Print Layout Design

5 Questions about Joomla 2.5

1. Why do I have to move from Joomla 1.5?

The short answer is you don't. You can keep running your sites in Joomla 1.5, and they will continue to work as they do now.

The longer answer is you probably really want to move your sites. In my opinion, the sooner you move them, the less pain and risk you'll feel in the long run.

Joomla 1.5 reaches its end of life in April 2012. After this point, no more security releases for Joomla 1.5 will be available. If a security issue is found in Joomla 1.5, it will not be patched by the project.

There's also an issue of support. Shortly after Joomla 1.0 reached its end of life in July 2009, we saw many 3rd party developers stopped supporting extensions for Joomla 1.0. I expect we will see this same trend after Joomla 1.5 reaches its end of life, with most 3rd party developers dropping Joomla 1.5 support for their extensions within a year, probably by April 2013. This means if you need to add new functionality to your Joomla 1.5 website, you'll find that pretty difficult if you don't upgrade.

Security issues may be discovered in extensions, which can provide an entrance to your website for a hacker. If the extensions aren't supported, the security issues won't be addressed.

2. Will I pay for this?

You'll have to answer this question for your own site. We simply can't migrate all sites for free.

But if you're going to move your sites to 2.5, now is the time to plan for a site migration for this year. We can provide a rough estimate for moving the site. 

3. How hard will it be to move a site?

We can make a few educated guesses based on what we've seen with Joomla 1.6 and 1.7.

• Some kind of method will be available to move from 1.5 to 2.5. For 1.6 and 1.7, there is a third party extension available for this process. However, this migration method works only for Joomla's core functionality (i.e. what you see when Joomla is first installed). It does not move data for any 3rd party extensions.
• We know that Joomla's core HTML output changed significantly from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6. For example, there are no more table-based layouts in com_content (YAY!). This can potentially impact custom templates when moving them from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6 or 1.7. CSS styles, and specifically names of classes and IDs, have changed, HTML tags have changed, and consequently, your CSS selectors in your custom style sheet will also need to change to preserve the look of your site.
• For custom templates, you may need to re-evaluate which browsers you're supporting for your template. We have templates we built in 2008, before the rise of Chrome and IE 9, so this is an opportunity to update templates to take advantage of features of modern browsers.
• If you are running 3rd party extensions containing lots of data — CCK's like K2, Zoo, and Mighty Resources; shopping carts like VirtueMart, Tienda, and redSHOP; or social media extensions like JomSocial and Community Builder come to mind immediately — you will need to be sure you can migrate your data quickly and easily from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5. Frequently, a migration tool, similar to the tool that moves data between versions of Joomla, will be required to make this move easily.
• Some parts of the site may need to be rebuilt, despite your best attempts to move the site between versions. It's possible other 3rd party extensions will not be developed for Joomla 2.5, so you will need to find replacement extensions and configure them according to your  needs. For example, the poll component/module that was available in Joomla 1.5 is no longer include in Joomla 1.6 and higher. You may need to find a poll component to replace this.

In general, if you're moving core Joomla data (that means standard Joomla content plus extensions that come with Joomla), you should be just fine and find the move to be straightforward.

If you're moving lots of data, lots of 3rd party extensions, or anything custom, expect a longer process and much more work along the way.

If you are working with a commercially available template, check with the template provider to find out if the template has been moved to the next version of Joomla. Most of the major template providers have been moving their templates from 1.5 to 1.6 and 1.7. If you have an older template, you may want to check to find out if there are plans to move it to 2.5. If not, you may need to find a new template for your client.

If you're working with a free template, you may not find a new version of it, and it's possible you won't find any support to move the template either. In this case, you'd have to replace the template with a new one.

4. How much will it cost to move a site?

If you know me, you know my favorite answer... It Depends. Is it a simple 10 page site with nothing outside of core Joomla functionality? Or is the site over 2000 pages in size, running a CCK, a custom template, and custom extensions?

Cost is directly related to the difficulty of making the move. Contact me for a quote.

5. What if I want to redesign as part of the migration process?

You may want to redesign your site(s) as they are moved to new versions of Joomla. This is particularly true if the you must pick a new template for their site, due to lack of support of that template in Joomla 2.5. The move should also present an opportunity for you to review the content on your sites and make updates. (I find when you view old content in a new template, you may want to update it.)