<h2>Announcement bar for Joomla 5.4</h2>
<p>Announcement Pilot adds one announcement bar to a Joomla 5.4 site without editing the template. The settings use Joomla's own plugin form, permissions and save action.</p>
<p>The bar supports:</p>
<ul>
<li>Plain-text messages up to 500 characters (HTML is removed, line breaks kept).</li>
<li>An optional button with text and a safe internal or https:// destination.</li>
<li>Four starting designs: Welcome, Free shipping, Sale and Store update.</li>
<li>Six-digit hex colours for background, text, button and button text.</li>
<li>Desktop and mobile font sizes, vertical spacing and bold text.</li>
<li>Top-of-page or bottom-of-page placement.</li>
<li>All devices, desktop only, or mobile only.</li>
<li>An optional close button. Closing hides the bar for the current page view only; no cookie and no browser storage.</li>
<li>A live preview and local impressions, clicks and click-through rate for the last 30 days, shown on the plugin's own Analytics tab.</li>
<li>A scoped stylesheet and a small deferred script served from your own site.</li>
</ul>
<p>The free plugin contacts no third-party service on the frontend. It creates no database tables and stores only its settings in the plugin parameters. It has no scheduling, targeting, rotation or countdowns, and it shows one bar for the whole site.</p>
<p><strong>A separate paid edition.</strong> Announcement Pilot Pro (plgsystemannouncementpilotpro) is a different Joomla plugin that adds up to eight rotating messages with pause and advance, page-path and language targeting, scheduled start and stop times, and a countdown with a custom end message and automatic expiry. It is bought and downloaded from PLANO's licensing site, not from this listing. The free plugin is complete and functional on its own: it contains no locked Pro code and needs no account, key, trial or purchase.</p>
<p><strong>Requirements.</strong> Joomla 5.4 only; PHP 8.1 or newer. The installer refuses older Joomla versions and PHP. Tested with the default Cassiopeia template. The bar is inserted in normal document flow after the opening body tag or before the closing body tag, so a fixed template header can overlap a top bar; use bottom placement or adjust the template.</p>