|
Jul 03
2009
|
Difference between Joomla 1.0 and Joomla 1.5Posted by admin in Untagged |
Joomla is the most widely used content management system around these days and with the release of joomla 1.5 we are introduced with another successor. While developing a new site we come across two obvious questions: Which version to go for 1.0 or 1.5? What is the difference between the joomla 1.0 and joomla 1.5 versions?
There are a lot of differences between the two releases. Joomla 1.0 was born out of a very famous CMS - Mambo. Joomla and Mambo were mutual compatible in modules, components, and plug-ins. With the release of 1.5 version Joomla came on its own. It has a completely rewritten code base and is better than 1.0 in usability, scalability and flexibility.
Joomla 1.5 introduces the MVC architecture. The MVC approach separates the data from the presentation and logic which ensures code reusability rapid development and maintainability. The Joomla 1.5 framework is built to support backward compatibility to PHP 4.3 while supporting PHP 5. The underlying classes have been designed with forward compatibility in mind. The idea is to ensure a solid foundation for future development while taking advantage of as much code reuse, as possible.
For the designers there are great improvements. First of all it has now easy to use interface. Again the designers will find this separation of logic and presentation useful as they can better control how content is presented. The template designers can now use custom layouts instead of heavy table output from joomla core. The template manager has also been freshened up with features such as the ability to edit any CSS file for the template.
Moving further there are vast improvements in all over user interface, administrator is more refined and simplified with other usability changes and easy to deploy. There are even improvements in extension, article, menu and media managers. There are many SEO and SEF modules available out there for creating SEO friendly URLs for the marketing of your website. Joomla 1.5 has an improved template preview, new plug-in manager, and support for Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0 feeds. It comes with Native LDAP support, XML-RPC support and easy implementation of Ajax applications. The best thing about it is proven to be bug free as it is tightly coupled while coding reducing the number of errors and bugs.
But choosing between both the versions needs a consideration of some drawbacks in 1.5 release. First of all you need to remember that its still a release and so not a stable version like 1.0 so you might encounter problems using it. But these problems will be overcome as this new born develops.
The second drawback in 1.5 is with the third party extensions. It is clear that Joomla ! 1.0 is well versed in third party developers extensions. In fact third Party developers can alter the extensions to create absolutely innovative extensions. However one does not have a wide choice of third party extensions in Joomla 1.5. there is a legacy plug-in in 1.5 which makes most third party extensions and templates compatible with 1.5 but there are lot of extensions still not working with 1.5 so you need to check out first and then decide which version to go for. But again a word of optimism is that though extensions are not compatible with 1.5 release now they will be compatible in future! And even there are extensions developed specifically for 1.5 release while there are extensions which will never upgrade to 1.5 and stick to 1.0. so the choice is yours.
Upgrade from Joomla1.0 to Joomla 1.5 you need to install the Joomla 1.5 afresh and later migrate the data from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5. you get lots of migration tools out there however these tools work only for core modules and are useless for third party modules.
The future prospects in joomla 1.0 are that only security updates will be made which means you will be tied to the current set of features on the other hand the future prospects in joomla 1.5 looks very bright. It will take time for developers to upgrade their products but by choosing 1.5 you will have easy upgrade path to future versions.
Compared to 1.5, joomla 1.0 version is less coder friendly. The user base of joomla 1.5 is still small compared to joomla 1.0 and even 1.5 lacks good documentation and help. Again most of the work today is still done in joomla 1.0. But the word of truth is that 1.0 user base and support will soon fade out and 1.5 help and documentation will increase as time passes. Conclusion If your site development is not urgent wait extra time to take advantage of 1.5’s bright prospects or if you have a small site in 1.0 the migration can less painful. So try 1.5 version and if you encounter problems you can always switch back to 1.0. After all Joomla 1.5’s future looks quite promising.
There are a lot of differences between the two releases. Joomla 1.0 was born out of a very famous CMS - Mambo. Joomla and Mambo were mutual compatible in modules, components, and plug-ins. With the release of 1.5 version Joomla came on its own. It has a completely rewritten code base and is better than 1.0 in usability, scalability and flexibility.
Joomla 1.5 introduces the MVC architecture. The MVC approach separates the data from the presentation and logic which ensures code reusability rapid development and maintainability. The Joomla 1.5 framework is built to support backward compatibility to PHP 4.3 while supporting PHP 5. The underlying classes have been designed with forward compatibility in mind. The idea is to ensure a solid foundation for future development while taking advantage of as much code reuse, as possible.
For the designers there are great improvements. First of all it has now easy to use interface. Again the designers will find this separation of logic and presentation useful as they can better control how content is presented. The template designers can now use custom layouts instead of heavy table output from joomla core. The template manager has also been freshened up with features such as the ability to edit any CSS file for the template.
Moving further there are vast improvements in all over user interface, administrator is more refined and simplified with other usability changes and easy to deploy. There are even improvements in extension, article, menu and media managers. There are many SEO and SEF modules available out there for creating SEO friendly URLs for the marketing of your website. Joomla 1.5 has an improved template preview, new plug-in manager, and support for Atom 1.0 and RSS 2.0 feeds. It comes with Native LDAP support, XML-RPC support and easy implementation of Ajax applications. The best thing about it is proven to be bug free as it is tightly coupled while coding reducing the number of errors and bugs.
But choosing between both the versions needs a consideration of some drawbacks in 1.5 release. First of all you need to remember that its still a release and so not a stable version like 1.0 so you might encounter problems using it. But these problems will be overcome as this new born develops.
The second drawback in 1.5 is with the third party extensions. It is clear that Joomla ! 1.0 is well versed in third party developers extensions. In fact third Party developers can alter the extensions to create absolutely innovative extensions. However one does not have a wide choice of third party extensions in Joomla 1.5. there is a legacy plug-in in 1.5 which makes most third party extensions and templates compatible with 1.5 but there are lot of extensions still not working with 1.5 so you need to check out first and then decide which version to go for. But again a word of optimism is that though extensions are not compatible with 1.5 release now they will be compatible in future! And even there are extensions developed specifically for 1.5 release while there are extensions which will never upgrade to 1.5 and stick to 1.0. so the choice is yours.
Upgrade from Joomla1.0 to Joomla 1.5 you need to install the Joomla 1.5 afresh and later migrate the data from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5. you get lots of migration tools out there however these tools work only for core modules and are useless for third party modules.
The future prospects in joomla 1.0 are that only security updates will be made which means you will be tied to the current set of features on the other hand the future prospects in joomla 1.5 looks very bright. It will take time for developers to upgrade their products but by choosing 1.5 you will have easy upgrade path to future versions.
Compared to 1.5, joomla 1.0 version is less coder friendly. The user base of joomla 1.5 is still small compared to joomla 1.0 and even 1.5 lacks good documentation and help. Again most of the work today is still done in joomla 1.0. But the word of truth is that 1.0 user base and support will soon fade out and 1.5 help and documentation will increase as time passes. Conclusion If your site development is not urgent wait extra time to take advantage of 1.5’s bright prospects or if you have a small site in 1.0 the migration can less painful. So try 1.5 version and if you encounter problems you can always switch back to 1.0. After all Joomla 1.5’s future looks quite promising.
