<rant>

I hope I am not the only one who is getting a headache from the Joomla! folks. Part of the problem is being caused by “business promoters” of all things Joomla. I mean, I appreciate that there are folks who are making a living by making the effort to take the open source CMS Joomla and create an easier to use, prettier to look at, and able to do more things product. But they are starting to make my head spin.

To give an example…today, I received an e-newsletter from a company (who will remain nameless) who sells value-added Joomla products (templates, mods, etc.). Nice folks.

The first article in the newsletter warns us that the end of version 1.5 is coming soon (in April 2012 BTW, eight months from now). They go on to talk about how Joomla 1.8 is right around the corner and that you should be preparing for this event. What!? Joomla 1.6 came out six months ago and Joomla 1.7 just came out two weeks ago! What’s the big hurry?

A couple of articles later the same newsletter has another story about the release of Joomla ver 1.6.6. What? This same company told me just two weeks ago that there would be no further development of Joomla 1.6 and that users of ver 1.6.5 (the then latest version) had to immediately switch to ver 1.7 or all of their websites would turn to pumpkins!!!

You can read about all the fun that caused me elsewhere in this blog.

I guess someone changed their minds and development on ver 1.6 is continuing.

The Joomla home planet gets into this fracas with this comment – clear as mud:

The Joomla Project is pleased to announce the immediate availability of Joomla 1.6.6. This is a security release and is intended only for those users who are unable to use version 1.7.0. Most users should update to 1.7.0 unless there are specific reasons why they cannot use 1.7.0 at this time. Update instructions for updating from 1.6.5 to 1.6.6 are available here.

The Production Leadership Team’s goal is to continue to provide regular, frequent updates to the Joomla community. Learn more about Joomla! developement at the Developer Site.

Version 1.6 will reach end of life on 19 August 2011. All users of version 1.6 should update to version 1.7.0 before that time. The update process to version 1.7 is very simple, and complete instructions are available here.

The thing for everyone to remember is, converting from 1.5x to anything is not an easy process. Many mods which you have learned to rely on are either not going to be upgraded or have a new equivalent built into the core, and more importantly, many of your v 1.5x theme files will not work with ver 1.6, 1.7 and presumably 1.8. If you purchased a theme or spent a lot of time developing one to your liking, it is likely that you will have to start all over again, or at the very least, spend some development time moving things around and getting them to work. Sure, the core and the database may covert easily, but getting your website looking good and running, well, that’s gonna take you some time.

</rant>

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Image licensed by Creative Commons by thetorpedodog

In recent years, the Joomla community has eased my neuroses with some nice update modules that made the process more tolerable. BTW, the best CMS upgrade process is with WordPress which is almost completely painless, click a button and wait for it to do its thing. But upgrades of Joomla historically have been a lot more complicated and my past experiences were never very pleasant.

Some of you may know that Joomla came out with a new version (1.6) about six months ago. I have been contently using version 1.5 on my jebswebs core site and for several clients. I had figured to wait at least six months to make sure all of the bugs and kinks were worked out before attempting to make the upgrade. So, this morning when I read a security announcement that 1.6 had some issues, would not be supported after August 19th of this year, and the recommendation was to upgrade to 1.7 immediately, I got a little nervous and figured today would have to be the day.

Girded with a several cups of coffee and the latest migration directions in hand, I set about the task, following the directions with religious zeal. Make backups: done, check tech requirements: check, install jUpgrade – a new module that would automatically upgrade the install from 1.5 to 1.6 painlessly: done. I even made backups of backups.

The process seemed to go smoothly. The new installation appeared within a new folder and opened and worked appropriately. The MySQL tables apparently all converted nicely, my content was all there. But the first signs of trouble were the fact that jUpdate had not installed Joomla 1.6, it installed Joomla 1.7. But that can’t be a problem, right?

I moved the site to the live side of the public HTML folder and made sure my images and other folders were all working. I moved the 1.5 installation into a folder /myoldsite and let it rip!

Then the fun began.

The first thing I tried to do was switch off to my old template so the new site would look like the old site. But I soon learned that my old template would not work with Joomla ver 1.7 (or version 1.6 for that matter). I next headed over to my friends at JoomlaShack where I purchased the original template.  I selected a new template (Enterprise) and made my purchase. When I then checked the JoomlaShack support site, I discovered that others were having problems with the Enterprise template working with Joomla 1.7. Ugh.

So, until this new template gets updated, I am stuck in the water having to use the default Joomla template for jebswebs.com. Sorry folks, I know it looks ugly. I hope to get it fixed soon. Stay tuned.

For those Joomla 1.5 users considering their options, sit tight for the time being. Joomla will be supporting 1.5 LTS (Long term support) for at least another nine months. Joomla has also announced that ver 1.8 (LTS) will be released in January. Hopefully by then all of the bugs will be gone.

technology

I have been toying around with an article for my website describing the difference between traditional “static” websites and “dynamic” websites created with open source Content Management Systems (CMS).  I may still finish the article/blog and post it, but in the meantime a nice little article was just published by the folks at TechSoup which describes Joomla!, one of the several open source CMS out there. Thought this article was written for people who work in the nonprofit world, the article is fairly generic and can be broadly applied.

I particularly liked these two paragraphs:

Until about two years ago, there simply was no easy, cost-effective way for non-technical users to update their own site content. Clients either had to train existing staff to code HTML, purchase additional software, hire a webmaster, or contract for ongoing maintenance. Installing individual desktop software was especially cumbersome for organizations functioning outside the traditional office environment — a description that fits many nonprofits, which often rely on volunteers, part-time staff, and staff who work from home.

CMS technologies such as Joomla enable authorized staff members and volunteers to edit their own site content from a web-based interface, with no prior knowledge of HTML or programming. CMS users can create new menu items and web pages, add news and calendar listings, upload photos and videos, and even build online communities.

So check out the whole article!

Oh, and if you have a nonprofit that needs a Joomla! site, well, “we can do that!”

~j