After 3 years of heavy coding, Joomla 1.6 was a major upgrade released in January 2011 and 6 months later Joomla! announced Joomla 1.7 Alpha release and there has been a lot of confusion regarding Joomla versions and users might be wondering whether they should upgrade from Joomla! 1.5.
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 you or for your clients. The developer portal outlines the new development strategy that is now in process: http://developer.joomla.org/strategy.html
iDealExtensions is committed to provide good quality software build on top of Joomla! plataform (framework), so we will also meet Joomla's development strategy and maintenance dates.
Most of our extensions have already been rewritten for Joomla! 1.6. In order to take full advantage from the new framework the 1.6 versions have been rewritten almost from scratch. We will provide support for two versions: a) the current LTS, 1.5 then 1.8 and b) the current Short Release Cycle (SRC) 1.6 then 1.7. See table below:
Support Scenario Related to Past, Present and Future Releases
| Date | Current Version | Event Description |
|---|---|---|
| (before) July 2010 | 1.5 | 1.5 GA released with long term support. |
| January 2011 | 1.5 or 1.6 | 1.6 GA released with standard support. |
| July 2011 | 1.5 or 1.7 | 1.7 GA released with standard support |
| January 2012 | 1.8 or 1.5 | 1.8 GA released with long term support. |
| February 2012 | 1.8 or 1.5 | 1.7 reaches end of life. |
| April 2012 | 1.8 only | 1.5 reaches end of life. |
It is likely that 1.7 will be a very "light" upgrade from 1.6, so our recommendation for now is for new installations to use 1.6 or the soon to be released 1.7 and then upgrade to 1.8 LTS. As for the upgrade I recommend to upgrade once all your 3rd party extensions have Joomla 1.6/1.7 stable versions. I also recommend you to read the much more extensive commentary by Andrew Eddie about "when to upgrade to Joomla 1.6".
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