Added

Bootstrap 5 rendering through a compatibility stylesheet

• index.php loads Joomla 5's bundled Bootstrap 5 (/media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css) before the template's own stylesheets, so template.css still wins the cascade.
• New css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css, linked last in the page head (immediately before </head>, on every page, with a file-time version marker). It lets Xeon Shop's Bootstrap 2 markup render correctly on Bootstrap 5:
  • Bootstrap 2 grid: .row-fluid / .spanN widths and gutters, nested spans and .offsetN, row clearfix, and phone stacking of every span column.
  • The Bootstrap 2 responsive utilities (hidden-phone, visible-phone, hidden-tablet, visible-tablet, hidden-desktop, visible-desktop), tab panes, collapse, .well / .page-header and Bootstrap 2 base typography.
  • A Bootstrap 5 modal shell, and Joomla 4/5 icon classes (pagination arrows, the password eye and others) mapped to Font Awesome 6 glyphs.
• New js/cs-jq-compat.js: restores three jQuery 1.x calls that Joomla 5's jQuery 3.7 removed but the bundled camera.min.js slideshow and jquery.stellar.min.js parallax still use (.live(), .offset() on the window, and .load(fn) as a load-event shortcut).

New phone layout

• 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, with submenus opening in place.
• A phone toolbar of six 44×44 px buttons: Section menu, Log in, Register, Search, Follow us (the social links) and Cart. The buttons take the template's accent colour on every page.
• Section menu opens the shop categories. It reads a new module position, cs-secondary (declared in templateDetails.xml and output in a hidden holder in index.php), so any menu module published there appears behind that button.
• Cart page on phones: each product row becomes a card with labelled price, quantity, tax and total (they were printed as bare, unlabelled values), the totals become label/value lines, and the billing, shipping and checkout buttons run full width at 44 px. Nothing runs off the screen.
• Account pages on phones (login, registration, your account) show the page content first, with only the breadcrumbs and the store category menu above it.
• Blog and category page numbers wrap onto a second line on phones, with "Page 1 of N" above them instead of running under the buttons.
• The login and cart form fields use 16 px text on phones, so iPhones no longer zoom the page in when you tap them.
• The slideshow's previous / next arrows are visible on touch screens. camera.js ships them at opacity: 0 until the mouse hovers, which never happens on a phone.
• The footer bands (#bottom-bg and #footer) inset their text 20 px on phones, the same as the content column. Their backgrounds stay full width.

Favicon

• New Favicon tab in the template options (fieldset faviconsettings, fields favicon and favicontool, field class fields/favicontool.php). Pick one image and the template outputs the icon set (phFaviconSet(), phIcoBytes() in index.php); the template's own favicon.ico stays as the fallback. With thanks to Gianluca, whose favicon question inspired this tool.
• 10 new language strings (TPL_XEON_FAVICON_*, TPL_XEON_FAVICONTOOL_*). The language file goes from 74 to 84 strings.

Modern social network support

• Five new social services, each with its own URL field and show/hide switch: Threads, TikTok, Bluesky, Mastodon and Discord (threads/threadsON, tiktok/tiktokON, bluesky/blueskyON, mastodon/mastodonON, discord/discordON).
• The Twitter slot is now X (formerly Twitter) with the X logo. The full set is X, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok, Vimeo, Pinterest, Discord and RSS, plus the five custom social slots.
• Social icons are Font Awesome 6 brand glyphs (fa-x-twitter, fa-bluesky, fa-threads and so on) in place of the old socicon-* icon font, and each of the 13 network links carries a title.

Template options (administrator)

• Colour picker: the open-source Coloris picker ships inside the template (css/coloris.min.css, js/coloris.min.js, field class fields/colorpicker.php), so nothing is fetched from another site.
• Custom CSS field (customcss, on the Header & Footer Custom Code tab), and support for a css/custom.css file. Both load after the compatibility stylesheet, so your rules win. The file is deliberately not listed in the package, so a template update can never overwrite or remove it, and the field is stored in the database.
• New fields/adminui.php: help rows in the options run the full width of the form instead of a narrow column, and the template's Details panel follows Joomla's light or dark admin theme.

