Joomla 1.5 - What you need to know

This article has been well researched and is presented by Phil Taylor, a Joomla Expert and ex-core developer of Mambo Open Source, the basis on which Joomla 1.x is founded. It is based on publically available facts.

If you don’t read the whole article, just read the next line!

* FACT: Joomla 1.5 does not provide an ‘upgrade’ path from earlier versions. *

UPDATE: After 3 hours research for this article, Darn Wordpress stripped all my links to the fact sources when I saved the article, - Google the text of the facts and you will find them true - all were quotes from dev.joomla.org blogs or the joomla forums and all were from Jinx or other ore team members.

I am asked everyday now about Joomla 1.5. Due to the marketing that is being released at joomla.org users of Joomla are being very badly misled into believing that “upgrading” their current site to Joomla 1.5 will be an easy task. This blog post is hopefully going to show some of the pitfalls and smash that false conception.
The “upgrade” of a Joomla 1.0.12 website to Joomla 1.5 will be VERY easy and very smooth ONLY if you are:

* A Website that has just content in Joomla Content Manager, banners, users, weblinks

* A website with NO 3rd Party Components, modules or mambots

* A template designed for both Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.0.x

* A few days for research, migrating and reconfiguration of your new Joomla 1.5 site

* The memory of an elephant!

* No custom SEF enabled

If thats you then great! but for 99% of Joomla websites at least one of the above will be a problem. For some it will be the fact that they are using custom components, for some they will not have the time to reconfigure Module positions and configuration settings.

* FACT: Joomla 1.5 does not provide an ‘upgrade’ path from earlier versions. *

* FACT: “this is exactly what the move to 1.5 will consist of. Building a new site with a facility to migrate existing content.” *

* FACT: “The only things that will be fixed [in Joomla 1.0.x versions] are security issues” *

* FACT: “As with all beta releases the [bug] tracker of 1.5 looks massive” *

* FACT: The Joomla 1.5 Beta was rushed, changes were still taking place 1 hour before release & Since the beta, Fundermental and huge changes have been made that have forced 3rd party developers to recode templates & Components to maintain compatibilty - even function name calls are changing and the whole template system - the API is still changing*

* FACT: The user interface was frozen in July - yet changes are still being made *

* FACT: Joomla was declared feature complete in July - yet features are still being added and more changes considered *

* FACT: the earliest point where a third party developer could start developing on the new API and expect it to remain stable was announced Jult 8th - yet changes are still applied that break 3rd party development and even core components! *

There are currently two ways to convert your Joomla 1.0.12 website to a Joomla 1.5 website - both require that you start from scratch!

==Semi-Automatic Conversion==

Converting an older site to a Joomla 1.5 site requires first, dumping the existing Joomla 1.0.x tables using a free Joomla 1.0.x component called com_migrator

What the com_migrator will do:

* Dumps your existing Joomla 1.0.x tables into 3 files.

* A file with a complete backup

* A file with core Joomla Tables

* All other tables (anything not core Joomla) in another file

* Thats It !!

The com_migrator is actually more of a backup component as it just dumps your tables to flat sql files - it doesnt actually do any conversion or migration, its just a backup tool!!

What the com_migrator will NOT do:

* The com_migrator will backup 3rd Party Component Tables, but then they are not used anywhere.

* Any conversion, encoding change, manipulation of data.

This migration of _content_ (Read, the content, weblinks, banners, contacts, newsfeeds, polls and users - Core Joomla features - NOT content in 3rd party components) is NOT a one-to-one process and involves conversions and modifications to the content dump (Changing encodings and table structure).

A manual creation of a brand new empty site using Joomla 1.5 upto to stage 6 of the installation wizard is then required, you can then feed it the Core Content (No information here about 3rd party data) file created by com_migrator. The installation wizard will then convert your data to UTF-8 (Whether you want it to or not! You might already use a different encoding!) and manipulate the table structure and field names so that they fit the new Joomla 1.5 structure and import your content (Read, the content, weblinks, banners, contacts, newsfeeds, polls and users - Core Joomla features - NOT content in 3rd party components).

* The wizard migrates all core content records in the database (i.e. content, weblinks, banners, contacts, newsfeeds, polls and users - NOT 3rd Party Tables).

* The wizard reconstructs menus to the new menu data structure with menu items that link to core content (not 3PD components)

* The wizard APPENDS all core module records from the old site to the module table of the new Joomla 1.5 site. Original Joomla 1.5 modules records are not deleted but set to ‘unpublished’. All parameter settings are preserved.

– — –
* Warning: NONE of your links in ANY menu to ANY 3rd Party component will be restored, they will just be abandoned!

* Warning: The user will need to reset module positions, order and publish settings.

* Warning: The wizard does not migrate database records for ANY 3PD extensions.

* Warning: The wizard does not migrate non-db content such as banner images, files, photos etc. So all your images paths will need changing if they are absolute (and even if they are relative) and links to files and images will need manual checking, you will need to manually copy these to your new Joomla 1.5 website.

* Warning: The wizard requires iconv module to be loaded in PHP.ini to convert encodings (Only enabled in PHP5 by default, users with PHP4 will have to get their webhost to enable this module)

* Warning: Uploading of the migration file could time out or be restriced on some webhosts by their file upload limits.

== Manual conversion ==

This is a nightmare and should only be attempted by those with considerable experience with databases.

* The table structure of some core Joomla tables are different between Joomla 1.0.11 and Joomla 1.5

* There are 2 known field names that have changed

* The mambots table has been replaced with the plugins table

* You cannot manually migrate your menu! (Menu records are no longer valid as the structure and menu system has changed.)

* Typed Content (Static content) is no longer a valid content type, you have to manually convert these items.

I am painting a black picture I know, but these are the facts taken from the people who have developed Joomla 1.5. I personally am amazed when I hear of customers and visitors to our site that are actually running their live site on Joomla 1.5 !! or are asking me to help them “upgrade” asap!

The fact is this - moving from Joomla 1.0.12 to Joomla 1.5 is going to require a lot of hard work for the webmaster of the site - but it will all be worth it - Joomla 1.5 is a great platform and moving forward many great things are going to go out of the new framework the developers have laid down.

The situation for 3rd Party developers is this, there is no automated way to move your 3rd party component from your Joomla 1.0.12 website to your Joomla 1.5 website, and even if there was there would be no way to ensure it would be compatible. Its like taking the engine from one car into another car - it takes some hacking and chopping and reconfiguration, sweat and tears, but it is possible - or just buy a new engine designed especially for you new highly polished car that is especially made to integrate into the compartment and it snuggly (no duct tape required!)