Joomla Extension Developers, what resources do you need for the final release of 2.5

[Jessica Dunbar]

Dear Joomla Extension Developers
We need your to help spread the word! 
We are currently planning the Joomla 2.5 marketing campaign. Joomla 2.5.28 will be releasing December 10th. As part of our campaign, we are asking extension developers if they would create a blog (of any length) that explains 2.5.28 will be the final release of the 2.5 series. Additionally, it would be helpful that you provide documentation on how to upgrade your extension within your blog post.
Here is documentation by Jennifer Gress, Tom Hutchison, and Connie Lippert to help people plan for upgrading http://docs.joomla.org/Why_Migrate. Furthermore, the marketing team is preparing a press pack to assist you with the proper messaging and Q & A about the development life cycle. 
In conclusion, our goal for this campaign is to work together to help the community find the resources they need for successful upgrade planning.
If you have suggestions on how else we can assist in this transition, please let us know.

Jess

[Peter van Westen]

Would be nice if the marketing team could provide a nice (short and simple) blog post we - developers - can use as a starting point. Maybe also with some cool images/graphics.
Most devs are not bloggers and/or not to good with words.

Peter

[Goyat LLC-吉田憲人]

Hi Jess,

I have already written how to migrate Joomla 2.5 to 3.x in Japanese and
spread it in my facebook members. Just for info.

http://www.joomlajp.org/cms/what-should-be-done/1280-how-to-migrate-joomla-2-5-to-3.html

Goyat

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Goyat LLC, Yokohama, Japan
Norito H.Yoshida 吉田憲人
http://www.joomlajp.org/
http://goyat.jp/

"Happiness is a perfume you can not pour on others
without getting a few drops on yourself."

幸福は香水のごときものである
人に振りかけると
自分に必ずかかる

[Johan Janssens]

Hi Jessica,

Excellent initiative to create awareness around the end of life of Joomla 2.5. What I find missing a bit in the 'Why Migrate' document is information about a phasing out of Joomla 2.5.

I don't think that most people are well aware that Joomla 2.5 is reaching end of life on 31 January 2014 and they fully understand what this means. Can I ask for some prudency before urging people to migrate ? I think a first good step would be an information campaign about the end of life of 2.5 and what this exactly means. 

For example, removing the 2.5 download option from joomla.org : http://www.joomla.org/download.html and hiding it more would be a good step to prevent more 2.5 installations. Instead of a download option information about upgrading to the latest 2.5 and migration to 3.x could be presented to users. 

I did a quick check in our Joomlatools analytics to get an idea how many people are installing our extensions on Joomla 2.5 and got the following data :

1. 1 Dec 2013 47% of installs where on Joomla 2.5

2. 1 Dec 2014 23% of installs where on Joomla 2.5

On average 35% of Joomla install our extensions where installed on in the past year are running Joomla 2.5. These figures are installations and not upgrades,meaning these sites didn't have any of our extensions installed before. 

Since extensions are installed when sites are developed it's fair to assume that the 2.5 install base has grown by 30% in thee past year and right now still 25% of people are choosing 2.5 over 3.x.

Taking this information into account and taking into account that Joomla 2.5 has a bigger install base over 3.x I think it's in everyone best interest that a campaign to migrate people over to 3.x is handled with care and prudence. 

A migration is always a point in time where people will consider other technologies. I would like to see us be able to bring most if not all of the 2.5 install base over to 3.x. There is no rush. With a good planned approach I think we can!

