Welcome to the Compass Designs website, powered by Joomla 1.5! The goal of this new site is to be the place to bookmark if you are looking for quality Joomla templates, tutorials, news and tips.Right now I am sitting on an airport heading the the Chicago Joomla EXPO, and I just *know* someone is going to ask me this question!
Pondering over my foo foo Latte from Starbucks, I think I might have actually found the answer. I did a little digging in the official Joomla forums and found some interesting stuff.
I looked at the topic and post counts for Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 in two forums, the one where end users ask general help questions, and the one where developers have specific code questions. The results shown in the graph below I thought were *really* interesting.
To me, this really shows the trend. Many many end users are still working on 1.0, but clearly, there is a huge amount of developer activity on 1.5. I interpret this as meaning 1.0 might still be the Joomla version of right now, but 1.5 will be the version of tomorrow.
Now, the graph shows total numbers, and obviously 1.0 has been around for a long time. A much better comparison would be the same data for say, 2008 only. Maybe a Forum Admin might provide that ;).
One other bit of data that is more timely is the number of downloads from joomlacode.org. Looking at the most recent builds of both versions:
| Joomla_1.0.15-Stable-Full_Package.zip | 283,397 downloads |
| Joomla_1.5.3-Stable-Full_Package.zip | 106,133 downloads |
Here 1.0.15 has the slight edge, but again, I thin kit has been available longer.
Anyway, the answer I have prepared for this question?
"If you are building a new site and don't have many extensions, make sure it will be future proof and use Joomla 1.5."
What do you think?
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Aaron
said:
J1.5 is the better system and perhaps may be experiencing high downloads, but it is the extension compatibilities that will decide what version people use. The great majority of extensions are 1.0. 1.5 legacy mode is a nice feature that should not be relied upon. I'd say 6 - 9 months before 1.5 is the mainstay. Use 1.0 if your site is focused on specific extensions (ie virtuemart | communitybuilder). Use 1.5 is you are only interested in core features. Thanks for the article on this important topic!  |
Trevor Yannayon
said:
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I agree, if you are not depending on using legacy mode go for 1.5. I do have a site running 1.5 with Virtuemart and it has been working great. |
Copes Flavio
said:
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I think that J! 1.5 is the way to go, It's not a good choice building now a website based on J! 1.0.x and then migrate it in a year or so, because all the extensions it used are no longer supported for 1.0. I't been a few months since the release of J! 1.5, so many extensions are running (or will be running shortly) on it! |
Perth Joomla Developer
said:
| This is so true. I've yet to use 1.5 on a live site because there has always been a particular plugin that wasn't available. But things are changing very quickly. |
David Towers
said:
| Yeah I agree, Joomla 1.5 is the future so it's good to use where it where possible. |
Ric Raftis
said:
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I think Joomla 1.5 is a far better and more intuitive piece of software than 1.0. I just love it. Perhaps the number of 1.0.15 downloads is also skewed by the number of existing sites in 1.0 being upgraded. Cheers, Ric |
Stuart Malcolm
said:
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The transition to 1.5 will take _years_ not months. First, the core will have to be shown to be stable (looks like we are getting there, but expect the first security hole will stop the clock for a while) Second, a critical mass of extensions will have to be ported - this is a big development effort that is still on-going, and there are issues around GPL licensing and dormant projects that have to be overcome. third, once the number of new 1.5+ sites overtakes the number of 1.0+ sites, there will still be a large number of live 1.0 sites. Not to mention that web designers will have to decide when/if/how to make the switch - non trivial if you are supporting tens or hundreds of sites. Like I say, it will take years for 1.5 to overtake 1.0. Lets dig-in for the long haul... |
David Attard
said:
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I've blogged about this just as Joomla 1.5 stable was released: http://www.dart-creations.com/the-joomla-blog/blog/joomla-1.0-vs-joomla-1.5.html I am also a firm believer that what makes Joomla so popular is the extensions available for it, such that you can practically come up with any kind of website without having to ever go near a line of code. Therefore my recommendations are very similar to yours, if you have a plain site, go for 1.5 because that is the future, however if the functionality of your site depends on certain 1.0 only extensions, I'd stick to 1.0 (especially if the component will never be written for 1.5). |
Administrator
said:
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@ Stuart and David I think the comments about extensions is spot on. These are what makes Joomla as powerful as it can be. Obviously there is a link to the incentive and eagerness for 3rd party devs to upgrade... for various reasons..... |
Earl Lewis
said:
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I just put up a website for a friends business on J! 1.5.3 and so far so good. I'm hoping my decision won't come back to bite me in the a&&. The comments about extensions is correct. I've spent a lot of time hunting around for extensions that do what I need to do and are "1.5 Native". The one that I couldn't find a 1.5 version for was document management. I decided to go with DocMan and run in legacy mode for the time being. Everywhere else I've been able to find 1.5 extensions that suit my purposes. One thing I've gotta say since I'm taking the time to post this, this is my first live J! effort and it was really quite easy to figure out. Once you get used to the architecture and resources available to do the things that need to be done for the typical web site it is truly a breeze. So to all the J! 1.5 developers out there that have worked so hard to make this open source product available, thank you! |
Bernard
said:
| Nice article. All the new sites I'm building is on 1.5 - it's just so much better than 1.0.x. I'm mostly using Virtuemart, which is pretty much ready for 1.5. Some extensions are still missing, but there is definitely enough to make it work. |
Sean Cook
said:
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Interestingly, I have a client who is struggling over this issue. He is in 1.5.3 and can't use one important extension for his community site, so I am now suggesting that he wait or start from scratch with a 1.0.15 site. Clients hate hearing this fact, but when you on a tight schedule, you have to make these crucial decisions. BTW, I told him to check this blog for the complete argument before he makes his final decision.  |
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