Warn users if either FOF or FEF is not installed. We have observed a rare but recurring bug in all Joomla versions from 1.5.5 onwards. Sometimes when updating an extension not all of its sub-extensions and / or files will be copied over to your site. This happens approximately to one out of 50 people out there (indirectly inferring from the number of support requests; actual frequency could be up to an order of magnitude smaller). If this happens with regards to the frameworks required to run our software you typically get a server error. Now we catch these two common cases and give you instructions for addressing them by manually installing the necessary Joomla installation package - exactly what we'd ask you to do had you contacted our support.
Removed two detection rules which trigger a bug in older versions of PHP. The PHP File Change Scanner in version 5.0 includes several new rules for even better protection against malicious code. Some of these rules are based on Regular Expressions for efficient pattern detection. Two of these rules -while they are perfectly correct Regular Expressions, mind you- trigger an error in the regular expressions parser found in older, buggy versions of PHP. Unfortunately, we will keep seeing these buggy versions on live hosts for the next five years because hosts don't care to update their servers. Since the PHP bug led to PHP crashing hard we have no choice but to disable these two rules. The kind of malicious code they detect is very rare and we have another five rules which provide adequate detection overlap, therefore we consider it not to be a workaround with a significant adverse impact.
Fixed integration between 404 Shield feature and com_redirect. The 404Shield feature was based on code found in Joomla itself to handle 404 errors. Unfortunately, the Joomla code itself was buggy :D As it happens, the right person hit the bug to get the Joomla production team leader debug it and fix it in Joomla. The fix was made known to us so we included it in this release.
Preliminary Joomla! 4 support. We have made our software compatible with Joomla! 4.0.0 Alpha 2.
Bug fixes. We have addressed another two low priority bugs. Please consult the CHANGELOG.
We only support Joomla! 3.4 or later, including 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8. We strongly advise you to run the latest available version of Joomla! for security reasons. Older versions of Joomla! have known major security issues which are being actively exploited to hack sites.
This version of our software has preliminary support for Joomla! 4 (only tested with Joomla! 4.0.0 Alpha 2), released in November 2017. Please note that Joomla! 4 is still in its early development stages. As a result we cannot guarantee that our software will work problem-free on future testing or stable versions of Joomla! 4. Please bear in mind that just like Joomla 4 itself, our support for it is currently work in progress.
HEADS UP! The next version family, Admin Tools 5.1, will no longer support Joomla! 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6.
Support for PHP 5.3 has been discontinued. PHP 5.3 has been end of life since August 2014 and widely considered a security risk, unfit for production sites. Our software requries PHP 5.4 or later and is compatible with PHP 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, 7.0, 7.1 and 7.2. We strongly recommend using PHP 5.6 or 7.1.
We'd like to remind you that Joomla! 3.4 does NOT support PHP 7. PHP 7 is only supported by Joomla! 3.5.0 and later versions. Akeeba Backup will work perfectly fine (and very fast!) on a Joomla! 3.5 or later site running on PHP 7.0.
HEADS UP! The next version family, Admin Tools 5.1, will no longer support PHP 5.4 and 5.5.