Website help with migrating from 1.5

[starsdance]

Hi, I hope somebody can help me. Many years ago we had a website built for us (I run a Pre-School) by somebody who is no longer involved in our business. We (various Chairpersons and myself) have tried over the years to update it and have all sorts of problems. The version we are running is 1.5.20 (I said it was old ).

I really would like to get it updated and looking better than it does at the moment so my question is: Do I try to update what I have or should I start again?

If I do start again I presume I can use my existing www. address. If so, how do I go about deleting the old one?

I look forward to receiving some advice - if it could be in worded for a complete novice to understand I would be eternally grateful.

[Webdongle]

Easier to start again
Download Wamp
Download the latest Joomla full version
Create several folders in Wamp's /www folder
You can then install Joomla in each of those new folders and practice before creating a new site.
https://community.joomla.org/user-groups.html may be of interest?

[sozzled]

We ... have tried over the years to update [our website] and have all sorts of problems. The version we are running is 1.5.20.

Not surprised, really, that you've had "all sorts" of problems—even if it might take a few years to describe them—considering J! 1.5.20 was released over eight years ago (18 July 2010), J! 1.5 was brought to end-of-life with the release of J! 1.5.26 and support for this series ended in December 2012.

In that time, a large number of J! 1.5 websites have been successfully attacked—brought to their knees—leaving site owners feeling helpless. Also, in that time, two major series of Joomla have been created—known as J! 2.5 and J! 3.x—and J! 4 is currently under development with an expected stable release in the first half of 2019. All told, there have been around one hundred releases of Joomla from the time of J! 1.5.20 to J! 3.8.11.

I really would like to get it updated and looking better ...

It's not a question of undertaking a cosmetic make-over for sites built with J! 1.5. Because of the inherent risks associated with attempting to maintain them, we strongly recommend carrying out [what is termed as] a migration from J! 1.5 to J! 3.x.

In the hands of an experienced professional, migrating from J! 1.5 to J! 3.x is a task that can take between a day to a week. The actual process itself takes about one hour to convert the basic J! 1.5 structures to J! 3.x. The total time, however, includes negotiating with the client, making the necessary contractual arrangements (and paying a deposit for the work to begin) and then there's the "cosmetics": tidying things up afterwards.

So, there's the general background to give you the overall scope.

While there are many resources that will assist "the complete novice" to carry out the tasks themselves, if you have no real idea of the overall effort involved then I would say you're probably in for a lengthy involvement of your time devoted to doing this yourself. As I wrote earlier, in the hands of a professional, the taks is [relatively] painless (apart from having to pay a few hundred dollars for the effort) and short-lived. To give you a rough estimate, (as I wrote earlier) from my experience it usually takes between a day to a week depending on the complexity of the original website.

If I do start again I presume I can use my existing www. address. If so, how do I go about deleting the old one?

This won't be an issue. If you decide to migrate your existing J! 1.5 website to J! 3.x or start again, you will be able to retain your existing "www." address [URL]. In effect, we're talking about replacing one website (the files and database tables) with another. The URL is simply a "pointer" to where the files reside on the server.

Regardless of whether you convert your existing website (using the migration strategy) or start again, the amount of your time and cost is about the same. If you discuss the situation, one-on-one, with an experienced professional, you may get a clearer idea with path you should use. This forum may help in some cases but a dicussion forum cannot equip you with all the resources to carry out a "three-mouse-clicks-and-hey-presto-instantly-solved" satisfactory solution for your business needs.

Hopefully this advice, in general terms at least, should address the strategic questions you've asked so that you can consider your overall strategy.

[Per Yngve Berg]

1) Your first task will be to update to 1.5.26.

https://downloads.joomla.org/cms/joomla ... format=zip
Download the file and unzip it. Upload to your site and overwrite all files with FTP.

2)The second task will be to install Joomla 3.8.11 into a new folder described by Webdongle.

3) Migrate Articles and Users of to J3. The extension J2XML can be used. (There are others also available, both paid and free.) https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/j2xml/ Install the exporter on the source site and the importer on the destination site.

4) Your old template cannot be used. Develop or get a new 3.8 compatible template.

5) If extensions are used on the old site, they have to be migrated or replaced if new version is not available. Search for migrate instructions at the vendors site.

6) Recreate Menu Items and Modules. They are usually few of them in a site, so this is not so difficult.

[Jaydot]

Although updating is technically possible, I would strongly recommend rebuilding the whole site from scratch, using the latest Joomla version. That way you will have a nice, clean, responsive (remember most of your visitors will visit the site using a smartphone or tablet) and future-proof website (which will then have to be maintained!).
You can do this in a developer-environment (i.e. Wamp, as Webdongle recommended) and then move the whole thing to your webspace with your domainname.
If you don't want to hire a pro to do this, someone will have to "learn Joomla". This is entirely possible, but it will take time, study and effort - it is also fun and very rewarding .

[Webdongle]

If you have users and/or a lot of pages then there is an alternative
Update to 1.5.26
Install the latest 3.8.x (without sample data)
https://extensions.joomla.org/extension ... for-j2xml/ https://extensions.joomla.org/extension ... ort/j2xml/
Not as 'clean' as building fresh but could be useful

But install wamp on your pc and pracice before you do anything else.