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To migrate from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5: That is the question

One of the big questions we get asked these days is whether it's worthwhile to upgrade from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5. As with all web design and development questions, the correct answer is: It Depends.

There are generally two schools of thought on this.

The "If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It" school says that if you're site is working in Joomla 1.0, then why bother to migrate? It's doing what you want, so you don't need to change it. This certainly has some validity, in that you save money in the short term by not migrating.

The second school of thought is "Future Forward". Since Joomla 1.0 is no longer supported past July 22, 2009, now is the time to migrate to Joomla 1.5. The consequence of not changing prior to July 22 could be paid in security. Joomla will not be updating the 1.0 code base past that point. If a security vulnerability is discovered, it won't be patched. Furthermore, it seems that many (but certainly not all) 3rd party extensions for Joomla 1.0 are either not supported now or won't be supported about the same time. Again, these are potential security vulnerabilities. If your site is hacked, there's really no recourse. You can post it again via a backup, but the hackers will return quickly and knock it down again. And now, you don't have any way of patching those vulnerabilities in a timely manner. You'll have to migrate at that point -- and now you might get charged a rush rate on top of everything.

We at 4Web tend to fall into the "Future Forward" school of thought. We encourage Joomla 1.0 site owners to migrate just as soon as they can.

When Microsoft says they won't support a specific version of Windows anymore, most people do indeed move to the next version of the operating system. It's largely due to potential security vulnerabilities, as well as lack of support for programs people might want to run (and potentially lack of hardware support as well).

Likewise, with Joomla 1.5, there's not going to be much (if any) development for 1.0 extensions going forward -- even as of this writing, that support is disappearing quickly. And the security issue is really quite big. We encourage businesses to look ahead, bite the bullet, and invest in the future with a site upgrade. You don't HAVE to upgrade your site map or template at the same time, which could be done at a later point.

So you want to migrate -- how much does that cost?

Well, guess what? It Still Depends.

Part 1: The core Joomla migration

In the simplest Joomla 1.0 site, you have essentially a default install -- no additional extensions of any kind. This site is straightforward to move with the migration tools that are out there. It happens in two big steps. First, you migrate the database piece into the Joomla 1.5 install. Then you'll need to port over the template separately, while updating all of its template code. Since the HTML changes between versions, you'll also need to make some CSS tweaks to make the site look as it did. Finally, you may have some module tweaking to do as well. The process, for me, generally takes 4-8 hrs to complete.

But that is the simplest site out there! And they get complicated very quickly.

Part 2: But I did use some third party extensions...

Of course you did. Who doesn't?

Migrating these extensions is a separate process. Some migrators incorporate the most popular 3rd party extensions, while other migrators don't. And of course, you might have used an extension that's not "popular" and for which there is no migrator.

In the most rosy scenario, there is a 1.0 extension with a corresponding 1.5 extension and a migrator between the two. Less rosy is the the extensions without the migrator. But unfortunately, there isn't a 1.5 extension available in many situations -- only the 1.0 extension exists.

In those cases, you'll have to find a roughly equivalent extension that does mostly the same type of thing for Joomla 1.5, or you'll have to custom code the old extension for Joomla 1.5 yourself.

Either way, it's not pretty, and it's a lot of extra expense for your client and a lot of extra time for you.

Be sure you look carefully at the migration path for those 3rd party extensions and have a plan for schlepping the data BEFORE you start and BEFORE you quote.

Part 3: But what about the core customizations I made...

Of course you did. Most people changed something in their Joomla 1.0 install. There were no template overrides back in the day, so you had to touch the core Joomla code. Every time you upgraded your version of Joomla 1.0, these were the customizations you had to go back and re-enter all over again.

And of course, those customizations don't translate to Joomla 1.5. Some of those changes are hopefully no longer needed. But some of them may still be needed, so what happens?

You definitely need an engineer here to identify exactly which pieces of code shall be kept and are still required, which pieces can go away, which become template overrides, etc. And expect that you'll find surprises along the way, things you might miss when putting together a quote.

Boy, does this sound like a pain in the rear.

Yup, it's a huge pain in the rear -- and an expensive one.

And what happens when we have to go from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 1.6?

Everything I have read and been told is that the migration process should be more straightforward. Let's keep our fingers crossed that it is.