Joomla 1.5 - End of Support - April 2012 - Are you Mad?

[Chacapamac]

Joomla will stop security release and all development of 1.5 in April 2012

Look at : http://developer.joomla.org/development-status.html

Long Term Support Release:
Joomla! 1.5.26
End of Support:
April 2012.
Note:
Major security fixes will be done until release of 3.0 in September 2012.

This is incredible !

This is a really brilliant idea, I explain.

50 millions + site out there build on the Joomla platform come from web sites developers or individuals that build their web presence on this framework. All those PEOPLE are the pillars of what Joomla is today.

As developer we already going on a rough road with the transition to 1.5 to 1.7 and to 2.5 and 3.0. No real backward compatibility between 1.5 to the newer versions. 2.5 will be compatible with 3.0, 3.5, I don’t know?

If you look at numbers, you can see that this instability show in trends around the world.

Go to —> http://www.google.ca/trends/?q=Drupal,j ... ess&ctab=0

Joomla start a steady decline in popularity from 2009 to today, comparatively to Drupal or Wordpress.


Now Joomla, with great wisdom, add to the incertitude what I think will be another big blow to the platform that close to 50 millions of sites and all those developers and people that follow them and give their entire support will be left in the dust.

Everybody know that migrating a site from 1.5 to 2.5 with the exact carefully same design and functionality from the original 1.5 will probably take the same amount of time or even maybe cost more than the original construction.

Now as a developer I will have to explain to all my base customers that they suddenly have to make a completely new site because the platform that I choose for them is not supported anymore. I’m sure they will be all really happy to hear that and I will look like a real professional.

Repeat that situation 50 millions of times of people that will have to take a decision for their sites. People that have to rebuild their sites will still facing an uncertain Joomla platform (that let them down already) or other CMS that still going strong. What will be your choice??

Worst, all those Web site Developers (The one’s that dish money to the Joomla project, extensions, template club and all,,,) will face a risk a complete breakdown of their base customers...

My prediction....

JOOMLA will drop from is pedestal
Wordpress and other really promising CMS will greatly benefit from this situation.


To all developer and people that trust Joomla to this day and feel the pinch, please post your impression here....

This is what I’m thinking right now...
— How my business will survive that?
— When they will repeat that stunt?
— What are my choice now?

Thanks Joomla!

[stgeorge]

Yes they are all mad at Joomla.

2.5 is only good for developers that wish to create complicated ACL Structure and is absolutely no use whatsoever to anyone building a website for anyone not requiring this level of ACL.
In fact it is so complicated that the average webmaster will never get to grips with it.

J 1.5.x is still the best CMS for the majority of websites.

So for Joomla to end support for J 1.5.x is ludicrous.

I have already chosen different CMS's for basic websites as J 2.5.x is unusable for the majority.

Besides J2.5.x load time is 3 to 4 times longer than J1.5.x

Also the idea of renumbering the versions so you get 1.6 - 1.7 - 2.5 soon to be 3.x is rediculous as when a search is conducted on a version you cannot get the results you require due to version number changes.
1.6 - 1.7 searches are applicable to 2.5 and so on. A nightmare!

[humvee]

Support has actually been extended to September 2012. But the original date has always been well publicised.

[humvee]

[Mod note: Moved from 2.5 General Forum to 1.5 General Forum;]

[stgeorge]

Support has actually been extended to September 2012. But the original date has always been well publicised.

I understand that the support date has been extended, but this is no long term solution.
JED is full of extensions for 1.5, which in effect has rendered all the input of those developers totally useless.
I would understand if developers stopped creating extensions for Joomla on the basis that the versions keep changing version prefix numbers and the update process is made more laborious.
Besides why bother when years of work will in effect be wiped out.
I even disagreed with the erasing of the JED 1.1 extensions as these could be used with the mother CMS Mambo.

I could not agree more with Chacapamac, there should be no reason the easier to use and more stable 1.5 could not be maintained.

