Stack playbook · Snapshot 23 October 2026
Joomla: readiness playbook
What 451 measured sites on this platform or framework get right, where they fall short, and the Joomla-specific steps that close each gap.
- Sites measured
- 451
- Median readiness index
- 53/100
- Profiles on this stack
- 17
detected from homepage HTML and headers
all sites: 64
top-50K sites
Readiness by lane
Enable
65/100
All sites 77
Harden
51/100
All sites 55
Accelerate
45/100
All sites 63
Recover
18/100
All sites 11
The Joomla playbook
Gaps ordered by impact, with the platform-specific step where one exists.
HSTS kept for at least a year
19% observed · all sites 31%
Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.
No render-blocking scripts in <head>
5.1% observed · all sites 44%
Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.
Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page
Static files cached for 30 days or more
22% observed · all sites 50%
Give versioned (fingerprinted) CSS, JavaScript, fonts and images Cache-Control: public, max-age=31536000, immutable, and change the file name whenever the content changes.
DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject
24% observed · all sites 31%
Publish DMARC with p=none and a reporting address first, fix any legitimate senders that fail SPF or DKIM alignment, then move to quarantine and finally reject.
Modern image formats in use
26% observed · all sites 40%
Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.
Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format
security.txt published
1.2% observed · all sites 5.5%
Publish /.well-known/security.txt with at least Contact and Expires fields, as RFC 9116 requires, and review it before it expires.
CAA records limit who can issue certificates
6.4% observed · all sites 11%
Publish CAA records naming every CA you actually use, including the CAs your CDN uses for managed certificates. Add an iodef contact if you want reports.
HTTP/3 advertised
14% observed · all sites 36%
Turn on HTTP/3 at your CDN. Browsers fall back to HTTP/2 automatically, so the risk is low.
Where Joomla sites lead
- robots.txt published91% observedall sites 79%
- Referrer-Policy set34% observedall sites 23%
- Nameservers spread across providers18% observedall sites 11%
- Page language declared95% observedall sites 91%