Hello, please activate the backward compatibility plugin.

That should help.

so no then lol
i have been told that selecting backward is not a good idea moving forward.

Sometimes you have to take a step back.

just as long as the templates will be eventually ready for 6 lol thanks

This worked for some of the templates, but for others I still get this error message:

500
BEHAVIOR::CAPTION NOT FOUND.
An error has occurred while processing your request.
You may not be able to visit this page because of:

-an out-of-date bookmark/favorit
-JERROR_LAYOUT_MIS_TYPED_ADDRESS
-a search engine that has an out-of-date listing for this site
-you have no access to this page

500 behavior::caption not found.

Only the templates Nina, Emani, and Layla are ready to run on J6 (with the J6 compatibility plugin enabled). The rest of the Joomla51 templates work under J5 (with the J5 compatibility plugin enabled) at maximum.

Dear Dautrich,

that's not entirely correct. Only these three templates are marked as Joomla 6 ready. However, other, even older, templates already work under Joomla 6. I tested it with several templates in a test environment. I would also wait for an official release from Ciaran.

But whether that will happen...

I know that this is only the “official” statement from the Joomla51 website. A Joomler from Switzerland has adapted Chelsea to run under J6, even with the J6 compatibility disabled. Yesterday, I did the same job for Skylar. And just a few minutes ago, I saw Emani running under J6.

Obviously, there are J6-compatible versions of Joomla51 templates running “in the wild”. But how to cope with the situation? Will Ciáran Walsh eventually return and solve the issues? I'm in doubt .....

BTW: Modifying the templates' code is not illegal, because the PHP code is distributed under GPL. But the CSS and JS files are copyrighted according to the comments in the code. Should we provide the adapted versions to a customer of Joomla51 within certain restrictions (i.e. only after he provides a screenshot of his account at the Joomla51 site, proving that he has purchased the respective template)? I don't know.

What needs to be done to make a template run under J6, even with J6 compatibility disabled?

I would be very interested in this workaround. Is there a source for this?

Best regards

First, you have to make sure that the template is J5 native (meaning not needing the J5 compatibility plugin). To do so, you have to exchange any appearance of a deprecated class with the new J5 class:
- Prepare a (local) dev site.
- You find the complete list in the developer documentation of Joomla here
- Visual Studio Code is very helpful to find and replace all occurences.

Example:
- You find an occurrence of JFactory like this

$user    = JFactory::getUser();

- You can replace this either with:

 $user    = Joomla\CMS\Factory::getUser();

- Or you can put a use-statement right at the beginning of the file (after the defined('_JEXEC') or die; ) like this:

use Joomla\CMS\Factory;

with this, you can shorten the statement to:

$user    = Factory::getUser();

Repeat that for all old classes in all php files of the template. VSC helps you by showing the class names in a different color like that:


It's a tedious task, but it took me only about one day including testing for one template (Skylar).
Be aware that this is not a real refactoring of the code, but just the minimum task to get things going.

And the good news: After that activity, the modified template works under J6 with the J6 compatibility plugin disabled.

Sorry, double post.

Thanks, I'll test that on a test environment soon. I read in the German Joomla forum that the code of the joomla51 templates is very outdated and partly dates back to Joomla 3. It's unfortunate that Ciaran hasn't updated it yet; otherwise, switching to a new Joomla version probably wouldn't require such significant changes. But if you only have to change a few lines of code, the effort is manageable. Thanks…

I'm not a developer; therefore, I cannot judge how outdated the Code of Ciáran's templates is. But the overrides in the Skylar template were more or less "clean" (in terms of deprecated classes, while my Swiss college found old stuff in the overrides of Chelsea.

One thing I can promise: If you try to refactor one of Joomla51's templates, you will find considerably more than a few lines of code to change! But as I said, it took me about one workday to adapt Skylar and three extensions.


BTW: What's your username in the German Joomla forum? You might have seen that I'm pretty active there as well.

I wish I had known all this before I renewed my subscription.

I wish I had known all this before I renewed my subscription.

Nobody seems to know what exactly is going on with Joomla51 and Ciáran Walsh. And I think that nobody is really happy about the uncertainty about the future of Joomla51 templates. I had all my sites on Skylar.......

well mine are all on Naomi which i like. Nowi'm trying a test site with Cassiopeia on joomla6 trying to figure out the grid system and user.css. I want my Naomi back!!.

I've been in a situation similar to yours: All my sites are/were on Skylar, which I liked and for which I created lots of CSS (to make my sites individual). I have converted one of them to Cassiopeia; the results are reasonable, but without further work (override to get an off-canvas menu for mobile, some JavaScript) not really impressive.

Therefore, I tried the above-mentioned method to make Skylar compatible to J5/6. Took me about one day (although I'm not a developer). Now, my Skylar version runs on J6 without the J6 compatibility plugin enabled.

My proposal: Do it yourself!

I'm not a developer; therefore, I cannot judge how outdated the Code of Ciáran's templates is. But the overrides in the Skylar template were more or less "clean" (in terms of deprecated classes, while my Swiss college found old stuff in the overrides of Chelsea.

One thing I can promise: If you try to refactor one of Joomla51's templates, you will find considerably more than a few lines of code to change! But as I said, it took me about one workday to adapt Skylar and three extensions.


BTW: What's your username in the German Joomla forum? You might have seen that I'm pretty active there as well.

Thanks for the detailed assessment and the practical report – that's very helpful for context.

The fact that Skylar is implemented more cleanly than Chelsea also aligns with the impression gained from other feedback. The question of outdated classes and overrides is particularly difficult for non-developers to assess objectively, which makes such experiential data all the more valuable.

The effort you described (a workday for the template plus several extensions) also confirms that the need for customization with older Joomla 51 templates shouldn't be underestimated. In practice, it's rarely just "a few lines of code."

BTW: I'm not registered in the German Joomla forum, but I do read the discussions there occasionally. and I found the j51 discussion from a week ago through a Google search, which I of course read through.

I also have to emphasize that I didn't do a complete refactoring of the template, but I did just enough to get it to work under J6.

Completely refactoring the template would imply an all new directory structure, the use of namespaces, and much more. In addition, the existing overrides need to be adjusted or removed (if possible).

The effort to refactor 50+ templates would take an experienced developer a couple of months (estimated).

Okay, that sounds promising! It was just a matter of revising the .php files, right? Did you adjust the files before or after installing a template in Joomla 6? Did you rewrite everything in the code and then deactivate the compatibility plugin, and it worked without any problems? I would modify the workaround so that I can apply it to multiple j51 templates.

I also think that's why there haven't been any new templates since 2021, as Ciaran was busy recoding the existing templates. And that certainly caused a financial downturn. These are all just assumptions, though. I hope Ciaran will comment on this someday.