Core Supported or Official Extensions are included within the core Joomla! CMS.
As opposed to Third Party Extensions which are provided as 'addons' by independent third party developers.
When Joomla! 3.4 was launched, the Joomla! Project announced that it planned over time to move toward a 'lighter version' of Joomla! CMS.
The future Core Joomla! CMS would include fewer Core Supported Extensions.
'De-coupled' extensions would thereafter be offered as optional extras via a separate category of the Joomla! Extensions Directory (JED) called 'JED Official Extensions'.
Read more: JED Official Extensions Category
JED Official Extensions
At the time of writing - 16 October 2024 - the JED Official Extensions Category at the above link lists only two such extensions:
- Weblinks,
- Ridiculously Responsive Social Sharing Buttons for Joomla.
A Tale of Two De-coupled Google reCAPTCHA Plugins
The following two extensions were removed from the Core Joomla! CMS when the Joomla! 5 Series was launched:
- Google reCAPTCHA Plugin, and
- Google Invisible reCAPTCHA Plugin.
The reCAPTCHA Plugin was removed during the upgrade process from Joomla! 4 to Joomla! 5.
The Invisible reCAPTCHA Plugin was not removed during the upgrade process, but is excluded from fresh installations of Joomla! 5.
Neither de-coupled extensions are listed in the JED Official Extensions Category at the above link.
No official explanation seems to have been published by The Joomla! Project.
There is however the following reference in the following Official Publication.
Read more: Planning to upgrade from Joomla! 4 to Joomla! 5
Extract: Google reCAPTCHA
"If you are using Google reCAPTCHA in J4, you should replace it with Invisible reCAPTCHA prior to upgrading to Joomla 5 (or a third-party solution). J5 will not include Google Recaptcha any longer. The Recaptcha plugin will be uninstalled upon upgrade to J5. The Invisible reCAPTCHA plugin still exists if you’ve upgraded from 4.4.x. You can enable it and set it up with new keys so you can use Invisible reCAPTCHA instead. Or you may use another third-party solution. Fresh installations of Joomla 5.x do not include any reCAPTCHA plugins in the core. Fresh installations of Joomla 5.x will need to use a third-party plugin/solution."
Source: Official Joomla! Documentation.
There is some consternation expressed in the Joomla! Support Forums about this de-coupling.
And confusion expressed about why Invisible reCAPTCHA was not dropped at the same time as reCAPTCHA and yet exluded from new installations of the Joomla! 5 CMS.
Perhaps the reason for its exclusion from the Core Joomla! 5 CMS is related to GDPR.
If memory serves, instances when we have enabled Google reCAPTCHA in websites in the past resulted in the loading of Third Party Cookies.
Joomla! 5 CMS users will find several free and paid for Third Party Captcha Plugins in the JED to help keep spambots out of their website's:
- user registration (if enabled) and
- contact form (if published).
Read more: JED Captcha Extensions
Example GDPR Friendly Third Party Captcha Plugin.
Read more: Aimy Captcha-Less Form Guard
Ways of working without having to rely on Captcha Plugins
We are not big fans of adding more and more third party extensions to Joomla! websites.
If your website does not have user registration enabled, and you can get by without publishing interactive forms (example: contact form) then you should not have to worry about spambots.
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