Roadmap for updating our Joomla 1.7 products to Joomla 2.5
Preliminary testing reports have revealed some minor issues with our templates and extensions when used with Joomla 2.5. The power of JAT3 will make upgrade tasks easier and faster. However, we still do not release anything without routine testing / checks. No hasty releases will be done just to be first to the post. Customer satisfaction is our ultimate goal.
JoomlArt's Joomla 2.5 Roadmap
Feb - March 2012
- JA Mers - February 2012 Joomla template to release with Joomla 2.5 support.
- Test and update the complimentary extensions used in JA Templates (30 plugins, 20 modules and 5 components).
- Use the updated extensions (related) and test all 32 JA Templates currently supporting 1.7 with Joomla 2.5 / 2.5.1
- Release updated templates along with bug fixes (reported with earlier versions) in batches of 3-5 per release announcement.
- Templates with multiple 3rd party extension support such as JA Social, JA Mesolite II, JA Zeolite II, JA Tiris will be released in the last batch.
Please note, the above plan is tentative and we do hope to finish all within Feb (hopefully), but it may take longer too due to unforeseen reasons.
Whats coming right away (1st week of Feb 2012) ?
- Feb 2012 Joomla Template - JA Mers
- Feb 2012 Magento Theme - JM Dicento
- Feb 2012 Drupal theme (via themebrain.com ) - TB Mollise
Apart from the above monthly releases, expect JA Elastica, JA T3 Blank, JA Teline IV, JA Kranos and JA Nex. All updated for Joomla 2.5 by this weekend, the whole team is currently working hard on it.
Joomla 1.5 - End of Life
Joomla 1.5 End of life April 2012
Joomla 1.5 is retiring in April 2012, that’s barely 2-3 months from now. It would make little sense for the majority to develop a new site in Joomla 1.5 right now and then migrate them to Joomla 2.5. At the same time it takes around 15 days for making template for Joomla 1.5 (design to release). We would NOT be releasing any new Joomla 1.5 template from Feb 2012 onwards, that saves our various teams almost 45 days of work! We plan to use these saved 45 man days for upgrades and converting older templates to Joomla 2.5.
However, we commit to support Joomla 1.5 products till 31st December 2012. Joomla 1.5 was revolutionary, Rest in Peace old friend.
What about the remaining 80+ Joomla 1.5 templates ?
Lets face the fact, it would not be possible to upgrade all the older Joomla 1.5 templates to Joomla 2.5 on T3 framework. We would like to go for user polls (Facebook poll or simple voting form) to decide on the next batch of templates to be upgraded to Joomla 2.5. We will start with 2010 - 2009 releases first and take the top 10 voted templates for upgrade and then we may repeat voting for 2008-2007 releases.
What will JA Focus on in 2012?
We will focus on Joomla 2.5 updates / upgrades while maintaining Joomla 1.5 products. We may discontinue products (extensions / templates) which may have better alternatives available or are no longer serving the purpose of their existence.
We also would be updating our user guides and wiki for Joomla 2.5 changes (if any) and removing references to Joomla 1.6 / 1.7 .We always try to put our users needs and wants as our top priority, however, at the same time we request our members and friends to consider our position and workload at this stage. As it is evident that future Joomla releases would be one click upgrades and hassle free, we do hope that it would be easy to maintain one version for all our products. Supporting multiple versions at the same time for 100s of products does have its effect on quality and support.
Catch up with us on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus. We announce all important stuff via those channels apart from our blog updates.
Looking forward to a Great 2012 !!
Regards
Hung Dinh
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