Migrating to Joomla 1.6 – Are You Sure? -
As you might be aware of, Joomla has released a new version of its popular content management software – this dynamic portal engine has been finally advanced to Joomla 1.6, on January 11th 2011. From the official Joomla 1.6 release announcement the company has unveiled the range of new functions and features the new version delivers to designers, developers, admins and webmasters, as well as about manifold style improvements Joomla has undergone.
So what’s new in Joomla 1.6?
- new admin, template choices: Joomla 1.6 offers a whole new look at the Administrator Interface with some new templates that extend the Joomla! system;
- template styles: Joomla 1.6 offers a whole new world of versatility by allowing webmasters to create template styles. Basically, you can easily clone your template to apply custom changes or edits to it, and then assign it to specific menu items to create unique pages;
- core layout files are tableless: new for Joomla 1.6, all core output files are written in XHTML 1.0 Strict. HTML 5 is also supported in Joomla 1.6;
- codemirror editor: finally, there’s a color-coded editor for easier HTML and CSS editing in Joomla;
- media manager improvements: the Flash-based media uploader brings the ability for users to upload multiple files at one time. You can also upload multiple images at once to the Media Manager.
- SEO features: meta-keywords and meta-descriptions can be assigned to articles, categories, and menu items, and you can easily add a site name to the HTML page title;
- new package installation capability: developers can now pack their components allowing users to install one file and include multiple extensions all at the same time;
- easily included language capabilities: with Joomla 1.6’s new language structure, developers are allowed to include additional language packages right with their extensions;
- integrated ACL capability: the development team has made it very easy to include advanced ACL features inside of any 3rd party component. With just a few code changes your component can allow your users to take advantage of the revolutionary ACL structure for their users;
- upgraded system requirements: the new operating requirements for Joomla 1.6 (particularly PHP 5.2) offers developers a great advantage by allowing them to take advantage of object-oriented programming and functionality;
- nested categories: with infinite layers of categories, creating a representation of your site map in Joomla! is a breeze;
- easy extension updates: you can easily update those extensions from within Joomla, without visiting dozens of extension developer’s websites, in Joomla 1.6;
- new plugin format: with the release of Joomla 1.6, plugins now have the same common structure as components and modules;
- consistent component programming: Joomla 1.6 provides a new and cohesive method for building components;
- for more principal changes introduced in Joomla 1.6, you may read the information offered by the Joomla Documentation.
Guidelines in upgrading your Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 1.6
It’s quite clear that with the release of Joomla 1.6 plenty of web developers now wonder how they can painlessly migrate from 1.5 to 1.6. With so many core changes carried on, that is in fact a huge issue for ordinary web users. However, there’s no defined upgrade path from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 1.6 (this is indeed a migration) which makes it rather tedious to upgrade to Joomla 1.6 easily. Yet it seems we can outline some good solutions:
- the Joomla Documentation website introduces a nice step-by-step guideline through the general procedure of how to migrate from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 1.6;
- additionally, there’s a third-party developer, named Matias Aguirre, who has created a j1.5 to j1.6 migration component called jUpgrade. That is a 3rd party Joomla extension on the JED which allows you to migrate from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6. Besides, many of Joomla’s developers are volunteering currently to put the finishing touches on it;
- another valued contributor to the Joomla community whose name is Hagen Graf developed a tutorial about upgrading from Joomla 1.5 website to Joomla 1.6. You may read over his guideline and find everything you need to get started with a migration;
- you may also peek into the official Joomla discussion forum and read about the hottest topic of Joomla 1.6 support questions.
However, if you’re a Joomla user who is thinking of upgrading to this new version, before starting the upgrade make sure that you have a look at the system requirements of Joomla 1.6 and take a backup of your current Joomla installation. Besides, ascertain that all modules and plugins you use are compatible with Joomla 1.6. These are the first steps in the process of migration, otherwise the upgrade may go wrong and you may lost some valuable data.
What about TemplateMonster’s Joomla Templates?
TemplateMonster has already released a number of professional Joomla 1.6 Templates that work with the latest Joomla 1.6 version. What’s for our Joomla 1.5 Templates they aren’t mainly compatible with Joomla 1.6 and frequently require being made-up from scratch to get running on Joomla 1.6. This is connected with various reasons – mainly because of utilizing plugins and extensions that aren’t supported in Joomla 1.6 version. Yet we think that so far it doesn’t make much sense to upgrade to Joomla 1.6 if your existing Joomla 1.5 site is well running. First of all, because it will take much time for the extension developers to produce upgraded versions of essential Joomla plugins, and your website most likely relies on these functionality plugins greatly.
Should you consider switching to Joomla 1.6?
Actually, it was a major undertaking for Joomla developers to get version 1.6 up and running – much of the code has been written from the very ground up and lots of the awesome core changes have been made. Thus, the upgrade process is not just about copying and uploading new files, it is all much more complicated than that – because the rest of the Joomla components market now has to catch up with the Joomla 1.6. So, the migration to version 1.6 is something not all webmasters need. If your existing website works well, you’d better stick to Joomla 1.5 for some time until there’s enough components for you. Plus, it’s highly recommended to wait a while with the migration and let Joomla 1.6 mature a bit.
Hopefully, the above mentioned information helps you out for the time being. And if you absolutely need to migrate to the highly innovative 1.6 version, visit the official web page of Joomla 1.6 where you can download a full package and see Joomla 1.6 live demo.