Get ready for Joomla 2.5!

15 December 2011

Joomla 2.5 (formerly codenamed 1.8) is coming out any day now, short on the heels of winning 2011's Packt CMS award. 

This is the next major release in the series, which started with 1.0 in the Mambo days, progressed to the now very stable 1.5, and on to 1.6/1.7, which were intended as a stepping stone to 2.5. We have seen conflicting reports of an early January or late December release date. Either way, there will be a period of months in which Joomla users plan their migration to 2.5. If you are not using too many extensions you could probably migrate fairly painlessly (a migration tool is reportedly in the works). If you are using a number of extensions, make sure to check for Joomla 2.5 versions of those, or plan to use some alternative. Many extension developers do not update their extensions for new versions of Joomla until weeks or months after the official release, since that is when new bugs typically come to light and are ironed out. Since Joomla is open-source just like Drupal, WordPress and so many other packages, it is always a work in progress. That's not to say it isn't a great tool for building a robust site!