Joomla! Documentation™

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Reporting bugs

To report a bug in the Joomla! bug trackers, you need to create an "artefact" (Editor's note: joomlacode.org uses the American spelling "artifact", but our policy is to use British/Australian spellings throughout the documentation.). Once the artefact is created, the developers will check the validity of it and act accordingly.

Register an Account at joomlacode.org

Register

Access the Joomla! development bug tracker.

• Joomla! 1.5 Bug Tracker
• Joomla! 1.0 Bug Tracker

Check to see if the bug you want to report is already reported.

A series of filters display the artefacts. Make sure Priority is set to "Any", Assignee to "Any" and Status to "Any", other filters to nothing. Mouse over the title of the artefacts to check their contents. If the issue you are experiencing is not already reported, click on the bottom-right Button "Add new Tracker Item".

A new screen will display and there, the more information you give, the easier it is for the developers.

Fill as many fields as you can.

• Priority : Use the default "Medium" except if you know the code enough to make another choice.
• PHP : Choose the version you are testing on. You can find this information by clicking the Menu "Help"->"System Info" in the Administrator back-end of Joomla!.
• Estimated Time : Leave this blank.
• Build : Type here the #SVN number if you know it, or Nightly Build date, or Version used if using a Released version.
• Browser : Self-explanatory.
• Database : The version of MySQL is also available in "Help" -> "System Info".
• Status : Leave this to "Open".
• Percent Complete : Leave this blank.
• Category : This one is more tricky. Use "Administration" if you do not know better.
• Customer : Use "User" if the issue is in front-end, "Developer" if the issue concerns an extension you are developing, "Administrator" in other cases.
• Web Server : The version/server type is also available in "Help" -> "System Info".

Provide a summary

Describe in a few words the issues you are having. It is generally a good idea to use existing artefacts as examples if this is your first time reporting a bug.

Examples:

• Front-end: Warning such and such.
• Back-end: Unable to save article when "nameofplugin" is published.

Note: Take care to be descriptive in your summary as this is the first thing the developers will see when they are perusing the tracker for something to fix.

Provide details about the bug

This is the most important part of reporting the bug. Describe here step by step how you got the error you are noticing.

The more details, the better.

Examples:

A. When I enabled "nameofplugin", no article can be saved. These are the plugins enabled at the same time. SEF is on (or Off). My site is in a sub-folder. I also remark that... etc. Files such and such are the issues IMHO (if you know what you are talking about).

B. Back-end. Clicking on "menu_name" Menu. Page opened is blank. Any other menu works OK. etc.

C. Back-end. Content -> Article Manager (The -> means you click on a submenu). Editing a non-categorized Article. Section dropdown does not display the sections available (or Editor is going over the right column for parameters, or Can't save article after changing a parameter [describe parameter], etc.

D. I have such an such issue when doing this and that. By changing this code [code proposed] in file [name and hierarchy of file], line(s) #, the issue looks solved on my settings.

Add an attachment to your report

To better describe the issue or/and propose a fix, you can add attachments to the artefact you are creating by using the "Browse" buttons at the bottom of the screen. A screen capture of the page(s) concerned helps a lot. If you can, try to optimise the size of the image through an image editor. If you know what part(s) of the code base to change, a patch [patches] or a full file where your changes are WELL shown will help the developers to solve the problem quicker.

Finish and send in the report

You will receive an e-mail confirming that you posted the artefact. When someone comments or asks for supplementary details or solves the issue, you will receive a notification e-mail and may reply if needed.

Extra tips and tricks

Well-written bug reports are incredibly helpful. However, there's a certain amount of overhead involved in working with any bug tracking system, so your help in keeping our ticket tracker as useful as possible is appreciated. In particular:

• Do read the FAQ to see if your issue might be a well-known question.
• Do search the tracker to see if your issue has already been filed.
• Do ask on testing forums first if you're not sure if what you're seeing is a bug.
• Do write complete, reproducible, specific bug reports. Include as much information as you possibly can, complete with code snippets, test cases, etc. A minimal example that illustrates the bug in a nice small test case is the best possible bug report.
• Don't use the tracker system to ask support questions. Use the Joomla! forums, or the #joomla IRC channel on freenode for that.
• Don't use the trackers to make large-scale feature requests. We like to discuss any big changes to Joomla!'s core on the developers forums before actually working on them.
• Don't reopen issues that have been marked "not a bug". This mark means that the decision has been made that we can't or won't fix this particular issue. If you're not sure why, please ask on developer forums.
• Don't use the tracker for lengthy discussions, because they're likely to get lost. If a particular artefact is controversial, please move discussion to developer forums.

Reporting security issues

Report security issues to security [at] joomla [dot] org. This is a private list only open to long-time, highly trusted Joomla! developers, and its archives are not publicly readable.

In the event of a confirmed vulnerability in Joomla! itself, we will take the following actions:

• Acknowledge to the reporter that we've received the report and that a fix is forthcoming. We'll give a rough timeline and ask the reporter to keep the issue confidential until we announce it.
• Halt all other development as long as is needed to develop a fix, including patches against the current and two previous releases.
• Determine a go-public date for announcing the vulnerability and the fix. To try to mitigate a possible "arms race" between those applying the patch and those trying to exploit the hole, we will not announce security problems immediately.
• Publicly announce the vulnerability and the fix on the pre-determined go-public date. This will probably mean a new release of Joomla! but in some cases it may simply be patches against current releases.