Added

Joomla 5 native admin form rendering

• 56 template-option toggles across templateDetails.xml converted from the legacy class="switch" type="checkbox" value="true" form to the J5-native type="radio" layout="joomla.form.field.radio.switcher" class="switcher" form with explicit <option>JNO</option>/<option>JYES</option> children. The Yes/No pill switcher now renders correctly across slideshow controls, font settings, EU cookie law, drop-down menu, mega menu, site-name flags, and the 5 custom-social-icon slots.
• templateDetails.xml rewritten to the J5 manifest schema with type="template", client="site", method="upgrade" so existing customers can update in place without uninstall-first.

Bootstrap 5.3.8 native rendering via bridge layer

• Template now renders directly against J5’s bundled /media/vendor/bootstrap/css/bootstrap.min.css — no separate Bootstrap copy required.
• New css/bs2-bs5-bridge.css aliasing layer (~500 lines, ~16 KB) loaded last in the head so it wins the cascade. The bridge aliases legacy BS2 grid classes (.row-fluid, .spanN, .offsetN, .pull-left/.pull-right, .visible-/.hidden-phone/tablet/desktop) so that custom-HTML module content stored in jos_modules.content — which is data, not code, and therefore not rewritten by any template upgrade — continues to render side-by-side instead of collapsing to stacked block elements.
• Bridge layer also carries defensive image aspect-ratio rules, the megamenu hover-delay fix, sticky-header background, testimonials-section min-height reset, and partners carousel spacing — all template-side fixes that would otherwise have lived scattered across the template’s own CSS files.

Universal image aspect-ratio handling

• New img[width][height] universal CSS rule defensively caps every image at max-width:100%; height:auto, with exceptions for icon, socicon, emoji, and separator classes that need exact pixel sizing.
• Container safety-net selectors cover every VirtueMart marketplace pattern: .main-image, .vm-additional-images, .vmproduct, .productdetails-view, .category-view, .featured-view, .latest-view, .topten-view, .recent-view, .related-products-view, .browse-view, .search-result-products, plus .com-content-article and .article-content for editorial pages.
• Resolves the tall-narrow image stretching that affected the cart, related-products, category view, single product detail hero, and contact page when VirtueMart emitted its _585x585.jpg resized assets with literal width="585" height="585" attributes under Bootstrap 5 flex parents.

Modern social-network icon set

• Font Awesome 6.5.2 social icons replacing the legacy 2014-era set. Facebook, X (the Twitter rebrand), Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn ship as the active set.
• Legacy services (Google+, StumbleUpon, Digg, Blogger) removed from the template options panel and the rendered output.
• 5 custom-social-icon slots retained for site builders who want to add their own beyond the core 5.

Megamenu demonstration patterns

• Categories hub ships with a 4-column curated megamenu (For Man / For Woman / Shoes promo / Accessories icon list) demonstrating the editorial showcase pattern customers can adopt for their own e-commerce category hubs.
• Using Joomla! hub ships with an organic child-menu rendering its 6 real menu children (Using Extensions, Parameters, Getting Help, Getting Started, The Joomla! Project, The Joomla! Community) demonstrating the documentation-hub pattern.
• Both patterns work with the same menu-position-N-<alias> architecture, so customers can mix and match per hub.

Changed

J5 + VirtueMart 4.6.8 compatibility

• Joomla CMS bumped from 5.1.2 to 5.4.6.
• VirtueMart bumped from 4.2.12 to 4.6.8 (istraxx channel).
• PHP supported range: 8.0–8.3 (verified end-to-end on 8.3.31).
• Bootstrap 2.3.2 → 5.3.8 (J5 bundled).
• Template version convention updated from the legacy DD.MM.YYYY <jver>/<vmver> form to semver 5.4.0, aligning with the VMT post-Avant catalogue.

Custom megamenu render loop

• Replaced legacy $menuitem->params direct property access (which throws "Cannot access protected property" under J5 because \Joomla\CMS\Menu\MenuItem::$params is now protected) with the public $menuitem->getParams() accessor that returns the same Registry object.
• Added a level == 1 filter to the megamenu loop because $menu->getItems('menutype', $type) now returns every menu item at every level — flat list of 88 items. Pre-J5 versions returned only level-1 items. Without the filter, the entire menu tree (categories, sub-categories, individual articles) rendered as flat siblings across the top bar.
• Corrected the selectmegamenu template param to point at the actual published menutype (topmenu) instead of the stale legacy value (megamenu) which referred to a non-existent menutype and silently emitted zero menu items.

Megamenu hover-gap fix

• Pure-CSS transition: top 0s linear 500ms on the dropdown’s hidden state — the dropdown stays at top: 90px for 500 ms after hover-out before reverting to top: -999em. This mirrors Superfish’s 500 ms hover delay (which the legacy template used for the non-mega dropdown path but never wired into the megamenu).
• Resolves the long-standing UX bug where the mouse traversing the visual gap between the menu bar and the dropdown would lose :hover and the dropdown would vanish mid-traversal.

