Upgrading to 3.0

Upgrading to Music Collection 3.0 can be done by uploading the new package to the Joomla installer. However, this is a major update that completely changes the design and a lot of functionalities. For this reason, before updating, you must be aware of which changes will it produce to your website because some things may work different.

The main change that the component has experienced is visual. The whole interface has been redesigned in order to offer a better look.

Now, most of the actions are AJAX powered. This means that the page doesn't need to be refreshed in order to accomplish them (for example, the search page will load the results dynamically). This provides a much improved user experience.

Here we list some of the main differences that you need to take into account if you're planning on upgrading. If you are new to Music Collection, you can ignore this article.

Added

Some new an interesting features that we've added and that you may want to take into account.

  • Bootstrap 3 used on main interface on the frontend. Bootstrap 2 is still supported, and now you can choose which one to use. If you have a BS3-based template, Music Collection will look better than ever.
  • AJAX loading. Many data load processes are now handled with AJAX using JSON. This makes the main interface to load much faster, and all the data is lazy-loaded afterwards and rendered on device.
  • New design. The new design is much cleaner, and based on cards that make the album artwork be much more clear and the whole interface much more visual.
  • Albums and songs can now be played from everywhere. You can play albums directly on modules, for example.
  • Microdata has been added to all elements in Music Collection. Using schema.org proposals and Google's structured data directives, we have added metadata to the whole extension to make it index better by Google
  • Cache has been added (optionally) to almost all data sets in Music Collection. This means that your site will load MUCH faster if cache is enabled. This is used to retrieve, for example, album songs list, artist songs, lists of artists, etc.
  • ACL has been added for main actions, like "allow song downloads" or "play music online".

Removed

Some features on MC 3 have been removed (or rearranged) compared to previous versions (2.4.11 for example). You need to take this into account if you are upgrading your extension.

  • Statistics. The native MC statistics options have been de-coupled from Music Collection. If you want to use statistics, you can do it so by using our separate extension Content Statistics, which provides full support for Music Collection. This way, the statistics in MC are handled separately, using the full power that Content Statistics has to offer.
  • JWplayer MODULE. This module no longer exists in MC 3. Since we offer a new playlist module and a much improved player experience, this module has been deprecated and removed from the system.
  • The default (plain) views on songs and albums lists has been removed. We have a "cards" view instead, now, and a detailed view for albums as well.

Upgraded

Some important upgrades in MC 3 in comparison to MC 2.4

  • JWplayer plugin now uses JWplayer 7 instead of JWplayer 6. The main consequence that this has is that now you need an API KEY from www.jwplayer.com in order to make the player work. This KEY is free and you can get it at their website, simply by logging in.

Modules

In this new version, we have grouped all our modules into 4 main modules:

  • Albums (improved version of the Albums module)
  • Artists (replaces the old "featured artists" and adds new features)
  • Playlists (replaces the old JWplayer module)
  • Songs (replaces the old songs modules and adds new features)

The most important change here is that some old modules are now included into the new ones and the jwplayer module has been deleted. The main reason for deleting it it has been that now, when you display, for example, the playlists module inside or outside the Music Collection component, it will include it's own player that will be able to play each song in the module.