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.

We are very pleased to announce the re-launch of Malcolm Pirnie's website. They are an environmental consulting firm based in White Plains, NY.

We originally built Pirnie's site back in 2006 in Joomla 1.0.  At that point in time, we made heavy use of exmenu -- an extension that allowed menus to be broken into a main top nav and a left side nav.  I think I had about 8 templates on the site as well, including one for the home page, one blank page, and about 6 variations on the inside page.

After Bill ported the site to Joomla 1.5, we slimmed this to three templates -- one for home, one for inside, and a blank page. We used a lot of interesting templating tricks to get this done.  We also added FrontPage Slideshow and Wysiwyg Pro for the editor -- making for easier pasting from Word, easier creation of internal links, and easy maintenance.

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.

Got an email from Azrul today stating that they're going to stop developing for Joomla 1.0, now that Joomla 1.0's support end date is announced.  They will support products for Joomla 1.0 already out there and anyone under a support contract until the contract runs out.

Azrul writes great extensions like MyBlog, JomComment, and others. I'd recommend using his blogging software for any Joomla site actually writing a blog... rather than using the blog functionality to post press releases or whatnot.

Just another reason to upgrade to Joomla 1.5!

Support for Joomla 1.0 is slated to end on July 22, 2009, 18 months after the release of Joomla 1.5.

 This leads to many Frequently Asked Questions.

 1. Should I be building my new Joomla sites in Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.5?