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Simple Fusion Changelog

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  • Version 6.2.0

    First Joomla 6 native release. Simple Fusion IV 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 (simplefusion4_template_package.01.10.2022 3.10.11.zip, template manifest 01.10.2022 3.10.11), and everything below is measured against it. Every Joomla 3 class call is gone (242 → 0), 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 the fixed 990 px frame, 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: 352 → 336, with 12 added, 28 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 2026-11-11.165), linked last in the page head. It lets Simple Fusion’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; the Smart Search field is the same height as its buttons.
      • Two Simple Fusion blocks: simplefusion4-1170-frame-20261111 (the wider page frame, the two columns, logo ribbon, menu bar, footer, side boxes and login fields) and simplefusion4-std-20261103 (the phone layout, ribbons, buttons and the other rules 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.
    • Font Awesome 6.5.2 (all.min.css + v4-shims.min.css from cdnjs) on the front end; existing fa fa-* class names keep working through the shims.

    New phone layout

    • Phones now get a phone layout. The old page was a fixed-width desktop page that a phone drew and shrank. On phones the logo comes first, then the content, then the sidebar modules (Login Form, Short About Us) as one dark band, all 16 px in from the edges.
    • New js/cs-mobile-generic.js. On phones (up to 767 px) a menu button beside the logo opens the top menu as a slide-out panel. It is filled in the template’s blue (rgb(0, 78, 132)) with white bars and sits on the logo’s centre line.
    • A phone button row of 44×44 px buttons in the same blue: Section menu, Log in, Register, Search and Follow us (the social links). Each opens its own panel; tapping outside an open panel closes it.
    • Section menu opens the sidebar’s Main Menu, followed by the menus that belong to the page you are on, under their own headings: on the sample sites, Australian Parks (Park Blog, Image Gallery, Park Links) and Fruit Shop (Fruit Encyclopedia, Growers). On phones the sidebar copies of these menus are hidden, so the same links do not show twice.
    • The menu, search, social and section panels open below the logo row, so the menu button never covers a panel’s first row (it used to sit on the search button). Opening a panel dims the page below the button row only.
    • The logo ribbon on phones wraps past the left edge of the screen with no fold at its right end, and the featured article’s title ribbon runs to the right edge with its fold past it, as both do past the page frame on desktop.
    • Buttons on phones are taller (46 px), and their gradient now fills the whole button. Login fields use 16 px text on phones, so iPhones no longer zoom the page in when you tap them. Pages with no slideshow no longer leave an empty 100 px gap above the breadcrumbs, and the footer menu is centred under the copyright line.

    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_SIMPLEFUSION4_FAVICON_*, TPL_SIMPLEFUSION4_FAVICONTOOL_*): the template’s language file goes from 66 to 76 strings.

    Template Options screen

    • 24 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: 7 → 8 tabs; 20 fields added and 16 retired (below).

    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 Font Awesome 6 glyphs on square white tiles like the old icon images, each with a screen-reader label.

    Module style and module lists

    • New html/layouts/chromes/vmdefault.php: the module style the side and content modules ask for (style="vmdefault"), carrying the template’s own .mtop / .mbot wrappers, so the side boxes keep their box artwork and padding. Joomla 4+ reads module styles only from html/layouts/chromes/ and ignores the Joomla 3 html/modules.php it used to live in.
    • New html/mod_articles_popular/default.php, and html/mod_articles_latest/default.php rebuilt on the Joomla 6 layout: the Latest Articles and Most Read lists print the module’s class suffix again, so the template’s list styles apply when you pick them. Article titles in both lists are escaped.

    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 01.10.2022 3.10.11 → 6.2.0, a creation date added (2026-11-12; the old manifest had none), and the version shown in the template description is 6.2.0 (2026-11-12). 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 990 px frame. The frame artwork (the dark left column, the light centre and the footer) is stretched to fit, and the two columns keep their original proportions.
    • The slideshow scales with the column (its height is 39.17% of its width), so the wider slideshow shows the whole picture instead of cropping it.

    J3 → J6 API migration

    • 242 Joomla 3 static class calls in the old template → 0. Each moved to its namespaced Joomla 4+ form (JText → Text, JRoute → Route, JHtml → HTMLHelper, JFactory → Factory and the rest).
    • Heaviest files: html/com_content/featured/default_item.php (38), 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 23 of the 26 PHP overrides changed.
    • The article overrides build their links with Joomla 4+’s RouteHelper instead of Joomla 3’s ContentHelperRoute (22 → 0), and the menu overrides read item settings through getParams().
    • Joomla 3 JHtml behaviour calls: 5 → 1 (behavior.framework, behavior.modal and behavior.tooltip, which Joomla 4 removed, are gone; behavior.keepalive stays).

