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Upgrade to Joomla! 1.7 or Joomla! 1.8?

April 4th, 2011 at 6:42 PM CEST in Joomla 1.7

Update: Joomla! 1.7 was released on 19 July 2011. Check our Joomla 1.7 templates out now!

Last weekend the Dutch Joomla!Days 2011 were held. All four ThemePartner core members went to check it out and we also gave two presentations. Such an event is always a great opportunity to talk to other Joomla! users and learn what obstacles they are facing in the Joomla! world. I noticed that some were wondering what to do when a new version of Joomla! is released. Questions such as "Should I upgrade to Joomla! 1.7?" or "Will Joomla! 1.7 be backwards compatible with Joomla! 1.6?" were heard several times. I think it is safe to say that the new release schedule of Joomla! leaves some people puzzled with what they should do.

Future of Joomla 1.7 and Joomla 1.8?

Photo credits: seier+seier

About the new release schedule of Joomla!

Previous versions of Joomla! were released when a specific set of new features were ready. This way it could take years before a new Joomla! version was released (take version 1.0 to 1.5 for example, that took almost three years!). This has been changed and (inspired by Linux distribution Ubuntu) new Joomla! versions are now released every six months. Every eighteen months, a so called Long Term Support (LTS) version is released. LTS releases are supported for three months after the next LTS release. The advantage of an LTS release is that you don't need to upgrade to a next major release that often.

Now what?

The next LTS release will be Joomla! 1.8 (or perhaps Joomla 2.0 as it will most likely mark a new era in Joomla?) which is supposed to be released at the 10th of january 2012, which is exactly 12 months after the release of Joomla 1.6. This means that if you deploy a website on Joomla! version 1.7 you'll need to keep in mind that after about six months no new security fixes are released. If you're the administrator of many Joomla! sites this can have a big impact. Joomla 1.5 will be supported until april 2012 as it is marked as an LTS release. You should ask yourself before upgrading to Joomla! 1.7 (or version 1.6 of course) if there are any features in it that you really need. If your site is running fine on version 1.5 and you don't need any of the new features then there is no real reason why you should upgrade. And if you decide to upgrade to version 1.7 (or any other non LTS release) you should be aware that after approximately six months you probably need to upgrade.

Backwards compatible

At the Dutch Joomla!Days 2011 both Brian Teeman and Ryan Ozimek mentioned that the Joomla! team tries to keep version 1.7 backwards compatible with version 1.6. There aren't any guarantees that it is fully backwards compatible, but if it isn't I don't think upgrading to Joomla! 1.7 will be as hard as upgrading from 1.5 to 1.6.

You can read more about the Dutch Joomla!Days 2011 in our reports of day 1 and day 2.

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User Comments (6)

Add comment

Stefan

June 24th, 2011 at 9:29 PM CEST

Thank you for the interesting information. I have read elsewhere that it will be easier to update from 1.5. to 1.7., because 1.7. will include an upgrade "tool" that 1.6. does not have. (As far as I know you have to install Jupgrade). any news about that? Regards.

Deepak

July 20th, 2011 at 4:52 AM CEST

Thank you for the information, it will help me in dission making to upgard now or later. I think I will wait till April 2012 before upgarding.

Thnak You
Deepak Labde
www.LabdeFamily.com

StevenH

July 28th, 2011 at 6:52 AM CEST

I've decided that waiting for 2.0 (or whatever it will be) is worth avoiding the upgrading nightmares. I manage a dozen 1.5 installs so I might be more biased about the versioning frenzy J! seems to be in. I would have much rather waited another 12-16 months for 2.0, rather than do 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 upgrades -- with all the plugin trickle that follows versioning changes.

But that's just one mans humble opinion.
Cheers all

Matt

August 11th, 2011 at 4:35 PM CEST

I manage a small handful of sites, including one that I was hoping to rebuild in 1.7. However, MOST of the extensions that I need are not 1.7-compatible and don't appear as though they ever will be. I'm also noticing that there are only a small handful of 1.7 extensions and the vast majority of those are NOT free, which saddens me since the Joomla community supports open-source extensions. Granted, there are some that are actually worth paying for (but not necessarily the amount that the authors are charging).

Robert

August 22nd, 2011 at 7:36 PM CEST

I had quite a bit of success in upgrading sites from J1.5 to J1.6 and almost no issues with the automatic upgrade from J1.6 to J1.7, a few broken extensions but they were updated right away.

There are plenty of decent extensions for J1.7, virtually all the ones for J1.6 will work in J1.7. And if you have a J1.5 extension that is not upgraded yet, most of those have alternatives that are J1.7 ready. The major ones have been upgraded to J1.7 or are in beta stages now.

Also open source does not mean free as in free of charge, it means free as in the freedom to have the source code to modify as needed and to contribute to by anyone.

I have no issue paying for quite a few of these extensions that measure up to good coding practices and are regularly updated. It really comes down to what 3rd party companies you choose to support and which 3rd party companies actively support their product.