Viperfish is the personal site of Joomla!â„¢ Developer, John Pitchers. As co-owner of JoomStore.com, John specialises in development of Joomla based websites, custom extensions and provides consultation on Joomla implementation.

Upgrade Joomla!1.0 to Joomla!1.5

Written by John Pitchers Wednesday, 22 July 2009 00:12

If a few hours of me writing this article, Joomla 1.0 will officially reach it's end of life, for which us web geeks use the dramatic term "EOL". (If your partner mutters under their breath that you've reach your EOL you better be worried.)

If you are running a Joomla 1.0 website, what does this mean to you?

For the time being, your site will probably continue to serve you and operate just as it always has. What EOL means is that Joomla are no longer providing support or any further development for the Joomla 1.0 platform. In fact,  Joomla 1.0 hasn't had an update since Febrary, 2008. It also means developers are no longer expected to support their old components and modules and all Joomla 1.0 plugins will probably be removed completely from the Joomla Extensions Directory.

Eventually, server technology will evolve to a point where the old code is no longer compatible.

The first beta release of Joomla 1.5 was on 11th October, 2006. The first stable release January, 2008 - a year and a half ago.  Considering the life-cycle of most websites means they are redeveloped every 2 years, it's time to move forward.

It's all about security

All software needs to be continuously monitored and updated to keep ahead of hackers with malicious intentions who love nothing better than to deface websites and steal our personal information. Anyone who manages multiple websites or hosting environments will tell you that keeping on top of security and ahead or hackers is a full time job. If your software isn't up to date, it's just a matter of time before you will have your site hacked and sabotaged.

If you run a blog site or a small 5 or 6 page brochure site, it's important that you consider upgrading fairly soon. If you are a Marketing Manager or IT Manager responsible for maintaining a Joomla 1.0 website, it is absolutely vital that you upgrade your site as soon as possible.

But... and it's a big but.

Unfortunately, there is no simple upgrade path form Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5. A migration component exists but it only migrates standard Joomla content like categories, articles, menu items and the like. Any other plugins installed on the old site will need equivalent 1.5 compatible plugins sourced and installed on the new site and all content brought across. This can be done manually, one item at a time or by copying tables from one database to another.

Your Joomla 1.0 templates won't be compatible with Joomla 1.5 either. They will need to be redesigned and coded.

Of course, I can do all this for you. I know...I sound like a dodgy home security salesman selling you on fear. That wasn't my intention but I did used to sell home security quite a few years ago. lol

If you would like to discuss upgrading your site, please contact me here. I might even throw in some window locks!