Changed

Joomla 5 platform

• Built for Joomla 5.4.9 and VirtueMart 4.8.4 (previous download: Joomla 4.3, VirtueMart 4.0.13).
• templateDetails.xml version 26.06.2023 4.3.0/4.0.13 → 5.4.9 and creation date 28/02/2018 → 2026-10-02. The version shown in the template description and the @version docblock in index.php match. method="upgrade" is kept, so an existing install updates in place.

Layout grid

• The page layout in index.php now uses Bootstrap 5 rows and columns: .row-fluid 32 → 3, .spanN 57 → 8, .col-md-N 0 → 49. css/template.css carries matching .col-md-N selectors (102) beside its .spanN ones, so the module-row widths carry over to the new columns.
• The VirtueMart overrides and the module content keep their Bootstrap 2 classes (.row-fluid 16, .spanN 30 in html/), rendered by the compatibility stylesheet.

J3 → J5 API migration

• 240 Joomla 3 static class calls in 36 files → 0. Each moved to its namespaced Joomla 4+ form: JFactory → Factory, JText → Text, JHtml → HTMLHelper, JRoute → Route, JUri → Uri, JModuleHelper → ModuleHelper, and the rest. 219 calls were converted in 34 files; the other 21 went with two removed files (see Removed).
• Heaviest files: index.php (37), html/mod_login/default.php (20), html/com_virtuemart/user/login.php (19), html/com_virtuemart/productdetails/default.php (16), error.php (13), html/mod_virtuemart_product/single.php (13), html/mod_virtuemart_product/slick-slider.php (13), html/mod_virtuemart_product/default.php (11).
• Also converted: JDispatcher::getInstance()->trigger() → Factory::getApplication()->triggerEvent() in user/login.php and user/edit_address.php; JDocumentHTML::countModules() → HtmlDocument::countModules() and new JRegistry() → new Registry() in index.php (2 each); the four jimport() calls removed; JError::raiseWarning(404, …) → new Exception(…, 404) in error.php.
• Every VirtueMart override folder was converted: askquestion, cart, category, productdetails, sublayouts, user and virtuemart, plus mod_virtuemart_cart, _category, _currencies, _manufacturer, _product, mod_login and mod_search. In total 41 of the 51 PHP overrides changed.

Template options (administrator)

• 100 field type changes in templateDetails.xml:
  • 80 on/off settings: the legacy class="switch" type="checkbox" → Joomla 5's radio switcher (for example OverrideDefaultSettings, RSSON, AdditionalGFontON, H1TitleImgText, cam_autoAdvance, breadcrumbcontentwidth). With the retired social switches removed and five new ones added, the template has 85 switchers and no legacy checkboxes (84 before).
  • 20 colour settings: type="color" → type="colorpicker", with a live swatch.
• Template options: 338 → 345 fields, 15 → 16 tabs. Eleven tab names lose their trailing "Settings" (for example Built-in Slideshow, Drop Down Menus, Color), and the social labels read "Show X (formerly Twitter)", "Show Facebook", "Show RSS" and so on instead of "… ON/OFF".

Icons and fonts

• Front end: Font Awesome 4.6.3 from MaxCDN → Font Awesome 6.5.2 (all.min.css + v4-shims.min.css from cdnjs). The template's existing fa fa-* class names keep working through the shims.
• Google Fonts load through a stylesheet <link> (with preconnect and display=swap) in index.php and in component.php (print view and VirtueMart pop-ups). The WebFontConfig JavaScript loader, which fetched webfont.js from ajax.googleapis.com, is gone (2 → 0).

