This is really what this site is all about:
- Development of two extensions to replace those which had passed their end of life
- Displaying a Facebook page,
- Displaying a KML map in Google Maps.
- The Migration path in detail - house keeping and cleaning up Joomla.
- The status of the many Joomla sites.
Progress Report
Upgrading Joomla 6, and development of TDOC stuff in Joomla 6
- 19th July 2026. Upgraded to 6.1.2. All is NOW Ok. Restored the two hacked sites after upgrading to 6.1.2 locally, repaired one site Ok.
To read the whole saga is click here. - 18th June 2026 HACKED. UnaccountableScotland.org.uk and AccountabilityScotland.org.uk in particular.
- 27th May 2026: Upgraded to 6.1.1. All is Ok.
- 22nd April 2026: Upgraded to 6.1.0. All is Ok.
- 21st April 2026: Upgraded to 6.0.3. All is Ok. The Favicon shambles continues. The ..\media\system\images directory is not "safe" from being updated. The two TDOC addons are fine but require their update xml's to be updated on the "to do" list.
- 20th February 2026: Upgraded to 6.0.3. All is Ok. However the Cassiopeia's icons are not displaying as they did prior to upgrade on the two sites upgraded, but they do still appear on mobiles and some other browsers. There is still nowhere obvious to upload fabicon.ico's, so a manual upload via the web host's control panel is required. . . . shambles.
Site Upgrade Status
A list of my web Joomla sites and status.
Live
UWix, Sn
Note: creation date of 2013 - J1.5 [may be .26 ?]
Restoration failure, Rebuilt from upgrade of 5.2.3 Local.
Migrating to Joomla 6
Introduction
The first thing to state is that the migration process gets easier and easier.
The second thing to state is that these notes are from me to myself - basic reminders - and that they may help other people.
Some notes:
Location of tmp folders
Therer are two places where a tmp folder is defined, namely under Global Configuration:
- Server, Path to tmp folder, viz ../site/tmp.
- Logging, Path to Log Folder *, viz ../administrator/logs. But also sometimes as above.
Setting text in the <title> in the <head>
This is a bit like setting your favicons - it improves what the user sees. There are three things to note:
- The text in the <title> in the <head>. This displays next to the favicon in the browser's title.
- For any menu item, including "home". there are three options on the "Page Display" tab for a menu item:
- Show Page Heading. Best to use is "hide", i.e. of the word "Home" on the "default page" - there MUST be one, and only one set.
- Browser Page Title. This is text that goes into the <title> which is displayed next to the favicon.
- Page Heading. This overrides the "Article Heading" if it is shown
- I seem to have found at least some of the rules . . .
- When an article is selected from menu, then the Article Title is used unless menu Browser Page Title field is completed.
- When NO article is selected from menu e.g. when it is a Blog, or Featured Articles etc, then the Menu Item name is displayed unless the menu Browser Page Title field is completed.
- When the template is configured, IF the "Brand" is set to ON, the the Brand Name is included at the start of the "title". An example is parkdavidson.co.uk.
favicons
Some jiggery pokery has been foiling me . . . However as at 6.1.0, all eight sites show their favcicons on a mobile phone correctly. These are:
- on tdocplus.co.uk:
- 01_ROPA
- linnpark
- rgtr
- wp [CEMDC]
- 0a_Empty400 [test site]
- on separate servers:
- Parkdavidson.co.uk
- Acountabilityscotland.org.uk
- Unaccountablescotland.org.uk
On the location of the favicons etc, I am now less confused. There are two locations, neither of which are accessible from within Joomla as far as I can see, namely:
- ../media/system/images [files are update when upgrading]
- rename or remove "favicon.ico"
- rename or remove "joomla-favicon.svg" [Required for Firefox and Opera]
- rename or remove "joomla-favicon-pinned.svg" [Required for Firefox Masks]
- ../media/templates/site/cassiopeia/images
- rename or remove "favicon.ico". The other icons [svgs] are not installed by default.
- upload the "favicon.ico" that you wish to be displayed. This is the "icon".
- upload the "joomla-favicon.svg" that you wish to be displayed. This is the "alternate icon" [Required for Firefox and Opera]
- upload the "joomla-favicon-pinned.svg" that you wish to be displayed. This is the "mask-icon" [Required for Firefox Masks]
For more information see https://guide.joomla.org/user-manual/templates/templates-favicons
To convert ico's to svg's I used https://www.convertsimple.com/convert-ico-to-svg/
On the file "logo.svg" [which gets renewed when updating] in the .../cassiopeia/images directory: this represents the word "CASSIOPEIA" as the brand logo. See here for more info: https://docs.joomla.org/J4.x:Template_SVG_Logos
Upgrade Servers
The rule for upgrade servers are here: https://manual.joomla.org/docs/building-extensions/install-update/update-server/
There are upgrade servers one each for the two TDOC addons as follows:
- TDOCGmap [tdocgmap_update.xml]
- located at: .../tdoc_j4_dev/tdoc_gmap
- and at: .../tdoc_j5_dev/tdoc_gmap
- TDOCfbk [mod_tdocfbk_update.xml]
- located at: .../tdoc_j4_dev/tdoc_fbk
The upgrade is simple as shown in red below.
