Behind the Scenes of the Admin Panels of Joomla 4

Joomla 4 Admin Panel

By “behind the scenes”, I mean the Joomla 4 admin panels. Joomla has done quite a bit of work, and I am going to give you my first impressions. Some of the things I think are great and some I wish were different.


Let’s Take a Look Behind the Scenes of the Admin Panels of Joomla 4

Pictured below is the brand new backend of the Joomla 4 interface.

Joomla 4 Admin Panels

As you can see, it’s been pretty dramatically redesigned, simplified, and I think in many many ways made a lot better.

You have your home dashboard which is a conglomeration of editable and configurable mini modules. You have:

  • Site
  • System
  • Notifications
  • 3rd Party
  • Sample Data

Of course all of these can be edited, and they can be unpublished. Unfortunately you can not drag and drop these which would have been nice, but you can reorder them inside of the edit menu. So that’s really terrific.

One of the first things I noticed when I installed Joomla 4 is that as soon as I installed JCE, a great message appeared in the Notifications module telling me my download key was missing.

How awesome is that? How convenient is that? It also tells me at a glance that everything is up to date. I really like this new home dashboard!

Long-term users of Joomla are going to note that there are some things missing here. Where is the Plugins menu? Where is the Extensions menu? Where is the Modules menu? All of those things are now under the System menu item (See below).

I can install Extensions and Languages here. My Global Configuration is also here. My Maintenance area, all of the Management area including Site Modules, as well as Administrator modules are all under the System menu item.

You also have the ability to add a Module to your dashboard by clicking the + Add module to the dashboard button. It is fantastic that they have made this so much easier to see and do.

The Extensions menu item is gone, but the Components menu item is still here. As you can see, I have already installed JCE Editor Pro and SP Page Builder Pro, because I wanted to test those two out.


Now for some of the frustrating news: the built-in Tiny MCE Editor.

If I click on Content and click on Articles, then select an article, you will get a look at the built-in Tiny MCE Editor. It is terrific in many ways, but in some ways it is not and won’t meet all of your needs; therefore, you are going to need to install JCE Core. If you’re a serious Joomla site builder, you probably already have a subscription to JCE Pro, so install that instead.


So how is this on mobile? Well I am glad you asked. I am working on my iPad pro, and I am pretty excited to tell you that things like SP Page Builder and other extensions work really nicely on the iPad.

In the image below, you will see that I was able to drag and drop CONTACT US from above the Lorem ipsum to below by using my finger or my Apple pencil. Isn’t that terrific!

So managing my Joomla website on a mobile device is actually pretty simple.


Well what about the phone? Well it is really terrific as well. Below is a screenshot of my iPhone 12 Mini.

You can see that I have access to all of the menu items and functionality right there inside of the Joomla 4 Admin panels. I have my hamburger menu at the bottom right-hand corner where I can easily access any section of my website.

Now I honestly would not manage my site on an iPhone, but in a pinch everything is accessible and you can click and drag everything on your iPhone just like you can on your other mobile devices.


I am pretty excited about Joomla 4 and think the team has done a great job of creating an administration backend that is going to make it easier for site builders to get to the things they need to get to and do what they need to do. I think the fact that everything works so well on mobile is critically important as well.

I hope this tour of the back end of Joomla 4 has been helpful! Be sure to check out our 2021 video:

Author

  • Rod Martin

    Rod holds two masters degrees and has been training people how to do "things" for over 25 years. Originally from Australia, he grew up in Canada and now resides just outside Cincinnati, Ohio. He has worked in both the non-profit and for-profit worlds, in small companies and large corporations. His extensive open source experience includes WordPress, Joomla and Drupal and he really knows how to help you get the most out of the system you chose. Rod plays ice hockey a couple of times a week and rides his Goldwing motorcycle pretty much everywhere he can.

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