What's new for operators (CBX 4)
- Version
- 3.x
- Updated
For shop managers and staff who build products and run the store in the CBX backend. This is the "what's better / what looks different" overview. For the concrete relearn ("this button moved, this word changed"), see the retraining brief: operators-what-changed.md.
This page is about the jump to 4.0. For what has been built since — new admin screens, the payment ledger, the on-screen help, the AI assistant — see Latest features, and the admin in particular. That set is cut by surface rather than by audience, so it is a different read, not a continuation of this one.
Dark mode in the admin
- The CBX backend now follows your Joomla admin light / dark / auto setting. If you switch the Joomla administrator template to dark (or "auto", which follows your operating system), CBX's screens go dark with it — menus, forms, lists, the calculation and rule editors, dropdowns.
- Nothing to configure inside CBX; it picks up the admin template's choice.
- No change to how anything works — same screens, same buttons, just readable in dark.
Answers are simpler to build
The biggest change you'll feel: the old split between a global "Options" library and assigning those options to questions is gone. Now:
- Each question simply has its Answers, edited right there. One editor, one place.
- There is no separate "Options" menu item and no "assign an existing option / Reused Answer" step.
- Every answer is independent: its title, price, SKU, image and settings belong to that answer in that question. Editing an answer changes only that answer.
What this means in practice: it's more straightforward — you no longer manage a shared library and worry about "editing this option changes it in every question that uses it." The trade-off: if you previously reused one option across many questions, those are now separate answers; changing all of them means editing each (see the retraining brief and the note for decision makers about the one-time upgrade).
Everything else is where it was
Products, pages, questions, calculations, rules, orders, customers, currencies, tax, shipping, payment, reviews, notifications, the dashboard — all unchanged in layout and behaviour. Your saved products, carts, and orders are unaffected by the upgrade.
For technical staff / deploys
New command-line tools exist for administrators managing the install (clearing caches, applying updates, reading/writing settings) — see the developer/CLI docs. These are for technical staff, not day-to-day shop operation.