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Upgrade to Joomla 1.6 or stick with J1.5?

content construction for joomla

There has been a lot of confusion around Joomla 1.6 recently. After 3 years of heavy coding this major upgrade has been finally released in early 2011. Right now many users are wondering what 3rd party support for J1.6 will look like in the next months. Does it make any sense to start a website in J1.6 at the moment? How long should I wait until making any movements for my clients?

This is how the development plan for coming Joomla core versions look like. Based on that it might be easier for you to make judgements whether and when to upgrade or build new sites in J1.6 for your clients.

Andrew Eddie, Joomla co-founder and core developer stated following on Joomla's people portal:
Finally, the developer portal outlines the new development strategy that is now in process: http://developer.joomla.org/strategy.html
In summary what this means is:

Release
Date
Maintenance Till
Joomla 1.5
Jan 2008
Apr 2012
Joomla 1.6
Jan 2011
Aug 2011
Joomla 1.7 (Bowerbird)
Jul 2011
Feb 2012
Joomla 1.8 (Cool Name?)
Jan 2012
Long Term Support

  • Joomla will release a new version of the CMS every 6 months, starting from Jan 2011 (the 1.6 release).
  • We are actually in the Joomla 1.7 (Bowerbird) development phase.
  • Development contributions for 1.7 are currently being accepted and should be made via the JFT, either by patch or referring to a branch.
  • Nobody can say what will be in Joomla 1.7 until the JFT is analysed and contributions are accepted.
  • Developers have the option of working on features that may take longer than six months to develop and target a future version (eg, skip contributions for a major feature in 1.7 because there simply isn't enough time and aim for 1.8).
Developers who are concerned about the magnitude of change should monitor the JFT closely to ensure there are no surprises that affect them. Given there is less than 3 months left to accept contributions for 1.7 (and these must be in fully working condition), it is likely that 1.7 will be a very "light" upgrade from 1.6.
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