As for 2.5 I think many appreciate the efforts of the Joomla Developers to create a system with a more flexible ACL but it is not required by the majority of websites and as said 2.5 is simply too complicated for the average user, even if they could cut their teeth on 1.5.

The cynic in me feels that the idea of Joomla as a flag for open source is going out the window, in favour of commercializing all associated extensions and documentation.

As 1.5 is open source it may well be that the system is taken, like Joomla from Mambo, by developers to be maintained elsewhere.
Maybe this is the solution.

[Chacapamac]

As stgeorge said, we are not discussing the fact that Joomla need to be updated and go forward. But I think that the Dev team lost contact with the reality and bringing Joomla in directions that have nothing to do with what their users and power users want. I think they don’t even listen and worst, don’t really care...

Do I ask for more ACL or a convolute, incomplete, difficult process to make multilingual site, NO and NO. Joomla 1.5 give us a real CMS, easy to work with, even for non we savvy people (95 % of Site Owners) with complete solutions given by fantastic third party extensions developers. You didn’t listen to your most loyal supporters and you bully all those people that make 1.5 a success to follow your way. Your way seem to add build-in possibilities that people don’t want or don’t need while loosing site of what people that are using Joomla everyday in real projects want.

Millions of 1.5 corporate and business joomla sites are out there, entire web building business build their clients base on the Joomla platform. Now all of those people will end up with unsafe, unsupported sites. They will have now to build entire new sites or anyway pay for a migration that will cost the price of a new site when Joomla was presented to them as a safe and evolutive system... That is the hard reality!

Do you really think that those site owners and worst the people that believe in Joomla enough to deliver professional web site to their customers will still trust this platform and continue to support the project... are you serious?
And worst, if you can do that now, when you will repeat that stunt. 6 month, a year, two, I like to know?

When this will start to be known by my clients and I will have to say, Sorry Bob, you will have to dish money for a brand new site now. I completely forget to tell you that your site did have an expiration date...

I’m sure that my reputation, as a business and a honest person, that I build for so many years will spread rapidly. I’m lucky if I don’t have to close the door and find another job.

AGAIN THANKS JOOMLA !

I was imbecile enough to trust you....

I like stgeorge idea - If by some miracle somebody with a little bit more vision and more conscious of the real world take this project and follow the direction that any CMS should take. A solution towards simplicity and efficiency. Hopefully these people will stay close and listen to the people that believe in them.

From today, I will go back to Wordpress and other cool project like Concrete...

My trust in the actual Joomla team is broken...


To humvee

Support has actually been extended to September 2012. But the original date has always been well publicised.

Yeah, that help !

[humvee]

As for 2.5 I think many appreciate the efforts of the Joomla Developers to create a system with a more flexible ACL but it is not required by the majority of websites and as said 2.5 is simply too complicated for the average user, even if they could cut their teeth on 1.5.

At the risk of prolonging this debate... Joomla! 2.5 comes with the same preconfigured user groups as 1.5, so there is no need for the "average user" as you describe to even have to worry about it. They can just carry on the same as they did before. What it does do is provide the flexibility that many, many developers and designers and other (obviously not so average) average users were demanding for many, many years (since Mambo days in fact!).

As for Extensions, the transition between 1.0 and 1.5 caused an initial issue but this was quickly overcome by the same Open Source community which Joomla still belongs to. Things don't / can't move at the same pace as they do in the commercial world where developers are paid to do the job and only that job, here the developers are busy doing their day jobs and then doing Joomla when they can and the same goes for the extensions, even those that are posted as "commercial", but even then the cost is well below what a custom or truly commercial system would cost.

Anyway I am no longer watching this topic, so best of luck to you both.

[Chacapamac]

Don’t get me wrong, I think Joomla 2.5 up going in a relatively good direction.

The scary part is that the strategy itself seem completely detach from what real users need or want. Also I can see evident disregard and the same detachment attitude for the fantastic work of third party extensions Dev’s that was key to Joomla success, so far.
(look at the dropping curve in Google trends)

I think those numbers talk about, instability and frustration for a platform that loose it’s ground.


