo and slogan image alt text is plain escaped text instead of the raw field, the preset stylesheet name is reduced to letters, digits, _ and -, and the menu overrides escape the menu’s tag_id and item attributes. htmlspecialchars / escape calls in the template: 55 → 85.
  • The social links open with rel="noopener". The error page escapes the message it prints and casts the error code to a number.
  • Every PHP file in the template stops unless Joomla loads it (defined('_JEXEC') or die): 29 → 31 files.

  Quickstart Installer

  Replaces the previous download’s Joomla 3 quickstart (an Akeeba .jpa archive restored with Kickstart): a complete Joomla 6.2.0 site with Sensory 6.2.0 pre-configured as the active template, set up as on the demo.

  • Bundled extensions: Akeeba Backup Core 10.5.0, StageIt 6.6.2, Web Links 5.2.0 and the en-GB language pack 6.2.0.1.
  • Search is Joomla’s Smart Search (the old Search component and module are gone), and its index is built (155 items), so the site search returns results from the first visit.
  • Search-engine-friendly URLs are on: pages open as index.php/<page> instead of index.php?option=…, as on the other Energize Themes templates.
  • The logo and the slogan link to the home page.

  Package format

  • Standalone template: now a Joomla package, pkg_sensory-6.2.0.zip (pkg_sensory.xml), that installs the Sensory template (tpl_sensory.zip) and registers it in the package manager. It declares method="upgrade", so an existing Sensory updates in place, and <blockChildUninstall>true</blockChildUninstall>, so the template is removed through the package rather than on its own.
  • Quickstart bundle: the complete Joomla 6.2.0 site described above.

  Earlier history and version numbering: the previous download was the Joomla 3 package dated 01.10.2022 (3.10.11), carrying template version 3.0.1 from 2012. From 6.2.0 the first three digits of the template version match the Joomla release it is built for; a later fix on the same Joomla release adds a fourth digit (6.2.0.1).