Upgrading to Joomla 2.5
If you're currently running Joomla 1.5 then now is the time to plan your upgrade.
Support for Joomla 1.5 based sites officially ends in April 2012. This means that there will be no further enhancements or security patches available for the 1.5 series of the CMS. In itself, this doesn't necessarily mean you must upgrade right away - your site should still function normally, it just means that over time the risk of a security breach increases as the core of the CMS is no longer being developed by the community and security patches for it and for third party extensions that may have installed on your site will not be available.
Upgrading from 1.5 to 2.5 can be a considerable challenge, especially if you have a large site with many third party extensions. Each site is different and a careful audit of the site should be carried out before you attempt an upgrade, specifically you will need to ensure that critical extensions are available for the Joomla 2.5 platform. And before embarking on the upgrade itself it's crucial that you take a complete site back up just in case things don't quite go to plan.
There are some tools out there that can help take some of the 'leg work' out of migrating the content. In particular the excellent JUpgrade tool which will get you a good way towards your goal of moving everything seamlessly to the new platform. It's worth noting that the tool is no magic bullet - it will not miraculously transform your site from 1.5 to 2.5 at the click of a button but it does get you a fair way down the road.
What are the plans for Web Foundry clients?
Over the course of 2012 we will be running a rolling program of migration for our existing 1.5 based clients. Fortunately we aleady have around 50% of clients migrated to 2.5 so with a fair wind we should have everyone upgraded by the end of the year.
Do you need help upgrading to Joomla 2.5?
If you would like more information about how to migrate to Joomla 2.5 then please contact us. We can offer advice and practical help with implementation and an upgrade audit can be carried out on your behalf together with a written action plan. Of course, this service is free to our existing clients.
The good news for the future...
As well as benefiting from dozens of new features and usability enhancements, Joomla 2.5 offers a 'one-click' upgrade to future versions. This is excellent news for clients and Joomla web developers everywhere as it takes a great deal of pain and cost out of keeping your website running the latest versions of the Joomla software.
Download our Free Joomla Release Schedule Chart
Other interesting articles that you may wish to read relating to upgrading Joomla: