Venda Energize Themes Templates Changelog

Added

Bootstrap 5 rendering through a compatibility stylesheet

• css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css — a new stylesheet that translates Venda’s Bootstrap 2 conventions onto Joomla’s bundled Bootstrap 5: .row-fluid rows with .spanN columns, offsets, pull-left / pull-right, the hidden-phone / visible-phone utilities, and the Bootstrap 2 grid, form, button, navigation, tab, pagination and alert classes, with multi-column rows stacking on phones. index.php now loads /media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css (and bootstrap.rtl.min.css on right-to-left sites) instead of the template’s own Bootstrap 2 copy, and links the compatibility stylesheet after the template’s own stylesheets so it wins where they differ.
• Joomla’s own icon-* classes (for example icon-eye, icon-angle-left, icon-angle-double-right) are mapped onto Font Awesome 6 glyphs (see Fixed).
• Bootstrap 5 data-bs-* attributes now appear where Bootstrap 5 components are used (7 → 12).

Phone header, menu drawer and toolbar

• js/cs-mobile.js — a vanilla-JavaScript phone layer for screens up to 767 px. A menu button at the right of the header, on the midline of the logo tile, opens the main menu as a full-width drawer.
• The menu button is filled with the theme’s accent colour (lime with dark bars on the demo’s colours), matching the phone buttons beside it.
• A toolbar of 44 px buttons under the header for the account, search and social links. The account button opens the login pop-up, and a tap outside it closes it; search opens a full-width search field with its own Search button; the social button opens your social links. The buttons take the theme’s accent colour, the same on every page.
• A second phone menu button. A new hidden module position, cs-secondary, is declared in templateDetails.xml and output by index.php; whatever menu module you publish there opens from the second button instead of repeating the main menu.
• The drawer, the panels and the dim layer behind them are pinned to the visible screen, and nothing overflows the screen sideways, so the page cannot be dragged off centre on a phone.
• The old phone menu, the selectnav drop-down list built from the menu, is replaced by the drawer.

Colour pickers on every colour setting

• fields/colorpicker.php, css/coloris.min.css and js/coloris.min.js (with js/coloris.LICENSE.txt) — all 110 colour settings in the template options change from plain text fields to type="colorpicker": each opens a real picker with a live swatch. The picker ships with the template, nothing is fetched from an outside site, and colours are still stored as hex codes, so every colour you had set carries over unchanged.
• fields/adminui.php — a hidden supporting field that styles the template’s Options screen only.

Favicon tool

• fields/favicontool.php and a new Favicon tab (faviconsettings fieldset, fields favicon, faviconspacer, favicontool) — choose an image from the Media Manager and the template generates the site’s browser-tab icons from it, using two new helpers in index.php, phFaviconSet() and phIcoBytes(). 10 new TPL_VENDA_FAVICON* language strings in en-GB.tpl_venda.ini (68 → 78). With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.

Custom CSS setting

• New Custom CSS setting (customcss, a text area in the template options) for your own CSS. It is stored with the template style, so an update to the template does not touch it.

Modern social networks

• Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, TikTok, YouTube, Pinterest and Discord added to the social settings, each with its own on/off switch and URL field (instagram / instagramON … discord / discordON).
• The social links render as Font Awesome 6 brand icons instead of the template’s old image sprites.

Supporting script

• js/cs-jq-compat.js — a small shim restoring three jQuery 1.x calls that jQuery 3 removed (.live(), .offset() on the window, and .load(fn) as a load-event shortcut), so the template’s bundled slideshow and other older libraries keep working on the jQuery 3 that Joomla ships.

Changed

Joomla 3 → Joomla 6 API migration

• All 49 removed Joomla 3 static class calls replaced with their namespaced Joomla\CMS\* equivalents (calls before → after): html/mod_login/default.php 22 → 0, error.php 13 → 0 (JError::raiseWarning() → new \Exception(), JText → Text), index.php 8 → 0, component.php 2 → 0, html/mod_menu/default.php 2 → 0, html/mod_breadcrumbs/default.php 1 → 0 and html/mod_search/default.php 1 → 0. These old names exist only while the Behaviour – Backward Compatibility plugin is enabled, and not at all in Joomla 6.
• 26 files were modified, 17 of the 29 PHP overrides among them: the module chromes in html/layouts/chromes (4), html/mod_menu (4), the content category (3), featured (2) and archive (1) overrides, and the breadcrumb, login and search overrides.

