Few days ago the Joomla! project released Joomla! 2.5.28 which is effectively going to be the latest 2.5.x release until the declared End of Life (EOL) for Joomla! 2.5 on the 31 December 2014.
What does this mean for your Joomla! 2.5 website?
Your Joomla! 2.5 installation won't stop to function after the 31 of December 2014. On the contrary - it will work as before. However a very important thing to note is that you would no longer receive any official updates. This means that your site won't receive any bug fixes or security fixes after the 31st of December. This makes Joomla! 2.5 unfit for use on live sites after that date.
All right! I got it, so what should I do?
You should update to the latest Joomla! 3.x version. In most cases the update is easy (as easy as 1 click), but depending on the used extensions, modules, plugins and templates you'll have to make some preparation before you hit that update button. A good video tutorial for updating Joomla 2.5 to 3 can be found over here. Another good resourse with information on the update can be found on the Joomla! docs site.
Important: If you use an extension on your Joomla! 2.5 that is not compatible with Joomla! 3.x, then updating can break your site! Make sure that you have a backup (we recommend and use Akeeba backup) before attempting an update & make sure that you do your homework (check what extensions you have, check if they are supported on Joomla! 3.3 etc.). Again a good start is checking the video and documentation links provided above.
Okay, so what about my compojoom extensions?
At the time of writing of this blog post all our extensions are compatible with Joomla! 2.5 and Joomla! 3.2/3.3/3.4. As far our extensions are concerned you don't have to do anything special to update from Joomla! 2.5 to Joomla! 3 except for using the latest version of our extensions. You don't need to uninstall our extensions before updating, just make sure that you have the latest version of them running on your 2.5 site!
Are new versions of the compojoom extensions going to support Joomla! 2.5?
Yes and no! In the short future till end of March 2015 the updates that we issue are going to work on Joomla! 2.5 and 3. But after that we will no longer try to make the updates compatible with Joomla! 2.5.
What will happen if I decide not to update?
As we already said - your website won't stop to function after the 31 of December. We are not talking about doomsday here :). You have to ask yourself this very simple question: "How important is my site to me?". If the answer is "not at all", then you are okay knowing that you run unsupported software and you run the risk of having a hacked site once a security hole is being found in the future. If the answer on the other hand is - "my site is important to me", then you know what you have to do... Also postponing this is not going to make the update easier. The rule of thumb is postponing an update for 3-6 moths is okay. Going beyond this time frame limits your chances of a trouble free update.
What do you guys recommend?
Since January 2013 we've run Joomla! 3.0, 3.1, 3.2 and now we are at 3.3. We always did the update by using the build in update tool in Joomla!. However before the update we've always made sure that the extensions we have on our site are compatible with the Joomla! version we are updating to. If you make sure that all the extensions you use are compatible, then you can be confident that the chance of running into troubles is nearly 0. (ah, and as usual - always have a backup before updating)