My biggest grudge in this matter and what I think users should ask, is to keep important security releases to 1.5.


1.5 sites are what Joomla is, today. Forgetting that is a big error.


You are squeezing the very people that was your most trusted allies, the people that believe that Joomla was different, better and put their neck out to promote it as a viable, solid solution for professionals web sites or business owner that spend money and work hard in building their web presence base on the idea that Joomla was a good solution.

Not Cool...

[Chacapamac]

Ok, one person seem to dare talking about that subject... Thanks

Now look at theses post on the Joomla! General Development Forum

See the thread "Is 1.5 years enough?"
http://groups.google.com/group/joomla-d ... 0be9419c3/

and a spin off thread "Is 1.5 Years Enough? Practical Talk on a Way Forward."
http://groups.google.com/group/joomla-d ... ea23690a9/


One of them:
http://groups.google.com/group/joomla-d ... 4526fbbb57
it has been mentioned what was needed in terms of "volunteers from within the community" to have security updates after the date that is currently set. It was made clear that people with all kind of skills can get involved in that process!

These talk are from main actors in third party extensions for Joomla.

Just, if you not sure that I’m simply a nut case, you should look at those discussions...

And please, use your voice. For the people that love this project to have some kind of real commercial future.

[teamracer]

Sorry for my bad english.

The problem with the LTS from Joomla is, that we have a law in our country that we have to provide support for our Webdesign for 2 years. But also without this law, I never could ask money from my clients and then after less than 18 month I would have to explain to my customer that his site needs to be redone if he wants to use the security updates. Most of our customers need inexpensiv little websites.
I have no Idea how much work it would be to upgrade to the next Version and can't in consequence recommend Joomla :-(

All this has the result that our group of webdesigner has halted all our Projects with Joomla and we are going to use the CMS with the least complicated system to upgrade.

We are now going with Wordpress and Typo3.
Typo3 has LTS up to 3 years.

I'm not happy with this, because i love Joomla.
If Joomla Websites can in the future be easily updated and we can provide our customers an inexpensive way to update we sure will start new Joomla projects.

[Chacapamac]

Thanks “teamracer” this is exactly what I‘m talking about.

All this has the result that our group of webdesigner has halted all our Projects with Joomla and we are going to use the CMS with the least complicated system to upgrade

That kind of scenario will be repeated around the world and when people and business will make the switch, they will probably not come back to Joomla.

The Joomla upgrade route is wrong and will hurt badly the confidence web developers need to present Joomla to their clients.

More, these developers are the same that feed the fantastic third party community and bring money to the project itself.

All of these people will fill the pinch.

My advice to Joomla is to revise their timeline and reinsure your base users before it’s to late.

[Chacapamac]

Disastrous, if you read carefully all those threads Joomla 2.5 to 3.0 seem to be a migration probably as difficult from 1.5 to 2.5...

It seem like somebody want deliberately destroy this project?

Joomla 1.5 abandon in few months with no migration tool or backward compatibility and no end in sight in a stable release...

This is really the end !

I feel so stupid to follow and encourage that project...

[Slackervaara]

I am also surprised by the rapid jumps in development of Joomla and a bit complex upgrading. Simplicity is an advantage for a popular system like Joomla. It is better to slow down the development a bit and instead prolonging the life for 1.5, which are used by so many. Upgrades cost time and money, which always are not available for users of free CMS-systems. If the security fixes cant be prolonged after september I would prefer that security fixes were available after paying a small fee, like 5 USD. It is worth paying a small fee than upgrade.

Naturally we as 1.5 users could also start to figure out how we can make 1.5 so secure that security fixes gets not so important.

[humvee]

We are now going with Wordpress and Typo3.
Typo3 has LTS up to 3 years.

I'm not happy with this, because i love Joomla.
If Joomla Websites can in the future be easily updated and we can provide our customers an inexpensive way to update we sure will start new Joomla projects.

