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The Joomla upgrade process
interactive news
Last year Joomla issued a new version to its CMS, and though we looked forward to using its wide array of new features and better designed workflow, we stopped short of recommending upgrades for anyone with an existing installation. Unlike upgrading an application on your computer, the Joomla upgrade presented compatibility issues with extensions installed on your system.
A year later, and it became clear that the developers of just about every major and/or popular Joomla extension had issued versions compatible with Joomla 1.7. Extensions that remained incompatible after that time were either abandoned by their developers or saw their specific features built into the new Joomla version.
Recently, we had the opportunity to upgrade a Joomla 1.5 deployment for Amy Binder, who keeps her site at amyink.com. Amy's relatively simple web presence highlights her copywriting business and includes a bio, writing samples, a history of her career, and samples. Completing the upgrade took us about eight hours.
Back up, back up, back up
interactive news
You have to backup your files. You've probably heard that warning since the first day you touched a keyboard. But how do you back-up your website?
If we've installed your website using either Wordpress or Joomla, you have what is called a "database-driven" site. Simply described, your website consists of two components: A database that contains all your content and an application that extracts the data and pours it onto your pages. Both of these components need to be backed up.
Joomla 1.6: Should you upgrade?
interactive news
Earlier this year, the Joomla developer community released a major upgrade to the Joomla CMS. This new release brought two major changes long-desired by users and developers alike: Broader and better user access control and the ability to create unlimited nested categories. In fact, on that latter point, Joomla finally gets rid of the Section/Category schema altogether. Now you can nest categories as deeply as practical. The new system also brings a new interface to the administrator control panel with an improved workflow.
However, the question remains: Should you upgrade? I recently spent some time testing a migration tool called JUpgrade that automatically downloads and updates your current Joomla installation.
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