After Joomla 2.5 being released (on January the 24th, 2012 - see article) I looked forward to update this site to the new release. It was stuck at 1.7, and I just liked to test and have a look at the new version. I though in a few days I had the site online using the new code, but I was terribly wrong. I jumped right into the plugin and extensions updates, not mentioning I modified the source code in some point to correct some small bug.
So, after a first compulsive update of the code regardless of everything, I deleted the site on which I was performing the test and started from scratch.
Considering the HUGE amount of junk I had everywhere, I decided to make a clean install of Joomla 2.5 and the latest plugin releases, then import the old content manually. That wasn't so easy.
Clean install of Joomla went really smooth - everything was up and running after a few minutes. Then I moved to extensions...
I was mainly using:
- JA Purity II template from JoomlArt as public template
- Phoca Download as download extension
and some other minor ones, that were unnecessary anyway. JoomlArt still had to release a version of its template for 2.5, same Phoca Download. Also, I was looking for a comment system to be implemented in the new version, and I spent some time looking around for it.
While waiting for new releases of my template and download extensions I testes some commenting extension. It looked that "standard" and popular one was JComments, but was stuck to Joomla 1.5. On the extension site forum everyone was talking about a version for Joomla 1.7/2.5, but it seemed that developer was making some "calibration" to the code - and when I say that, it means Garrus Vakarian is a newbie compared to JComment developer (have a look at this thread!). The version for Joomla 1.7 was up and running on a demo site on July 26th 2011, and just needed some "calibration". And it kept being "calibrated" until February 20th, 2012. WTF! The forum was full of angry comments and sarcastic posts about that, but finally the new version was released. I understand JComments is a free extension, and I understand too that programming on spare time keeps things going for long. But I also feel not really fair toward JComments users to say "I've a working version of it - it just need some fine tuning" and let them wait months. Just publish the extension, alpha or beta release, or say "I will publish it in 2012, not before".
I meanwhile I tested sliComments (quite nice) and several other extensions, while also working on queries to import old content to the new site. The time JComments was finally released for Joomla 2.5, I already had the content ported, and some new extensions on:
- JDownloads that substituted Phoca Download on my site
- Asynchronous Google Analytics Plugin for Google Analytics
- Flexi Custom Code to handle the webcam javascript code (previously I wrote it directly inside the database) - I tested some before choosing this one
- newest versions of JA Purity II template and its JA T3 Framework
Then, finally, it looked everything was fine, and I published it yesterday. Now it just need some calibrations (!!!), but the fine tuning can be done while online.
There's something to fix on JA Purity II mobile CSS, and some change on PHP code I made on previous version that have to be moved to the new one (some is not needed).