Joomla! 1.5 was released in January 2008 so will have been supported for just under 5 years!

[teamracer]

The Problem is that i cannot recommend my clients to upgrade(migrate) to 2.5 because we have to start again in 18 month. This is far to short. With other CMS we had better experiences in upgrades.

Some websites will remain on 1.5. ass long as they are running --> Customers with small budget.
Other websites form our clients will be redone in another CMS in the next 6 months.

I love working with Joomla. But we cannot tell our customers every 18 month to migrate to the newer version.

Like i said we have to give a 24 Month support to our products. This is for the moment impossible in Joomla :-(

Best regards

[teamracer]

We are now going with Wordpress and Typo3.
Typo3 has LTS up to 3 years.

I'm not happy with this, because i love Joomla.
If Joomla Websites can in the future be easily updated and we can provide our customers an inexpensive way to update we sure will start new Joomla projects.

Joomla! 1.5 was released in January 2008 so will have been supported for just under 5 years!

We started our last Joomla 1.5 projects in January 2011 because we hoped that there will be an migration without to many expensive work. The Joomla 1.6. was said to be only valid for 6 month. So Joomla 1.6 was not possible.

Our customers of the last Joomla 1.5 websites are not amused :-(

Best regards

[humvee]

The end date for Joomla! 1.5 was well publicised and I am pretty sure was available when you started the projects in 2011. So Joomla! has met its obligations.
Joomla! itself cannot be held responsible for the Extension developers' speed at staying with the process and in fact many (most) of the major third party projects have kept up.
So I think it is just going to be a case that for a few people that could not, or chose not, to keep up with the announcements and effectively plan for and advise their clients of the timetables, difficulties are going to be encountered.
Nothing anyone can say will change their minds, and they can't accept that all projects move on - that is how they develop and improve.
I would also point out that there has been plenty of opportunity to discuss this "issue" long before now, so actually starting the whole conversation a month AFTER the original end-date is a little bit meaningless.

[Slackervaara]

What about creating security fixes for those who subscribe and pay for them? This will not cost the Joomla-project anything and would be cost-effective for those who don't want or can upgrade. Another alternative is that the Joomla 1.5 users create a group or website for security fixes financed by donations. I guess some security fixes can be figured out by studing the security fixes for 2.5 as they come along. Joomla 1.5 should be pretty safe though as it has been subjected to hackers in 5 years. It seems to me that an upgrade to 2.5 maybe isn't safer, as the hacking incidents reported in the 2.5 forum seems commoner than here.

[Chacapamac]

Really positive approach Slakervaara, I will have no problem to pay for fix and Security — Hopefully Power Users will take the ball...

[teamracer]

What about creating security fixes for those who subscribe and pay for them? This will not cost the Joomla-project anything and would be cost-effective for those who don't want or can upgrade. Another alternative is that the Joomla 1.5 users create a group or website for security fixes financed by donations. I guess some security fixes can be figured out by studing the security fixes for 2.5 as they come along. Joomla 1.5 should be pretty safe though as it has been subjected to hackers in 5 years. It seems to me that an upgrade to 2.5 maybe isn't safer, as the hacking incidents reported in the 2.5 forum seems commoner than here.

This is a thing i was hoping to see some time since january 2012!
I will pay to get security fixes. For me 50 to 70 Euro a year will be no problem.

The end date for Joomla! 1.5 was well publicised and I am pretty sure was available when you started the projects in 2011. So Joomla! has met its obligations.
Joomla! itself cannot be held responsible for the Extension developers' speed at staying with the process and in fact many (most) of the major third party projects have kept up.
So I think it is just going to be a case that for a few people that could not, or chose not, to keep up with the announcements and effectively plan for and advise their clients of the timetables, difficulties are going to be encountered.
Nothing anyone can say will change their minds, and they can't accept that all projects move on - that is how they develop and improve.
I would also point out that there has been plenty of opportunity to discuss this "issue" long before now, so actually starting the whole conversation a month AFTER the original end-date is a little bit meaningless.

