Joomla! Documentation™

Going from Joomla! 1.5 to 3.x is considered a migration or a major migration. This means that considerable changes in how Joomla works, tables, technology have occurred that require a migration instead of an upgrade or update. Both Joomla core extensions and any third-party extensions will need to migrate to Joomla 3.x. This includes the template. Every single thing needs to be looked at, planned, decided upon, and executed. You will need to be diligent with staying organized throughout the process.

Intro

The fabulous thing about migration is that it is a great time to reassess goals, create a new look and feel (template), clean up, and develop other areas/elements of your site. The more organized you can be with your ideas/thoughts/plans the better. Plan, plan, plan. Planning makes execution easier.

Start planning by asking the following questions or doing the tasks listed below. You may have more items to plan for depending on the complexity of your site. Sadly, there is no way we can list every possible scenario.

You can ask specific questions on the Joomla 3.x Migration Forum.

Planning Action Items

General

1. Assess your original site goals. Migration is an opportunity to get back into focus with your goals or change direction.
2. Does your server meet the minimum technical requirements for Joomla 3? If not, you will need to change hosts. No better time to change hosts then during a migration.
3. What kind of development environment will you use? A development environment on your local device? A subdomain or subdirectory on your server? A new server/hosting account due to technical specifications?

Joomla Core

1. Clean-up your current site. Take a look at your Sections, Categories, and Articles. Sections are converted to higher level categories from Joomla 2.5 on. Is there clean-up that needs to be done so that you don’t migrate unnecessary content? Document what you want to delete. Alternatively, you may want to document what you want to bring over depending on quantity.
2. Organize your content on the current site. Do the Categories you have still apply? Document new categories you may want to add in your new site.
3. Do you have any articles in the trash? If so, delete them (and any applicable media that may be associated with them if not in use elsewhere on the site). Articles (categories and menu items too) left in the trash can cause duplicate alias issues once migrated.
4. The Media Manager: Decide whether you want to bring your entire /images directory over or just part of it. If your Media Manager has become a disaster, you may decide to bring over specific images via FTP or cPanel instead of migrating the entire directory. In the future, organize folders in the Media Manager so you don’t end up with a big mess.
5. If you are using core components like Joomla Contacts, Web Links, or Newsfeeds, document this as you will need to bring those over.
6. Check your menus and determine if you will bring them all over or only specific menus and menu items. Delete any menu items from the trash to prevent duplicate aliases.
7. If you redesign or make changes to your site design or navigation, will you have obsolete pages that will require a redirect? Track all URLs that need redirects on a spreadsheet or notepad.
8. Did you “hack the core” of your 1.5 site? If so, those changes will not migrate to Joomla 3. You will want to find alternatives to hacking the core in Joomla 3 (How to override the output from the Joomla! core, Understanding Output Overrides, Layout Overrides in Joomla).
9. Check your User Manager. Are you intending to bring them all over? Is there clean up required? Perhaps Super Administrators that no longer should have access or spam users that need to be deleted? Are you using some kind of third-party extension to enhance User Profiles? This part needs careful planning. Especially if the user data changes frequently.
10. Are there new features of Joomla that you wish to use, like Access Control Levels (ACLs), tags? If so, start planning for that now. Planning ACLs is cautious business. Being thorough is very important.

Third-party Extensions

1. Make a list of all third-party extensions in use. This includes components, modules, plugins, languages, and templates. You may use the the Third-Party Extension Inventory Worksheet or just copy/paste them into a document for reference if you’d like. A piece of paper and a pen will suffice. Include if these extensions are used heavily, moderately, hardly ever, or not at all.
2. Determine whether the third-party extensions you rely on are ready for the version of Joomla you are migrating to.
3. Determine if you really need all the extensions you are using. Could it be that Joomla 3 has built in features that could eliminate the use of a third-party extension?
4. What about your template? If you purchased your template from a third-party source, is there a 3.x version released for it? Would you like to continue using it? Is there a migration path published by the developer? Is the new version of it responsive? Is your template a custom template? Or was it heavily customized from a third-party template? For an expansion of Template based considerations, see Template Considerations During Migration (link to Template Considerations page).
5. If you are changing out your template for a new one, will it require any new images? For example, if your current site has a white background and your logo or other images are .jpg images with a white background it won’t look very nice against a new template with an off-white or coloured background.

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