Joomla Web Design – Top reasons to Upgrade to Joomla 1.5

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Joomla Web Design – Top reasons to Upgrade to Joomla 1.5

12 October 2009 No Comment

This article discusses the Top reasons why you should upgrade your website to Joomla 1.5.
Joomla is an open source content management system that has had a big impact on the web design industry. Joomla websites have become even more popular since the launch of new Joomla 1.5.Â A company today requires a dynamic and interactive website in order to be successful.Â Company demands have increased and businesses today require a websites that can be updated with ease.Â It is thus not surprising to know that thousands of businesses worldwide have chosen Joomla for their web design needs.

Background on Joomla 1.5

In the beginning of this year, the Joomla development team released the new Joomla 1.5 platform. With the launch of Joomla 1.5 and the announcement that support for the older Joomla 1.0 series will cease in the coming months, businesses are faced with the crucial decision of whether or not to upgrade their company website from Joomla 1.0 to the new Joomla 1.5 platform.Â The decision to upgrade is faced not only by Web design companies but also by businesses who have been quick to respond to the latest release of Joomla.

Before discussing the top reasons to upgrade your company website to Joomla 1.5, it is crucial to understand that there is no straight forward way to migrate your website from the old Joomla 1.0x to the new Joomla 1.5x. It is also important to consider if it is really necessary to do so. However Joomla 1.5 offers significant improvements and there are many reasons to upgrade.

Top reasons to upgrade your company website to Joomla 1.5

Some of the top reasons to upgrade to Joomla 1.5 are discussed below.

1.Â Â Â Adding images on web page is much easier

Joomla 1.5 makes managing images in your content even easier. If you are familiar with Joomla then you know that it offers an article manager feature that is used to add or update the content on various website pages. There is a built-in text editor for adding and formatting text. In previous versions of Joomla, only the images available in media manager could have been inserted into the content in the editor. If you wanted to add anew image form you desktop, you first had to exist the article manager and go to media manager to upload the image first. You would then return to article manager to edit the page and insert the image that you added to media manager.

In joomla 1.5 you can upload a new image to media manager from the content editor itself. There is a short-cut ‘image’ icon below the editor that allows you to access media manager in a pop-up without having to exit article manager. This is a significant improvement in usability. I have also found that this makes it much easier for customers to update pages on their website.

2.Â Â Â SEO improvements

Joomla 1.5, the website page names are in the form of ‘www.yourwebsite.com/services’ or www.yourwebsite.com/contact’. The relevant pages are named how you want them to. You have full control over how you want the web address of individual web-pages of your company website. This is done using article title alias which is very easy to set from the article manager. In older versions of Joomla, renaming page names to your choice required additional configuration or components. This is now built into article manager.

3.Â Â Â Professional back-end

One of the first things that become evident with Joomla 1.5 is its better backend. The administration panel of Joomla 1.5 not only has a better feel to it but offer improvements in usability and power. The custom module support is improved in module manager. The interface is simpler and faster and reduces the number of clicks required to perform many of he tasks. There is also support for additional character sets and languages. 1.5 also supports right to left texts in languages whereas these languages could not have been easily included in the older version of Joomla.

4.Â Â Â Backward compatibility

For those who are concerned that their company website running on older version of Joomla may have compatibility issues especially when it comes to add-on features that may have been used, Joomla 1.5 is fully backward compatible with older Joomla 1.0x. This can be done via the legacy plug-in that is built-in to Joomla 1.5. The plug-in simply needs to be enabled from the admin in order to make the website compatible for any older components or modules that a website may use. From a technical point of view, although Joomla 1.5 supports the latest PHP 5 version, it is also backward compatible to PHP 4.3. Many older web-hosting accounts still run the old PHP 4 version so compatibility reduces risks on most shared web hosting platforms.

5.Â Â Â Joomla 1.5 is faster and safer

Speed and security are important consideration for all websites. For a company or business these are vital considerations. Joomla 1.5 addresses many of the safety and speed issues of the website.

6.Â Â Â Better API – Easier to build extensions

Building extensions is vastly easier and faster because of the comprehensive new API. According to the Joomla team one of the biggest improvements to Joomla 1.5 is for development a purpose which makes it easier to extend and enhance its features even further.