I think that the end date of joomla had been publicised in Januar 2011. But it can be that i am wrong. But this not really changed something for us, because at that moment we were hoping that they were working on a "good" migration system for the websites. In the forum i visited there were talkings that the upgrade process should be simplified until 2.5.
The same talkings can now be found if the update from 2.5 to 3.0 is mentionned. If the update form 2.5 to 3.0. is the same than from 1.5 to 2.5 than the Joomla Plattform has a problem.
You must also know that we also worked before January 2011 with Wordpress an Typo3 and we really thought that the upgrade process for Joomla will be as easy as with the other CMS we used that time.
If there was publicised that the upgrade process will be as complicated than from 1.0 to 1.5 we would have stopped already before January 2011 with Joomla websites.

Best regards and thanks for your previous replies

[humvee]

What about creating security fixes for those who subscribe and pay for them? This will not cost the Joomla-project anything and would be cost-effective for those who don't want or can upgrade.

This would cost the Joomla! project by taking developers attention away from 2.5 and 3.0 development.
If you want to hire a developer there is always the Professional Services forum where you can make your pitch.

Another alternative is that the Joomla 1.5 users create a group or website for security fixes financed by donations. I guess some security fixes can be figured out by studing the security fixes for 2.5 as they come along. Joomla 1.5 should be pretty safe though as it has been subjected to hackers in 5 years. It seems to me that an upgrade to 2.5 maybe isn't safer, as the hacking incidents reported in the 2.5 forum seems commoner than here.

There is no law against you creating your own fork and managing your own project but if you cannot afford the time to update your current clients, imagine the time you will spend organising this! As for charging people you would need to ensure you were not infringing any of the licensing terms of Joomla! in doing so, and that would probably involve the instructions of lawyers to review and advise upon such actions which would be even greater expense.
Why not put your time and effort into taking Joomla! forward rather than living in the past?
If you have particular templates or extensions that have yet to be updated you might consider sponsoring the developers of those to invest their time in doing so.
Alternatively I guess if you don't like the current path and options for migrating to 2,5 you could use the same money and effort to create a migration tool that achieves better results.
Just a few thoughts.
But which ever way you look at it, the decision has been taken by the Joomla! project to move on.
If you cannot support that then fair enough that's your choice.
You will probably find very similar situations arise in many projects of this nature including those in commercial software development.
As for your views on the security of 1.5 over 2.5 the threats are ever changing. That is why PHP is updated, why the Windows family get updated, why anti-virus software gets updated and on and on...!
The software also develops to make better use of the technologies that it uses "under the hood" to improve efficiency, enhance security, usability and accessibility and on and on...

[rich1]

It looks like there may be a Forked Project

http://thenetweb.co.uk/tnwwiki/

[Antonimo]

If you look at numbers, you can see that this instability show in trends around the world.

Go to —> http://www.google.ca/trends/?q=Drupal,j ... ess&ctab=0

Joomla start a steady decline in popularity from 2009 to today, comparatively to Drupal or Wordpress.

...
...

My prediction....

JOOMLA will drop from is pedestal
Wordpress and other really promising CMS will greatly benefit from this situation.

Well it has transpired just as the OP predicted!

Joomla is going down and it is extremely unlikely recover. For our part, we are and have been moving all our clients to WordPress.

[Chacapamac]

Sorry guys to lashed at Joomla like that, I have mediterranean blood and I was really stress out with Joomla back then.

But I still think that security support of 1.5 should be continued for a while until the dust come down and mostly for the big multilingual site out there.

I was also surprised to see an unofficial security patch coming out not to long ago.... Thanks to the fantastic Joomla community.

Joomla is going down and it is extremely unlikely recover. For our part, we are and have been moving all our clients to WordPress.

I said that other CMS is taking advantages of those instabilities. But moving customers to a lesser CMS is simply sad for your customers and great for me...

