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Gantry 5.5.x Release - Important notes before you update!

    • MrT's Avatar
    • MrT
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    Gantry 5.5.x Release - Important notes before you update!

    Posted 2 years 5 months ago
    • TL;DR: Don't update to Gantry 5.5.x until you have updated your RT theme to a compatible version first. For those that updated to G5.5 already and are stuck with it, G5.5.x has many significant bug fixes - so you should update to that version.

      Today sees the release of the long awaited Gantry 5.5.x. This major update brings significant updates including support for Joomla 4 (Joomla 3.10.x also supported), WP5.8.x blocks, and PHP8. Before you update though please read the rest of this topic to learn more.

      1. Study the changelog for Gantry 5.5.0 though to the current version of 5.5.x - there are big changes that you should be aware of https://gantry.org/downloads .

      2. Ideally you would do the upgrade on a test environment first to make sure everything works as you expect it to.

      3. Backup, Backup, Backup! Before you do anything - just so you can restore back if something goes wrong. The update to Gantry 5.5.x is a one-way process otherwise, you cannot downgrade back to Gantry 5.x without using your restore.

      4. Because Gantry 5.5.x introduces significant redevelopment of the Gantry 5 menu system we strongly urge you immediately go to Gantry 5 menu editor immediately after the update to G5.5.x and just save each of your menus. This then migrates your existing menus from the old YAML method of storing the menu data in flat files over to the CMS database instead.

      5. Having updated you should clear browser and server cache.

      6. Template support: Alongside the release of Gantry 5.5.x we have also released compatible version of the Helium and Hydrogen themes. All other RT themes will also need updates issued (many have already been released now - 27 of 45 for Joomla, Wordpress and GRAV versions will follow) - so if you are using an RT theme you should wait for the theme update to be issued too. There are manual methods to update an RT theme to work with Joomla 4 but it would be better to wait for the official RT theme update (see changelog as it involves copying folders from Helium and checking the existing theme overrides and reapplying them to new code).

      7. Joomla 4 and Gantry 5.5 - Gantry 5.5.x does now support Joomla 4. However, you should be aware that Joomla 4 now introduces Bootstrap 5 and this can also introduce significant changes in the "look" of your site (which we are trying to minimise when we release the theme updates for Gantry 5.5). Joomla 4 also changes some of the HTML structure of your site which may require changes to your custom.scss selectors.

      Don't forget also that the old RT extensions DO NOT work with Joomla 4 (and won't be made to do so) - so consider this before deciding that you need to Joomla 4 (which requires Gantry 5.5.x too).

      Also be aware that any Joomla HTML overrides created previously in Joomla 3 will not work in Joomla 4. Therefore, you should remove these before you update to Joomla 4 and then recreate them (if still required) again in Joomla 4. Failure to do this will break your site in Joomla 4.

      8. There are some significant updates to the third-party versions of internal coding that Gantry 5 uses (such as the SCSS compiler) - this way require changes to your custom coding (such as custom.scss) as the new SCSS compiler is much more strict. This affects RT themes as well - so that is another reason we need to do theme updates.

      9. Some things may look different - I've mentioned this already but its worth re-iterating, there may be some unforseen cosmetic layout changes after you have migrate which may need you to write/amend custom.scss

      10. Please read notes from the Gantry 5 Development team here https://github.com/gantry/gantry5/issues/2789#issuecomment-947948729 and here https://github.com/gantry/gantry5/blob/develop/UPGRADE-5.5.md


      Regards, Mark.
    • Last Edit: 10 months 2 weeks ago by MrT.
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