Menus, backgrounds and dialogs

• The hover drop-down menus are driven by CSS instead of the Superfish/Supersubs jQuery plug-ins. A closing drop-down waits 0.6 s and submenus are attached to their parent item, so the drop-down stays open while the pointer moves down to it.
• The background image set in the template options is sized with CSS (background-size: cover) instead of jQuery.backstretch().
• The login dialog is a Bootstrap 5 modal (.modal-dialog.modal-dialog-centered > .modal-content) opened and closed with data-bs-toggle / data-bs-target / data-bs-dismiss (0 → 8); its Close control is a real button.
• Template-side jQuery call sites: 174 → 148.

Store pages

• Category descriptions no longer carry 30 px of side padding (.category_description), so the text lines up with the Ordering bar and the products below it, on desktop and phones.
• css/template.css: 219,016 → 223,228 bytes.

Fixed

Pages that returned a server error on Joomla 5

• Shop login page: html/com_virtuemart/user/login.php called JDispatcher, behavior.modal and behavior.formvalidation, none of which exist in Joomla 5, so the VirtueMart login page returned a 500. It now uses triggerEvent() and behavior.formvalidator, and the modal call is gone. With thanks to Zoltán Szász, whose follow-up report led to the formvalidation fix across our templates.
• Checkout address form: html/com_virtuemart/user/edit_address.php called JDispatcher and behavior.framework, and count($this->userFields['functions']) on a value that is empty for guests, which is a fatal error on PHP 8. Editing the billing or shipping address during checkout returned an error. It now uses triggerEvent() and !empty(). With thanks to Zoltán Szász, whose report found the PHP 8 crash.
• Slick product slider layout: html/mod_virtuemart_product/slick-slider.php called behavior.modal, which Joomla 5 removed, so any product module set to that layout stopped the page. Removed.
• Error pages: error.php used JError and JText. When Joomla's Behaviour - Backward Compatibility plugin is off, and always on Joomla 6, Joomla could not render any error page, so every "page not found" became a 500.

Add to Cart

• Add to Cart did nothing on the home page and category listings: the button showed a spinner that never finished and nothing was added. The template's html/com_virtuemart/sublayouts/addtocart.php left out the security token VirtueMart requires, so the request was redirected instead of answered. The token is added.

Requests for files that do not exist

• The home page requested css/camera.css, which the template has never contained. Removed.
• The error page requested css/reset.css, css/text.css and css/typography.css, none of which exist. Removed, and on right-to-left sites it now loads the template's real template-rtl.css (it asked for a missing template_rtl.css).

Maintenance pass

• The @font-face in css/template.css pointing at Joomla 3's media/jui/fonts/ IcoMoon font, which Joomla 4 removed, is disabled.
• Pagination arrows: Joomla 4/5's icon-angle-left / -right / -double-left / -double-right buttons had no mapping in the template's icon CSS, so they showed no arrow. They now show Font Awesome 6 arrows.
• Featured articles: in a one-column featured (home) view, tall intro articles were clipped to their title. .blog-featured .blog-items.columns-1 .blog-item now uses display:block; overflow:visible; height:auto.
• Search button: the global button margin pulled the search button away from its box. #search-position .btn now has margin:0.
• With thanks to Michael Mullan, whose Expression bug report led to this maintenance pass across our templates.

Removed

Files removed

• Bootstrap 2: the whole 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 5's Bootstrap 5 and the compatibility stylesheet take its place.
• js.zip: a 147 KB archive of 26 old script files that sat in the template root.
• utils/admin-js.js: a Joomla 3-era admin script.
• html/mod_k2_content/ (Slider/default.php and two index.html files): an override for K2, which the template does not use.
• html/com_virtuemart/productdetails/default_addtocart.php: nothing called it, and it built its own cart form without the security token.

Legacy scripts no longer loaded

• index.php and component.php no longer load superfish.js, supersubs.js, jquery.backstretch.min.js (loaded twice before), jquery.mobile.customized.min.js, modernizr.js, selectivizr-min.js, the html5.js shim or the Google webfont.js loader. The local files remain in js/ (30 → 33 files) but nothing loads them.

