Should I Upgrade Joomla 1.5 to 2.5? All the WHYs and HOWs

In the fast changing era of web technologies - Joomla is evolving as well, continuously releasing new more sophisticated versions. The answer to “Should I upgrade” is quite evident if considering all new possibilities that Joomla 2.5 provides its users with. Lots of developers have been working hard to improve some prominent features of Joomla 1.5 and add many extraordinary new ones. One more important feature to keep in mind - although much of the code is the same as in Joomla 1.5, much of it has been written from the ground up. Because there is no core upgrade path and the changes are really significant - this is indeed a migration. In fact, there are many benefits of switching to Joomla 2.5, but we will mention only the crucial ones.

The first consideration should be around security issues. From April 2012, Joomla 1.5 support and updates are no longer available that makes Joomla upgrading vital in terms of website security. In fact, it will be much more difficult and costly to clean your website from viruses every week than upgrading to the latest version. Secondly, Joomla’s new SEO features is a great step forward! Search engine friendly URLs are built-in in new Joomla that makes it much easier for Google to identify some important content and keywords in your website. That will certainly improve the foundation of your internet presence and search engine ranking. Thirdly, Joomla 2.5 offers great improvements in terms of content management. If you are managing your website by yourself without hiring someone more professional to help you - an easier-to-understand and more consistent user interface will certainly save you both time and money.

Once you’ve decided to move to new Joomla 2.5 - you should decide the way of switching from the old version to a new one. It’s necessary to consider whether you’re able to perform it by yourself or hire someone professional who has more experience in migration hassles. In case none of the variants doesn’t suit you - give a try to brand new online service CMS2CMS. With this migration tool the migration from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 2.5 will be much easier that manual, cheaper than hiring a programmer, and less frustrating in general. There are several steps to walkthrough and each of them is no more complicated than filling out a few text fields. What is more, you don’t have to be concerned about lengthy website downtime - your source website will be 100% available during the migration period.

It case you have estimated all the privileges of Joomla 2.5 and have made the right decision upgrade, here we provide a detailed tutorial with easy-to-follow steps:

1. Back up your current Joomla website. Making the reserve copy of your site is recommended in order to exclude all the possibilities of data losses. You can also save all the content on USB flash drive, external storage device or any hard drive.
2. Install your new Joomla 2.5 website on a previously found hosting provider.
3. Get FTP for both Joomla sites. In other words, find out the access details to your existing and new Joomla sites - host name, username and a password.
4. Register your CMS2CMS account by providing your username, email and password or login through Facebook and Google.
5. Specify websites URL addresses of your Joomla 1.5 and new Joomla version.
6. Download and install the bridge file. Save it zip format and connect to your Joomla websites via FTP client software. Within FTP dashboard copy the “cms2cms” folder and paste it into the root directories of your Joomla websites (current and new versions).
7. Choose migration preferences by activating the following migration options: migrate media, make URLs SEO friendly, clear Target website data, get design ideas.
8. Test Free Demo Migration. It’s recommended running the free Demo Migration to see how the CMS2CMS service works and to estimate your new website visual look.
9. If you are completely satisfied with the results of Demo version - run Full Migration by pressing the corresponding button. After that click, all your Joomla 1.5 content will be upgraded to 2.5.