Drop-down menus, scripts and fonts without the old jQuery plug-ins

• Desktop drop-down menus no longer depend on the Superfish / Supersubs jQuery plug-ins; they open on hover without them, and a menu stays open while the pointer crosses the gap from its heading down to it. The Superfish animation options went with them (see Retired options).
• The jQuery.browser Internet Explorer detection shim in index.php is gone; it has had no purpose since jQuery 1.9.
• The page background image is fitted with CSS instead of the Backstretch jQuery plug-in.
• Google Fonts load from a direct link in the page head instead of the WebFontConfig JavaScript loader, which fetched webfont.js from Google before any font could load (1 → 0).
• The front end loads Font Awesome 6 with the v4 shims (all.min.css, v4-shims.min.css) instead of Font Awesome 4 (font-awesome.min.css). The shims keep any fa fa-* class in your own content working.

Error page and print view

• error.php uses the namespaced Joomla API. A “page not found” now renders as Venda’s own error page with a real 404 status, on desktop and on phones (see Fixed).
• component.php — the print, email and pop-up view — uses the namespaced API too.

Template Options screen

• The Options screen’s icons came from Font Awesome 4.6.3 on MaxCDN, which no longer serves it, so they were missing. They now load Font Awesome 6.5.2 with its version 4 name shims from cdnjs.
• The legacy on/off checkboxes are now Joomla’s native switchers (32 in all, after the social switches added and retired in this entry).
• Fields 198 → 203 and tabs 7 → 8, after the additions and retirements listed in this entry; 134 fields changed type: the 110 colour settings and the on/off switches.

Logo link and slideshow

• The site name / logo links to the home page by default. The “logo linked” option (logoLinked) defaulted to off in templateDetails.xml, so a fresh install showed an unlinked logo; it now defaults to on.
• The built-in slideshow is on by default, with autoplay. cam_turnOn defaulted to off; it, cam_autoAdvance and cam_mobileAutoAdvance now default to on, so on a fresh install the slideshow shows and advances on desktop and on phones.

Version

• templateDetails.xml <version> moves from the date-and-compatibility string 05.03.2024 5.0.2 to 6.2.0. From this release the first three digits match the Joomla release Venda is built on (6.2.0 = Joomla 6.2.0); a later fix on the same Joomla release adds a fourth digit (6.2.0.1).

Fixed

Pages that returned a server error

• Every “page not found” was served as a 500. error.php called JError::raiseWarning() and JText; JError does not exist in Joomla 4 and later, so the error page itself failed — and Joomla cannot render any error page when the error template fails. It now raises a proper \Exception with the status code.

Login pop-up

• The login module in the header pop-up rendered without its wrapper. It asks for a module style called vmdefaultlogin, which Venda never shipped as a Joomla 4+ module chrome. New html/layouts/chromes/vmdefaultlogin.php wraps it in a .moduletable with no heading, since the pop-up’s own header already shows the title.

A script error on every page

• jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, the slideshow’s old touch add-on, threw an error while loading under the jQuery 3 that Joomla 4 and later ship. Nothing still uses it, and it is no longer loaded.

Sample content images

• The sample “Extensions” categories (Components, Modules, Templates, Languages, Plugins) showed broken images: their descriptions pointed at administrator/templates/bluestork/, the Joomla 2.5 admin template, which no longer exists. The five original icons now ship in images/legacy-bluestork/ (icon-48-component.png, icon-48-language.png, icon-48-module.png, icon-48-plugin.png, icon-48-themes.png) and the Quickstart’s category descriptions point there.

Maintenance pass

• Pagination arrows and the password show / hide button rendered as empty squares. Joomla 4 and later emit .icon-angle-left, -right, -double-left, -double-right and .icon-eye, which the legacy icon stylesheet did not define. The compatibility stylesheet now maps them to real glyphs.
• Featured articles clipped to their title. A single-column featured view could cut tall intro articles off; the featured list and its items now size to their content.
• MooTools in the collapsible module chromes. html/layouts/chromes/toggleModule.php and toggleModule2.php called MooTools’ addEvent, which Joomla 4 and later do not ship. Both are rewritten without it (MooTools calls across the template 4 → 0, including the two in the removed html/modules.php).

