From the director's office
I mostly blog about the Joomla! Content Management System, business networking, and other geeky subjects which I think are interesting.
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Joomla! 1.8 – don’t you mean 2.5?!
This weekend we attended Joomla!Day UK 2011 in London, a fantastic event for all things Joomla! and a great opportunity to network with other Joomla! users. One of the popular keynote speakers was Chris Davenport, who is part of the Joomla! Leadership Team and responsible for documentation in the Joomla! project.
Chris was tasked with speaking on the topic of Joomla! 1.8 and beyond, and his presentation clarified something which has long mystified the Joomla! community – the numbering system behind Joomla! releases.
For example, why did we jump from 1.0.x to 1.5.x to 1.6.x to 1.7.x? What is next? Why are these numbers used?
We are just in the process of putting together a diagram to explain the release cycle but here are the principle points:
- Joomla! 1.7 marked a separation of the Joomla! CMS from the Joomla! Platform
- Joomla! now operates a fixed release schedule based on timeframes rather than feature implementation
- Long term support releases will always end in .5 (e.g. 1.5; 2.5; 3.5), and be supported for 18 months, with the aim being a stable release – therefore few ‘new’ features will be incorporated from the end of short term releases to the beginning of long term releases
- Examples include Joomla! 1.5 and the future release of 2.5 (January 2012)
- Long Term Support (LTS) releases will be dropped 3 months following the launch of the next LTS (e.g. 1.5 will be dropped in April 2012)
- Short term support releases will be released on a 6 monthly basis, and will incorporate more ‘new’ features which are markedly different to the previous Long Term Support (LTS) release – therefore will have a tendency be less stable, and may have more bug fixes.
What does this mean for web developers? Well, my take on this is that we should not ignore the short term releases. Far from it. Although it can be frustrating having a new version every six months, it is an opportunity to test out the new features being introduced prior to the next Long Term Support release (which are few and far between) and to make sure that our clients are up to date with the latest and greatest that Joomla! has to offer.
For extension developers, it’s critical to keep up to date with these short term support releases because the changes being made are likely to affect your extension on some level – whether it allows you to add extra functionality or leverage new technologies, or breaks your extension!
I wholeheartedly support moving to a fixed release schedule rather than being based on features being ready for release – if something isn’t ready for release by the date of the release, it’s not included. This in some ways can prevent buggy code being included at the last minute, but also it could serve to galvanise the community into action, if specific features are really wanted in the next release.
To end with a great quote from Chris’ talk:
“The community ARE the development team” – lets get involved and keep Joomla! development moving with the times!
Comments
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Monday, 24 October 2011
There are loads of ways to stay in touch with what features are planned for 2.5.
Firstly, sign up for the mailing lists: http://www.joomla.org/mailing-lists.html
Secondly: Join up on Joomla! People and check out the plethora of groups relating to your interest - for starters the official working groups: http://people.joomla.org/groups.html?categoryid=1
And finally, participate in and read the forums - http://forum.joomla.org/ - where a whole wealth of information is shared and discussed relating to features which are going to be implemented.
If you're interested here is how new features are implemented: http://developer.joomla.org/strategy/adding-new-features.html.
Note the link to http://ideas.joomla.org/forums/84261-joomla-idea-pool
Ruth -
Wednesday, 09 November 2011
That is great information Ruth. I now understand a whole lot more about releases and the support structure.
One of the aspects I have always struggled with were the upgrades/updates. Obviously the security releases have always been a priority but 'to upgrade or not to upgrade' has always been a question in my head.
I have just started using 1.7 and I am very happy to see that there is the update function built in. With so many client sites and just me to look after them the time it takes to upgrade them all has left me breathless. I have always wanted to find an external tool where I could upgrade all sites on a server. Haven't found one to dat but maybe 1.7 will make life easier.
Thank you. -
Wednesday, 09 November 2011
Hi there,
I'm glad you found it useful. Regarding an external tool where you can upgrade all sites on the server, if you host with Rochen they have in-built WHM Joomla! Utilities which allows you to scan your account for Joomla! sites, tells you their status relating to upgrades, and gives you the option to update selected sites, or all your sites.
It also lets you apply security tweaks en-mass as well.
Highly recommended just for the time we save not having to faff about with logging into all our sites.
Ruth -
Wednesday, 09 November 2011
PS. Of course, make sure you've got a rigorous backup schedule before doing global updates .. just in case!
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Wednesday, 09 November 2011
I am glad about the upgrade options built in to joomla 1.7 because to be honest as an end user everything has been made to complicated. I worry that joomla itself will become to complicated to use, This will be especially so if joomla is split in to 2 parts. The JED is already full of duplicated extensions for several different version of joomla which i have to sort through to get a working site sometimes.
The new versioning system for joomla will drive me mad.
I had a look on the links Ruth had posted here and although useful they still dont really give me a strategic overview of what improvements a new version of joomla will have. (windows 7.5 i dont think so).
@Ruth - Thanks -
Wednesday, 09 November 2011
Thanks for that extra information. I will look into Rochen hosting and talk to my business partners about htis. It would save a lot of headache that we have at the moment.
I dont suppose they gave a list of new features. This is one of the biggest things with joomla, there is no centralised place to see what features are being developed ie 'Page Title Tags' that can be set in the article. These are the sort of things i would love to see in the magazine or on its own page. I knew that in joomla 1.6 the main focus was ACL (which we all wanted) but other than that i have not got a clue about the differences apart from the obvious layouts. So to me the next release is not really important becasue i dont get excited about them anymore.
I personnally would of had 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 as stable release numbers, the .5 is just confusing. Oh Well, joomla is still brilliant
Humble WebUser