<!-- 26th April 26 - updated as works for 6x -->
<targetplatform name="joomla" version="5.*|6.*"/>
Note the naming errors . . . I just did not understand the Joomla naming convention coming from a Clipper and then Visual Objects background.
Also the fact that I "forgot" that J5 and J6 would come along in due course. There are users who use different gmap locations depending on when they first installed.
Compatibility
The Backward Compatibility module is replaced by a new version and which gets enabled when J6 is installed.
This needs to be disabled unless it is actually needed. It is NOT needed with either of the Version 5 TDOC Extensions.
However, if disabled for the Linnpark Website at tdocplus.co.uk/linnpark then although the backend is fine the site itself does not display.
Noted that this is the oldest web site started in 2013 with Joomla 1.5.
Windows 11 and XAMPP
Background
I have been using XAMPP for many years both on my own network server [now retired] and my local pc [old W7 and new W11].
It turns out my problem is probably due an interreaction between HP's Wolf Security and XAMPP
Joomla reports that the XAMPP build being used is Apache/2.4.54 (Win64) OpenSSL/1.1.1p PHP/8.1.12 and all works fine, Control Panel 3.3.0 . . . for now [thats 18th October 2023] ! And on 21st Oct 2023, having removed all traces of XAMPP, used CCleaner, and reinstalled am now using Apache/2.4.56 (Win64) OpenSSL/1.1.1t PHP/8.2.4.
There does appear to be a later version !
Configuring Joomla 4
This is about what might be called the system tweaks that should be made.
Setting up .htaccess [which is installed as htaccess.txt], and url's.
First of all .htaccess conguration files can in effect be nested, So for this site on this server, it is as follows:
Root: An .htaccess provided by the operator of the server
Public: A sub directory in the root. An .htaccess, which is optional, but which is applied to your Joomla installation.
If you have several Joomla installations, then each one will be in a subdirectory within the Public directory, and each Joomla installation will have it's own .htaccess.
On installation, Joomla installs a file called htaccess.txt. This mut be manually renamed ".htaccess".
Breadcrumbs
Introduction
Breadcrumbs in Joomla 4 has developed an unworkable situation for which there is a very simple solution - an extension.
Update at 17th Ocober 2025. UWiX version 3.4.0 is dated 1st March 2019 [no longer available], whereas the Jommla version is 3.0.0 is dated 1st July 2006.
The Problems
Google has messaged to say there are two problems with the Joomla Breadcrumbs. The message is as follows:
Breadcrumbs issues detected on https://www.wp.tdocplus.co.uk/
Search Console has identified that your site is affected by 1 Breadcrumbs issues:
The following errors were found on your site:
Missing field 'itemListElement'
Migration Notes - General - 3.9.28 / 3.10.x / 4.z.y
Notes on migrating Joomla 3.9.28+ sites to Joomla 4
I have 8 sites, of which three started in Joomla 1.5. Others later, but only 2 recent ones.
The "garbage" which has been left behind is considerable ... much of to do with Akeeba's f0f, fof, and fef .... etc. Some of the removal has to be done by accessing the database using PHPmyAdmin.
Read more: Migration Notes - General - 3.9.28 / 3.10.x / 4.z.y
Migration Notes - Manual Cleaning
BUG Reports
- Extensions-Manage-Discover adds back an entry into the #__extensions table WHEN it finds it in the "plugins" folder.
- The Hathor uninstall is not perfect - it leaves this file behind: ..\plugins\installer\webinstaller\tmpl\hathor.php, and a message in #__postinstall_messages.
- Simplepie seems still remains a manual problem.
Introduction - Early sites at J 3.10.2
One gets to the stage when having used all of Joomla's built in cleaning, discovering, and deleting tools one has to resort to doing two more other things, viz:
- Inspecting the tables in the database using something like phpMyAdmin
- Inspecting the files using File Manager
Migration Notes - Joomla 1.5 Categories
My first site was in Joomla 1.5. I only used the simplest structure - no categories, and no blogs. Just articles attached to menu items.
On the occasion of migrating to J4 - the site migrated fine - I decided to add Categories and a Blog for each one. Fiasco. This is an inherited J1.5 problem would you believe.
The solution is to be found on the Joomla Forum here: https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=672782.