Removed

Files removed from the package

• The bundled Bootstrap 2 stylesheets (9 files): css/bootstrap.css, the archive css/bootstrap.zip, and the css/bootstrap/ folder (bootstrap.css, bootstrap.min.css, bootstrap-responsive.css, bootstrap-responsive.min.css, bootstrap-extended.css, bootstrap-rtl.css, bootstrap-tooltip-extended.css). Joomla’s own Bootstrap 5 is used instead.
• html/modules.php — the Joomla 3 modChrome_* function file. Joomla 4 and later read module chromes only from html/layouts/chromes/, which stays.
• The old Options-screen helpers in utils/ (9 files): admin-js.js; the checkbox-switch images images/switch-background.png and switch-mask.png, replaced by Joomla’s switchers; the jscolor picker js_colourchanger/ (jscolor.js, arrow.gif, cross.gif, hs.png, hv.png), replaced by the colour pickers; and the unused bss_fontchanger.php.
• In total the shipped tree moves from 249 files to 246: 16 added, 19 removed, 26 modified.

Scripts no longer loaded

• superfish.js and supersubs.js (drop-down menus), selectnav.min.js (phone menu), jquery.backstretch.min.js (backgrounds), jquery.dropkick-1.0.0.js (select boxes), jquery.mobile.customized.min.js (slideshow touch support), the Internet Explorer helpers modernizr.js, selectivizr-min.js and html5.js, and Google’s webfont.js are no longer loaded by the template. No file was removed from js/: the ones that lived there are still there for custom code that references them.
• jQuery itself still loads (Joomla’s own copy), for the slideshow.

Stylesheets no longer loaded

• css/responsive.css, a copy of Bootstrap 2’s responsive stylesheet, Font Awesome 4 (font-awesome.min.css), and the Internet Explorer conditional stylesheets ie.css, ie6.css and ie9-10.css are no longer loaded. Those files are still in css/.

Retired options

• Social slots for Google+, StumbleUpon, Digg, Blogger and MySpace, services that have closed or no longer offer profile links (gplus, stumbleupon, digg, blogger, myspace and their switches).
• The Superfish drop-down options (dropopacity, dropheight, dropwidth, dropspeed, dropdownhandler1), plus colours_handlers.

Security

• Server paths no longer disclosed on error pages. Joomla’s own Newsfeeds component can turn a caught exception into a message that contains the site’s absolute filesystem path and a full stack trace, and the error page printed it to any visitor. Outside debug mode, error.php now replaces any such message with Joomla’s generic “An error has occurred” and keeps the status code. The error message and page title it does print are escaped.
• Template settings are escaped or validated before they reach the page. New helpers in index.php do the work: phEsc() (HTML attributes), phCssToken(), phCssNum(), phCssFont(), phCssSelector() and phCssUrl() (values written into CSS, including the colour settings), and phJsStr() / phJsLit() (values written into scripts) — 232 calls in all.
• The rich-text title fields (H1Title, H2Title) go through phRichText(), Joomla’s input filter in HTML mode, which strips script, style and iframe elements and on* event handlers while keeping the markup these fields are meant to accept.
• Module, menu and tab titles are escaped in the module chromes (slides.php, toggleModule.php, toggleModule2.php, vmdefault.php), the menu overrides (default.php, default_component.php, default_url.php, default_separator.php), the breadcrumb, login and content overrides. Titles written into HTML attributes through strip_tags() alone, which does not escape quotes, are now escaped. htmlspecialchars and equivalent escaping calls across the template rise from 37 to 76.

Quickstart

• A complete Joomla 6.2.0 site with Venda installed as the active template and the demo content.
• Web Links, which 11 of the demo’s published menu items use, is updated from 4.3.1 to 5.2.0.
• The second phone menu button’s menu ships as a module in the cs-secondary position (“Phone Second Menu (Main Menu)”), showing the Main Menu with all its levels.
• The sample “Extensions” category descriptions show their icons again (see Fixed).
• Joomla’s Statistics plugin is off, so the “Enable Joomla Statistics?” question does not appear.
• A clean starting state: every hit counter starts at zero, the action log is empty, and four post-installation messages remain.

Package

• Installs as an upgrade over an existing copy. The template manifest declares method="upgrade": no uninstall-first step, and your template settings are preserved.
• Supplied as a standalone template package (pkg_venda.xml) and as a quickstart; the earlier Joomla 4 download remains available but is no longer recommended for new projects.