Keep up the good work,

Johan

[Michael Babker]

Hi Johan,

What you're seeing in terms of download numbers is actually pretty consistent with what I've been seeing for core Joomla downloads since recording download data after some of the detailed metrics were dropped from the JoomlaCode database last summer.  You can see what I've been tracking at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtNxys1hAr-HdDFDMWo0Z2ZuS3hIdWlzS3hnX0dOS1E&usp=sharing

Generally, numbers aren't broken down on the spreadsheet much further than total daily downloads or downloads of a package while it was the current release, but if you pull download reports from http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/frs/?action=FrsReport (note that numbers for Oct 1 forward generally do not include 3.3.6 due to moving the primary space for packages to GitHub), you can see the trends of new installs versus updates for each of the branches (2.5 versus 3.3).  A couple of days ago, this was the summary for our last version (2.5.27 and 3.3.6) downloads:

226,262 new installs of 2.5.27, 472,009 of 3.3.6

434,118 updates to 2.5.27, 488,422 for 3.3.6

As for your other suggestions, many of them are already being planned through the Update Working Group and Marketing teams, including an update of the download page.  It'd be great if you were interested in collaborating in the Update Working Group, seems like your ideas are in line with what the group is aiming to accomplish.

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[Tom Hutchison]

All

Another one of the take aways developers should keep in mind, is my documentation on my extension(s) ready for a user migrating?  I am rolling the word extension across all aspects too, component, plugin, module and template. 

We are hoping you will help get the word out and at the same time ease your work load with this early notice by partnering with marketing. 

It should be easier to point your users at your specific doc links with a blog post and/or double checking users can find your migration advice. For example:

Please upgrade to "MyExtension" verX.x which is compatible with J2.5 and 3.x before you migrate. 

 or 

You must do xxxx then xxxx before migration. Then install this verX.x once 3.x is installed....

This should hopefully save your time answering a lot of questions in your ticket/forum/feedback/email channels about migration of your extension. If you have everything in place, great! If you will help get the word out, even better and much appreciated!!

Thanks

Tom

[Johan Janssens]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for sharing the documents. This indeed verifies our own data. Based on this I think we safely assume that Joomla 2.5 is still being installed for 30% of new Joomla websites, or Joomla 2.5 still takes for 1/3 of the market share.

Based on this I don't think a migration awareness campaign is the first step. You run the risk of alienating 1/3 of your market.  A more prudent approach would be to try and get the number of new installs of 2.5 down first to more acceptable numbers. I think 10% would be a good number to scope for. Once you hit that you can be more firm in migration messaging for 2.5 sites.

As I said this can be done without making too much noise. First step is simply to make 2.5 harder to find and install. Removing it from the official site etc together with putting more focus on Joomla 3 should do the trick. 

The trend we are seeing makes new installs drop by 20% in the past 12 months, or +/- 2% a month. I think we can get this number up to 5% with not that much additional effort. That would mean a good 4-6 months before 2.5 new installs drop below 10%.  Once 10% is reached you can start working on migrating users from 2.5 to 3.x to increase market share of the 3.x release.

I'm happy to help where help is needed.  If the Update Working group needs help us this, happy to do so. Not a marketeer, just trying to use some common sense.

Johan

[Johan Janssens]

Hi Tom,

I don't think this is a real problem that needs to be solved.  The market has already solved this problem on it's own. 

Most if not all developers (specially commercial developers) are already on both 2.5 and 3.x. Having an extension only on one of both releases is economically not viable. As demonstrated in my above reply (with our own data and that of Michael) a year ago the install base was split 50/50 between both 2.5 and 3.x. For a developer being only one would mean missing out on 50% potential revenue.  Data from the JED can confirm this. 

Hope that helps,

Johan

[Charlie Heath]

From the perspective of a vertical market developer with specialized components for a few clients, the LTS lifetimes of 2 years combined with the lack of a stable API and comprehensive migration documentation is a significant problem.  I'll spare the details, but am three weeks of work and eight months of planning into component migration and still don't have a clear path to actually start client migrations.

I think a more reasonable LTS scheme would add security support on a legacy platform, making it possible to skip one major platform version to better match natural website lifetime expectations on a rolling basis and allow niche component developers to go at least 3 years instead of 1.5 between migration cycles.  This seems to be roughly the model  Drupal uses; V6 released in 2008 still on security support, V7 the current mainline, V8 in beta about a year to allow contributed modules to come to maturity on a feature-frozen core before declaring it the new mainline. V6 support will phase out three months after V8 becomes mainstream.  That's about a seven year supported platform lifetime for developer and website owner planning.

