I'm delighted to announce the release of MetaMod and MetaMod Pro for Joomla 1.6.

The version numbering for the new releases starts at version 3.0 for both.

Upgrades

If you have purchased MetaMod Pro since 1 April 2011, you're entitled to a free upgrade to the 1.6-compatible version. Until I automate this, please send me a PM or e-mail if you purchased since then, and I'll add it to your downloads in your account.

Changes and New Features

MetaMod for Joomla 1.6 is almost identical to the 1.5 version. There are a few changes in JomGenius support, and these are outlined on the JomGenius documentation pages. These are mostly due to changes in Joomla itself – for example, in Joomla 1.5 there's a "frontpage" view, which has been replaced in Joomla 1.6 by a "featured" view which is often used as a front page. It made sense to go with the new naming rather than to stick with "frontpage" which would have been confusing.

Joomla 1.6 also gets rid of content "sections", replacing them with nested categories. JomGenius makes it easy to detect all categories or articles that descend from a particular category, with the "ancestor_category_ids" parameter.

There's a small improvement in GeoIP handling too: you can now detect the continent of the country that the visitor is from. This is available in the variable $geoip->continent_code when you use the GeoLite City database. Details can be found in the Help tab when you edit a MetaMod.

Installation

When you install MetaMod Pro, it now automatically installs the most recent MetaMod Module, the Pro plugin, and it automatically enables the plugin.

If you've already started to use the free MetaMod module, you can install the Pro package on top of it, and all your previous MetaMods will be retained (and upgraded if necessary).

Stability
So far, MetaModPro for 1.6 seems very stable, and few problems have been reported. If you *do* have any problems, please report them in the MetaMod Pro forum. Please be sure to mention what version you have installed.

Have fun!
Stephen