Let’s put the thing straight with a new vision
(a litle more calm this time)

Forget the move 1.5 to 2.5 and you will see that Joomla 2.5 up are, to me anyway, from a long shot, the best CMS to offer to any new customers. (Just like 1.5 was)
Joomla is now superior to any of those others choice, Drupal, Wordpress and all. It became a powerful, top of the line, easily upgradeable CMS. Hopefully, the Devs will keep it like that.

After working with 2.5 and 3 now, I have to tone down my frustration with the beautiful CMS Joomla is becoming.

My only big problems was the problems with multi language sites... Thats only what I do in my parts of the world and obviously the pressure was on me. By the way I update already most of my important complex templates to 2.5 and I’m starting the migration right Now.

I WAS WRONG!
(even if the bump was high for me)

Joomla WILL NOT go down and to the contrary.
I was completely right to believe in Joomla. Joomla 2.5/3.0 is now, by far the best professional CMS solution you want to offer to your customers.

Build now on an EASILY UPGRADABLE professional framework and backed by the best community and the best choice of top notch extension developers in all CMS (try the others forums, just to see)

Joomla 2.5, 3, juste like Joomla 1.5 is the only CMS I build new web site on.

Moving to Wordpress, go ahead....

And one other point I have to touch, when you take the time to understand the excellent multilingual system that now is part of Joomla you can see that Joomla DEV’s knew what they were doing. Excellent system, perfect for SEO, easy to maintain if build the right way. Dont even need any third party extension...

You will say that I have drastically change my tune....

You are right,
just like a toe that you crush on the bed post in the morning, your world turn instantly dark to a tunnel vision, but with time, you start to see the light again...

[rich1]

Actually there too many flaws in the 3.x series to think that upgrades are seamless.
See these posts and you will see that the upgrade from 2.5x has destroyed much work and I have even put one site back to 1.5.

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=712&t=858355
The above was a recent post by me with no response from Admins.

Look at the hits that this post is getting:
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=712&t=845879

I am not sure if Joomla realizes the damage caused through this metadata and other problems.

I could not understand at first, why recently one site I monitor had SERP referral pages going down from 500 hits to 80 or so. Until I looked at what had happened by migrating from 2.5 to 3.x.

The worst of it is that there is nobody wishing to comment.

Joomla 3.x whilst, on the surface looks to be a good system, is flawed.
It is getting constantly broken by upgrades, with a serious amount of work on 3rd party extensions.
2.5 does not migrate as expected.
I have absolutely no faith in the transitions to come with Joomla 4.
They keep rolling out Joomla 3 without sorting out the problems.

I still think that there should have been a willingness to maintain 1.5 as a separate entity, with the joomla 2 series as an incremental increase in version numbers, rather than create Joomla 3, 4 etc etc.
It is a nightmare when searching for solutions with all these version numbers as they are and are going to be.

The idea was to create an easy update scenario.
Well I am sorry but updating 1.5 was a doddle compared to what there is now. Constantly breaking the system with 3rd party extensions, server and php upgrade requirements.

The time involved looking after a Joomla website now has at least trebled.

One other point of note, if not the most important point, is that compared with 1.5, the 3 series has diabolical page load speed.

[Chacapamac]

It is getting constantly broken by upgrades, with a serious amount of work on 3rd party extensions.

I do not see that on 2.5 to 3 on any of my sites, if you got compatible extensions?

I still think that there should have been a willingness to maintain 1.5 as a separate entity

They should…

@ rich1 — I’m following your post about the SEO problems — Really like to have some clear answers about it from Joomla

[stevenh]

I've had a lot of problems with 3.+, and much preferred 1.5. EVERY TIME I do just a minor update, plugins and extentions start breaking. Like, I updated a clients site to 3.4.3 (from 3.4.2) and RSFORMS lightbox editor broke. RSFORMS released TWO(2) updates to fix it, and though that's fixed, now RECAPTCHA is broken. It never ends.

I NEVER had these problems in 1.5, and it was fast and simple... now it's heavy and more complicated.