I know the J! organization put a lot of thought and planning into developing its LTS plan, and that a lot of volunteer hours are involved (thanks!).  But if the stats quoted by others here are correct, and J2.5 continues to have new deployments that are roughly equal to V3 deployments, I think the problem is bigger than has been acknowledged if security support is terminated too early.

Thanks again to all the volunteers for their work.  One question for Jessica; will the Advanced Search component have a V3 version?  It looks like the solution to a problem I have for intelligently searching complex structured documents but I'll need the V3 certified component to look at it closer.

Charlie Heath
Town Websites

[Bakual]

I know for a fact that some hosters will start disabling 2.5 sites beginning next year. Especially those not on the latest release. So telling the users to migrate is in fact needed. They should no longer stay on a 2.5 starting with 2015-01-01. While it most likely still will be secure, they really should plan to migrate asap.

[Bakual]

Hi Charlie

The new dev strategy we adopted beginning of this year will get you a longer lifespan. Joomla 3 will have an expected lifetime of at least 4 years, most likely more. The first version was released End of 2012.

Joomla 2.5 on the other hand was in maintenance mode for quite some time already (since January 2012). No new features where added, only bugs fixed. The first version of that series was 1.6 (numbers are confusing, I know) which was released january 2011. Also the API between Joomla 2.5.27 and Joomla 3 is compatible. Extensions which are written for Joomla 2.5.27 and don't use deprecated methods will run on Joomla 3 fine.

[NoNumber (Peter van Westen)]

" Extensions which are written for Joomla 2.5.27 and don't use deprecated methods will run on Joomla 3 fine."

That's not completely true. From a php perspective maybe. But CSS/JavaScript is a different matter. If you stick to what's in core, you have the issue between whatever vs Bootstrap, Mootools vs jQuery, etc. Especially when it comes to admin-side extensions.

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[Ole Ottosen (ot2sen)]

Hi Jess,

One thing that could be useful, for bloggers and international writers, as well as extension developers, would be that the press pack or media kit this time could be easily adjustable.

Would be nice to have clean Graphics without the English texts, to go with the default en-GB pack. And some easily adjustable file types too.

In general it would be nice to have access to all kind of Graphics, for those WHO would like to spread the Word. Like the Heart, and the neat j3 Graphics, etc.

Ole

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[Johan Janssens]

Hi Thomas,

Disabling sites ? That sounds like a harsh step to take. Do you have any concrete information about the hosters you are talking about and the amount of Joomla installations that are impacted by this ? Have these hosters made any announcements about the fact they will disable 2.5 ? 

Johan

[Tom Hutchison]

Johan, 

I think you misread my post. Of course extension developers would most likely have a 2.5 and a 3.x extension at this point. What I was talking about is "migration" of users from 2.5 to 3.x and if any special details must be known for a migration to go smoothly. Yes, the market might have already taken care of it. We are trying to stay ahead of the curve. 

It is no secret 2.5 is approaching EOL. This has been published and talked about. It's no secret even Google has been checking versions of not only our software but others and then notifying webmasters their software is out of date. 

I am now steering this thread back on track by posting Jess's original email which started it.

We need your to help spread the word! 
We are currently planning the Joomla 2.5 marketing campaign. Joomla 2.5.28 will be releasing December 10th. As part of our campaign, we are asking extension developers if they would create a blog (of any length) that explains 2.5.28 will be the final release of the 2.5 series. Additionally, it would be helpful that you provide documentation on how to upgrade your extension within your blog post.

Here is documentation by Jennifer Gress, Tom Hutchison, and Connie Lippert to help people plan for upgradinghttp://docs.joomla.org/Why_Migrate. Furthermore, the marketing team is preparing a press pack to assist you with the proper messaging and Q & A about the development life cycle. 

In conclusion, our goal for this campaign is to work together to help the community find the resources they need for successful upgrade planning.
If you have suggestions on how else we can assist in this transition, please let us know.

Jess

Thanks

Tom

--

----

Tom Hutchison

Joomla! Production Leadership Team

[Bakual]

True. The output itself needs to be adjusted so it looks pretyy. That can be easy solved with two different layouts and a simple switch.