Layout & styling refinements

• Sticky #top-handler now ships with a white background and subtle shadow so the menu bar stays readable on scroll instead of fading into whatever’s behind it.
• Testimonials section .container { min-height: 460px } hard-coded value removed in favour of min-height: auto — resolves the over-tall gray box that the BS2-era styling produced.
• Partners / manufacturers carousel padding-bottom and pagination-dot spacing tightened to match the canonical demo proportions.
• Cart product images (span.cart-images img) now defensively constrained to width:45px; height:auto; max-height:60px; object-fit:contain — resolves the tall-narrow stretching under BS5 flex contexts.
• Breadcrumbs cleaned up: bullet markers removed, separator spacing tightened.
• Auto-generated menu-item alias 2015-02-18-10-15-06 on Template Features renamed to template-features — cleaner admin display, SEO-safe if the item is ever wired to a real page.

Fixed

• Stale jos_contact_details.image reference pointing at images/template.png (a file that never existed in any donor history) replaced with a real image, eliminating the broken-image render on the contact page.
• Donor _update_sites.location URLs cleaned of leading-line-feed + indentation corruption that libcurl rejected as "URL contains whitespace" — this was the source of the red ❌ badge on the cpanel admin dashboard immediately after install.
• Joomla 5 admin AJAX badge endpoints (com_postinstall/getMenuBadgeData, com_installer/database.getMenuBadgeData, etc.) verified clean through the server-side WAF and rate-limiter so the cpanel ships with all-green badges.

Removed

Legacy frameworks

• Bootstrap 2.3.2 vendored CSS — J5’s bundled Bootstrap 5.3.8 covers everything, with the bridge CSS aliasing legacy BS2 class names in customer-authored module content.
• jQuery 3 compat shim for legacy plugins — the modernized template runs on J5’s bundled jQuery without the shim.

Dead JavaScript

• Backstretch jQuery plugin (used historically for slideshow background images) — replaced with CSS background-size: cover.
• Dropkick custom <select> styling — replaced with native styled selects (light border, focus ring, SVG dropdown arrow) carried in the bridge CSS.
• Superfish / supersubs JS dependency on the megamenu — pure-CSS transition-delay now handles the hover timing without any JS.

Retired social services

• Google+ (defunct since 2019)
• StumbleUpon (defunct since 2018)
• Digg (no longer relevant in current social sharing)
• Blogger (icon dropped from the active set; site builders can re-add via custom-social-icon slot)

Donor cruft

• templates/horme_3/ and templates/vmbeez3/ — stale legacy donor templates left over from the 2016 origin point.
• templates/serenity/html/old-overrides/ — superseded override stubs (com_virtuemart/cart/default_*.php, mod_virtuemart_cart/default.php) that would otherwise have triggered "overrides exist for this layout" warnings in the customer’s Override Manager.
• Deprecated extensions: PayPal vmpayment plugin (manifest literally says "deprecated, please use PayPal Checkout" — superseded by vmpayment_paypal_checkout) and file_fof30 (Akeeba FOF 3.x library, superseded by FOF 4 in 2021; Akeeba Backup 10.x doesn’t need it).

Security

• WAF false-positive resolved at server level: LiquidWeb ModSecurity rules 5000223 and 5000224 (which were blocking the Joomla 5 admin AJAX badge endpoints with 403/411 responses) are now excluded for com_postinstall and com_installer task=getMenuBadgeData requests in the /etc/apache2/conf.d/modsec2.zz-cybersalt-joomla-ajax-fix.conf server-level override.
• Apache mod_evasive DOSPageCount raised from 4 to 30 to accommodate the J5 cpanel’s 10–15 badge AJAX calls per second — the previous threshold was tripping false-positives and surfacing red badges on every install.

Quickstart improvements

• Article hits counter reset to zero across all bundled content (68 articles, 1305 accumulated hits cleared). A fresh customer install no longer ships with pre-loaded view counts on the demo articles. Automated in the closeout pipeline as Phase 5j so future templates ship clean by default.
• Post-install messages cleaned up — no spurious red badges on the admin cpanel after install.
• Update Sites scrubbed of stale and broken vendor entries (whitespace-corrupted VirtueMart URLs, istraxx’s ${PHING.NAME}/${PHING.VERSION} unreplaced build-tool placeholders that polluted the _updates table). 4 broken sites disabled, 1 corrupted URL repaired.
• Template Overrides Checker pre-checked — the admin opens without "needs review" warnings on shipped overrides.
• Discover state corrected on bundled extensions so the cpanel Discover panel doesn’t flag the install as having undiscovered components.
• Deprecated extensions removed from the bundled fileset: PayPal vmpayment plugin and FOF30 library.
• Browser-cache walkaround guidance: customers performing the test install should open the admin URL in a new incognito / private window for the first walkaround — existing browser tabs accumulate cached HTML during admin clicks and can return 404/403 from stale CSRF tokens that have nothing to do with the install itself.

Package format

• pkg_serenity-5.4.0.zip — customer-facing package wrapper. Drop into Joomla’s Install → Extensions → Upload Package File. Wraps the bare template plus any related plugins/modules into a single install action.
• tpl_serenity.zip — bare template (flat-root), useful for J3/J4 migration paths or third-party developer integration.
• serenity-quickstart-J5.4.6-16.06.2026.zip — full-site quickstart bundle (~67 MB) with Joomla 5.4.6 core + VirtueMart 4.6.8 + Serenity template + bundled demo content. Unzip into a fresh hosting account, run the Joomla installer, and the demo site comes up matching the canonical demo at demo.virtuemarttemplates.net/Joomla5/Serenity/.