    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 links to the home page, like the logo, 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 takes Joomla’s Smart Search box.

    Menus, scripts and fonts

    • The desktop drop-down menus are driven by CSS instead of the Superfish / Supersubs / hoverIntent scripts.
    • 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.
    • The WebFontConfig loader script is gone from component.php and error.php (2 → 0): component.php loads its Google web font from a direct stylesheet link with preconnect hints, and the new error page is drawn inside the template’s own page.
    • The html5shiv script, selectivizr-min.js, modernizr.js and imgSizer.js are no longer loaded, and the 8 Internet Explorer conditional comments in index.php are gone.

    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

    • Title ribbons on blog pages sit on their band: the title and the ribbon’s folded tail were 7 px above it (the leading-article ribbon on blog and category pages had no top padding).
    • Sidebar menus: the parent of the page you are on (for example Image Gallery while you view Scenery) is shown as a normal item with its bullet; its bullet image had been stretched into a grey bar across its title.
    • Photo gallery pages show every photo at one size (300 px, 4:3) on the same left edge, and full width on phones, instead of mixed small thumbnails, some floated and some centred.
    • The side login keeps the template’s own field artwork; on tablets the fields shrink to the narrower column.
    • On the login page the show password eye sits inside the password field in the template’s blue, and the “Remember me” box sits clear of its label.

    Fixed

    Pages that failed on Joomla 4+

    • Error pages: error.php used JError, so on Joomla 4 and later the error page itself failed 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. 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 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 (2 → 0). The 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 …') (15 of them). Joomla 4+ reads each as a single position name, so the test always failed and whole rows of modules did not show. Each position is now checked on its own (15 → 0).
    • Blog and featured rows: the blog and featured overrides counted their rows from Joomla 3’s article numbering. Joomla 4+ numbers the intro articles from 0, so in a multi-column blog an article could start no row and the next row began half-way along. Rows are now counted as they are printed.
    • Empty slogan image: with the slogan set to an image but no image chosen, the template printed <img src="/">, and every page requested itself a second time as an image. The slogan image prints only when one is chosen, and the logo falls back to text when no logo image is set.

    Maintenance pass

    • The @font-face rules in css/template.css pointing at Joomla 3’s media/jui/fonts/ IcoMoon font, which Joomla 4 removed, are 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.
    • 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 (28)

    • 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 and js/modernizr.js.
    • Old jQuery and MooTools scripts (js/ 14 → 6 files): superfish.js, supersubs.js, hoverIntent.js, jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, imgSizer.js, the Cufon font script cufon-yui.js, and the MooTools scripts tipz.js and parallax.js, which nothing loaded.
    • The unused css/responsive.css and css/slideshow.css, which nothing loaded.
    • html/modules.php and html/_modules.php (Joomla 3 module chrome functions with MooTools; the style the template uses is now html/layouts/chromes/vmdefault.php), the html/mod_search/ override (2 files) for the search module Joomla 5 removed, and a stray html/com_content/category/blog_item.zip.
    • 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. Every template setting written into the page is escaped or validated for where it lands:
      • phEsc() (30 calls): HTML text and attributes.
      • phRichText() (4): 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() (50), phCssDim() (2) and phCssNum(), phCssUrl(), phHexColor(), phCssFont(), phCssSelector() (1 each): colours, sizes, fonts 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() (12 each): values written into the slideshow’s inline JavaScript.
    • Raw echo $this->params->get(…) output in index.php: 97 → 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 alt text is plain escaped text instead of the raw field, module and article titles printed by the overrides are escaped, and the menu overrides escape the menu’s link attributes.
    • The 13 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): 34 of 34 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 Simple Fusion IV 6.2.0 pre-configured as the active template, set up as on the demo.

    • Bundled extensions: Akeeba Backup Core 10.5.0, StageIt 6.6.4, 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 links to the home page, and its alt text reads “Simple Fusion IV” (it named another template). The footer’s “Template Features” link opens the Typography page; it pointed at a menu item that did not exist. The contact’s missing image is cleared.
    • Three sample pages that gave a server error on the Joomla 3 demo open. The second top module is titled “Custom Module 2” (the sample data called two modules “Custom Module 3”). The sample article photos are 440 px versions, so they fill a phone’s column, and the photo galleries use the sample data’s full-size pictures.

    Package format

    • Standalone template: now a Joomla package, pkg_simplefusion4-6.2.0.zip (pkg_simplefusion4.xml), that installs the Simple Fusion IV template (tpl_simplefusion4.zip) and registers it in the package manager. It declares method="upgrade", so an existing Simple Fusion IV 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). 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).

Changelog entries prior to this release are not available.