Joomla v1.6? upgrade already...!

I’ve built a quite a few websites using the Joomla platform in the last couple of years and while it hasn’t always been straightforward and it wouldn’t be my first choice, I have learnt to like it. I’ve got the scars and tired eyes to prove it. No - it’s never that bad!

Then along came Joomla 1.6…

3 years in development, with oodles of updates and modifications… I had to try it out! Very impressed I was and still am. However, although a major release, this was just a ‘temporary’ release ahead of the next few. Doh - I missed that!

Version 1.7 was released in mid-July and 1.8 is due in Jan 2012. The critical thing is the shelf life of the 1.6 and 1.7 releases. With 1.7 being released a couple of weeks back, 1.6 will officially be no longer supported from the end of August. It won’t be until the v1.8 release (January 2012) that the latest Joomla core will have  support for 18 months. That’ll mean security patches and updates for a more reasonable length of time.

All is not lost if you’ve jumped at the sound of the ‘v1.6 gun’. The saving grace is that updating from Joomla 1.6.5+ upwards is simple. In fact moving from 1.6.5 to 1.7 was a doddle and took me less than 2 minutes. However, I’ll admit that is was a bit more a faff updating to 1.6.5 in the first place. 

The moral of the story is that if you are planning a Joomla site development in the coming months, keep that Joomla release schedule in mind…