With the impending end of official support for Joomla! 1.0 and as I prepare for my session at the upcoming CMS conference, I've found myself revisiting the ongoing question of whether to build sites in 1.0 or 1.5.

As a developer who has enthusiastically embraced 1.5, my knee jerk reaction is that of course (!) we should all be building new sites in 1.5 and drop 1.0 like a hot potato. How could anyone even question this? Some of the comments to the official annoucement (see here) served to remind me that there are other perspectives well worth consideration. Although I have to say, I find the comment that  "I realy[sic] hate 1.5. Its[sic] just so messy that I would send the programmes[sic] back to school and scrap the whole code" pretty much impossible to warm up to on any level. I'll just vehemently disagree with that assessment and move on to my main points.

Other, more thoughtful comments made me reconsider that knee jerk reaction. Here at 4Web, our focus is on high end, custom Joomla sites for large companies. As a developer writing the custom extensions, I have rarely seen a better - or even equally - congenial environment and API for extending and customizing a code base as I see in J!15. Things that were difficult or a struggle in J!10 are a breeze. For us and our goals, there is no question that J!15 is the way to go. Thus the knee jerk.

But what about those of you working on smaller sites or who have a large base of existing J!10 sites? The choice may be quite a bit fuzzier.

I've only recently realized that many web designers are installing Joomla!, selecting or buying a template with their client in mind and installing what extensions will get the job done. J!15 hasn't even had its first anniversary and many (most?) available, already written extensions:

1.  Only run under J!10
2. Run under J15 in legacy mode (often with difficulty)
3. Have been adjusted to technically run natively in J!15, but still rely on many J!10 techniques that can cause difficulty in J!15
4. Have entirely new (often beta or even alpha) versions written expressly to the J!15API.

It will be awhile before the weight shifts decisively to J!15. Part of the problem is that some of the most popular extensions (Community Builder comes to mind) are so large and complex that refactoring them to J!15 must be a headache of monumental proportions. And when J!16 comes out, it is unclear to me what compatibility issues will show up with even fully native J!15 extensions - and J!10 extensions will be utterly dead in J!16.

So what to do? You have everything you need in J!10. A mature product with a a massive collection of extensions and templates allowing you to build a fabulous site for the average client with fairly simple needs.

 So if you take a long view of the future, J!10 is working for you, and/or you have a large J!10 client base , why not wait for J!16 before looking beyond? It kinda makes some sense to me.

And if you aren't taking a long range view, why upgrade at all? It is not at all unlikely that J!10 will never completely go away. I wouldn't doubt some collection of developers will hang on and keep it alive for some time after the official Joomla! core team abandons it. I've seen this happen many times. Heck - people are still writing code in my first computer language FORTRAN. Useful stuff never completely goes away.

Bottom line, like so many things in life, it's a bit of crap shoot. If you have any skill or talent at all, you can usually find people who will appreciate your services monetarily regardless of your choice of tools. J!10 is a great system. For our purposes, J!15 is a better fit. Maybe for you J!10 is a better fit.