Legacy stylesheets no longer loaded

• Font Awesome 4.6.3 (font-awesome.min.css), and the Internet Explorer sheets ie.css / ie6.css with their conditional comments (the files remain in css/).

Retired social services

• Four social slots removed with their switches: Google+ (gplus), StumbleUpon, Digg and Blogger.

Security

• 13 output helpers added (defined in index.php; the CSS and JavaScript ones also in component.php and error.php), used at 285 call sites. Every template setting written into the page is escaped for where it lands:
  • phEsc() (97 uses): HTML text and attributes.
  • phRichText(): 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.
  • phHexColor() (47 uses), phCssToken(), phCssNum(), phCssDim(), phCssFont(), phCssSelector(), phCssUrl(): colours, sizes, fonts, selectors and image URLs written into the page's CSS.
  • phJsStr(), phJsLit(): values written into inline JavaScript.
  • phFaviconSet(), phIcoBytes(): favicon output.
• Raw echo $this->params->get(…) output: 211 in index.php and 4 in component.php → 2, the Header and Footer Custom Code fields, which are administrator-only by design.
• Three alt="<?php echo strip_tags(…) ?>" echoes, where a quote in a setting could break out of the attribute, now go through phEsc(strip_tags(…)).
• Module, menu and tab titles and module class suffixes are escaped in the module chromes html/layouts/chromes/megamenu.php, parallax.php, slides.php, testimonial.php, vmdefault.php, vmdefaultlogin.php and vmtab.php, in html/modules.php, mod_menu, mod_custom and mod_virtuemart_cart, and in index.php (the login dialog and the left/right header panels). Module background-image URLs in parallax.php, testimonial.php and mod_custom are escaped or sanitised for the attribute or CSS they land in.
• The 18 social links escape their URL and open with rel="noopener".
• The colour-theme name used in component.php's stylesheet path is filtered to a plain token.
• The error page escapes the error message and page title it prints, and casts the error code to a number.
• htmlspecialchars / escape calls in the template: 6 → 53.

Quickstart Installer

The Quickstart is a complete Joomla 5.4.9 site with VirtueMart 4.8.4 and Xeon Shop pre-configured as the active template, installed with Joomla's own web installer. The Joomla 4 download was an Akeeba .jpa archive restored with Kickstart.

• Bundled extensions: Akeeba Backup 10.4.0, Weblinks 5.1.0, MCP For J 2.7.5.
• The site templates/ folder holds only cassiopeia, system and xeon. VirtueMart's demo templates horme_3, vmbeez3 and vmbasic are not included; the first two had error pages that returned a server error.
• The two VirtueMart 3 Klarna payment plug-ins (plg_vmpayment_klarna, plg_vmpayment_klarnacheckout), which VirtueMart 4 no longer ships, are not included.
• A CATEGORIES module (mod_virtuemart_category) is published at cs-secondary, so the phone's Section menu button opens the shop categories.
• The site-level language file language/en-GB/en-GB.tpl_xeon.ini is the current one, so the template options show their labels, including the new favicon strings.
• Joomla 5.4's "What's New" guided tour (tour 15) does not start by itself (autostart = 0), and Joomla's Statistics plugin is set to never send data.
• A clean starting state: the action log is empty, and the post-installation messages are trimmed to Joomla's five new-site advisories (welcome, action logs, privacy, multi-factor authentication, automated updates).

Package format

• Standalone template: now a Joomla package, pkg_xeon-5.4.9.zip (pkg_xeon.xml), that installs the Xeon Shop template (tpl_xeon.zip) and registers it in the package manager. It declares method="upgrade", so an existing Xeon Shop updates in place, and <blockChildUninstall>true</blockChildUninstall>, so the template is removed through the package rather than on its own. The Joomla 4 download was a plain template zip.
• Quickstart bundle: xeon-quickstart-J5.4.9.zip, a complete Joomla 5.4.9 install with VirtueMart 4.8.4 and Xeon Shop pre-loaded as the active template.