Compass Designs .net

• When is Joomla 1.6 coming out?
• What has changed in Joomla 1.6?
• Should I use Joomla 1.5 or 1.6?

In the same way when 1.5 came out and people were wondering about their 1.0 websites, the same questions are being asked again of Joomla 1.6.

Let's look into our crystal ball and try and answer these three questions!

When is Joomla 1.6 coming out?

Right now Joomla 1.6 is in alpha. That's the first of a series of stages that it will go through before its ready to use on a production site. Here were the stages of 1.5 and how long it spent in each stage:

• Alpha - 2 Alpha releases - 1 year in Alpha
• Beta - 2 Beta releases - 9 months in Beta
• Release Candidates - 4 Release Candidates - 6 months in Release Candidate
• Stable

Now, don't be fooled by those long stages and what it means for 1.6. Joomla 1.5 was a very different animanl and a number of other factors led to some very extended stages before releases. I am pretty sure 1.6 will move much faster through these stages.

Even so, I would not be surprised if we were looking at 6-12 months before a stable version we can use on production sites. Remember, it doesn't just need to be stable, third party developers need to have migrated as well.

What has changed in Joomla 1.6?

The short answer is ACL and nested categories.

But, I find a really great reference to the long answer. Buried in the Joomla docs wiki was a handy chart of the Joomla 1.6 development status, listing what was being worked on and how close it was to completion.

http://docs.joomla.org/Joomla!_1.6_Development_Status

What I didn't see was anything about the various Google Summer of Code projects that might be included in 1.6.

Should I use Joomla 1.5 or 1.6?

In 2008 I wrote about Should I use Joomla 1.0 or 1.5.

Well, at that point 1.5 was stable, and it still wasn't a slam dunk.

Right now, you would need to want to live an exciting life to be creating sites with 1.6. The best thing to do might be grab the alpha and play around to see what's new.

If you think that 1.6 might be in the future for your site, then install as few extensions as possible human! Each one you install is going to exponentially increase the complexity of your migration.

Bonus Question: How can I help 1.6 get here quicker?

Once the beta and RC's start coming out, there will be lots of bug testing to do. If you would like to see 1.6 here quicker, consider contacting the bug testing team.

Make sure you bookmark Joomlashack to keep track of all the Joomla 1.6 news and information.