What Is the Best Joomla Version?

Note: This post represents an opinion, our opinion, based on the work that we have done on Joomla for the year 2012.

We get asked this question a lot: “What is the best Joomla version?” Back in 2011, we used to say it was Joomla 1.5 – but as of May of 2012, we had a barrage of hacked Joomla websites running the latest Joomla 1.5 version (which is Joomla 1.5.26). As such, we’re no longer able to say that Joomla 1.5 is the best Joomla version out there, because it is no longer secure (we have written an exhaustive post about this).

So, which Joomla version do we consider as the best?

Well, in our opinion, it has to be Joomla 2.5. Here’s why:

• Security: Joomla 2.5 is always up-to-date when it comes to security because it’s still officially supported (unlike Joomla 1.5), which means that any exploit is usually addressed immediately by the Joomla team (which releases a patch that can be easily applied to any Joomla version to remove that exploit).

• Easy upgrade: Gone are the days where one has to update his Joomla version manually (using FTP) – with Joomla 2.5, updating the CMS can be done by just clicking a button in the backend and waiting until the magic is done!

• Solid code: We have to admit that Joomla 1.5’s code was not consistent – even when it comes to its core (this is because Joomla 1.5 still had traces of Mambo, its predecessor CMS, in several key places). Additionally, a lot of the code in Joomla 1.5 is considered deprecated by the latest PHP version and may not work in future PHP versions. Joomla 2.5, on the other hand, is much more consistent (mainly because it dumps all references to Mambo) and its code is future proof with PHP and MySQL.

• Better ACL: Joomla’s 1.5 ACL was very weak (some say it didn’t even have a real ACL). Joomla’s 2.5 ACL is much more solid (albeit much more complicated) and can be used to develop complex access scenarios.

• Support until 2014: The Joomla official team has stated that Joomla 2.5 will be supported (officially) until mid 2014. However, from our experience, we know that they will extend this support for an additional year.

• Seamless migration to Joomla 3.5: The Joomla team has promised a bridge that will seamlessly migrate Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.5 in 2014. What’s even more exciting is that most Joomla 2.5 extensions are compatible with Joomla 3.5 – this means that no more (ahem!) paying for developers to migrate your Joomla website to the latest version! (Well, you might still have to pay something, but the amount of money to be paid – and time spent – to migrate your Joomla website from 2.5 to 3.5 should be considerably less than that for migrating your Joomla 1.5 website to Joomla 2.5.

• A huge library of 3^rd party extensions: The number of 3^rd party companies who are dropping development for Joomla 1.5 and joining development for Joomla 2.5 is increasing by the day. Additionally, there are many extensions for Joomla 2.5 that are exclusive for that platform and do not even work on Joomla 1.5.

Now some of our readers/clients might wonder, how come we didn’t say that Joomla 3.0 is the best Joomla version? Well, unfortunately, and from our experience, Joomla 3.0 is still far from perfect, and regardless what the Joomla official team might say about it (how stable and reliable it is), we still consider this version of Joomla to be in alpha (or beta at best). We know that migrating to Joomla 3.0 is tempting because of its mobile support, but we recommend to avoid this version until 2014 when Joomla 3.5 is released (which is supposedly a much more stable version).

So, now you know what is the best version of Joomla, which is Joomla 2.5. If your version of Joomla is 1.5 or lower, then you should really think about migrating to Joomla 2.5. If you need help doing this, then all you need to do is to contact us. We’re fast, we’re reliable, we’re Joomla experts, and our prices are very competitive!