Joomla! 3.4.8 Released

Joomla! 3.4.8 is now available. This is a bug fix release for the 3.x series of Joomla This release fixes some bugs related to session management from Joomla 3.4.7. The project understands that many of our users are now on Christmas Holiday’s so we would like to emphasise that this release only contains bug fixes and whilst we strongly encourage our users to update as soon as practically possible, this update can be left until after any holidays.

Could not instantiate mail function

If your Joomla server does not support the php mail() function and Joomla attempts to send an email (such as a new user registration email), any of the following message may appear:

  1. Could not instantiate mail function.
  2. The mail() function has been disabled and the mail cannot be sent.
  3. Registration failed: An error was encountered while sending the registration email. A message has been sent to the administrator of this site.

Joomla! 3.4.7 Released

Joomla! 3.4.7 is now available. This is a security release for the 3.x series of Joomla which addresses a critical security vulnerability and one low level security vulnerabilities. We strongly recommend that you update your sites immediately.

This release only contains the security fixes; no other changes have been made compared to the Joomla 3.4.6 release.

Joomla! Two Factor Authentication

Two factor authentication is one of Joomla! 3 improvements which can and will improve security. This is because by enabling two factor authentication, it is practically impossible for a hacker to use a brute-force attack to guess the details of your Joomla! username and password. This is particularly important for the administrator part of the website, which ensures that attacks which try to guess your password can never be successful.

Setting mail in Joomla

If you have not made any custom changes during the installation, your Joomla will be set up by default to use the PHP Main function to send email messages. The settings can be modified via the Joomla admin area -> Site -> Global Configuration -> Server. The corresponding settings are found under the “Mail Settings” section.