[Bakual]

The biggest hoster in my country sent such mails half a year ago. I had the pleasure to have a meeting with them afterwards. I'm sure they will not be the only ones who don't want unsupported software on their servers.

[Bakual]

I agree with One. Having pictures helps. Also having some example post would be great.

[Johan Janssens]

Hi Tom, 

Thanks for the extra clarification. I did read your original post correctly. I'm also not trying to steer this discussion off topic. Feedback :

A. Migration of users

Users do not migrate to a new release just because the software vendor is telling them to do so. Any migration that is more then a simple upgrade is considered to be 'a risk' and is translated in 'a cost'. For a user to take this step the benefit of migrating needs to outweigh the cost it involves.

The numbers Michael en myself posted above confirm this. Users are in no rush to move to 3.x. Today the market tell us that 30% of new installations are still done on Joomla 2.5, with more then 50% of new installations being on 2.5 a year ago.

Lets look at the benefit vs cost factors that could influence users to migrate. 

1. Benefit 

Joomla 3.x doesn't have any key selling points over Joomla 2.5 that could help users see additional benefit to upgrade. The unique selling point for v3 has been mobile ready and user friendly.  From most users their perspective this is not enough of a reason to migrate. 

- The mobile readyness is only an issue for users on the frontend and can easily be solved using a mobile ready and responsive template. Most if not all Joomla 2.5 templates support are responsive and a large part is mobile ready.

- User friendlyness (in the administrator) is a feature Joomla 3 has failed on. The major feature request today for all our extensions at Joomlatools is the ability to manage everything from the frontend. When asked why, users are telling us the administrator in 2.5 and 3.0 is too complex. 

The Why Migrate document you proposed confirm this. If i'm a user on the fence the document doesn't help me make that decision. It doesn't demonstrate enough benefit. 

2. Cost

Joomla 2.5 is not yet 3 years old. Officially released in January 2012. For many users a time period of less then 3 years is too short to warrant an additional migrate cost. (as Charlie has also pointed out from his own experience) A migration for most means hiring a developer to help them migrate, if often brings additional costs to extensions etc. 

B. EOL of Joomla 2.5

I respectfully doubt that users are aware that Joomla 2.5 is reaching EOL and they know what EOL actually means. It has been published, and talked about for sure. The data speaks different though. 

If still 30% of new installations are done with Joomla 2.5 a month before EOL the only possible conclusion is that : users are not aware and the process to make them aware has failed.

So please, don't try to put my remarks off as 'steering' this thread of topic. I'm trying to constructively provide feedback.  My feedback might not be what you expected. I will re-iterate what I said in my original reply.

I don't think that most people are well aware that Joomla 2.5 is reaching end of life on 31 January 2014 and they fully understand what this means. The data supports this. Can I ask for some prudency before urging people to migrate ? 

I propose to first work on an information campaign about the end of life of 2.5 and what this exactly means while focussing project efforts on reducing the number of new 2.5 installs. If new installs hit below a 10% rate, this would be a good time to work on migrating users to Joomla 3.

Sincerely,

Johan

[Johan Janssens]

Which hoster is that ? 

[Sergio Manzi]

Thomas, sure that they were not talking about Joomla 1.5? I received a letter of such tone from Google for an old Joomla 1.5 site I manage in "Google Webamsters Tools".

It seems quite strange that 6 month ago they were willing to get rid of Joomla 2.5...

[Michael Babker]

Don't know Thomas' situation specifically, but there were other hosts at the beginning of this year who had e-mailed clients stating that if they were running 1.5, their sites were going to be upgraded to 2.5 (which we all know by now isn't as simple as clicking a button) or accounts were going to be suspended; see http://community.joomla.org/blogs/leadership/1796-setting-the-record-straight-for-sites-on-joomla-15.html for Joomla's response to that.  As much as I'd like to say that his note is news to me, sadly it isn't.

In some ways, hosts are right to do so.  Using Rochen as an example (since they are sponsoring Joomla's hosting), their Acceptable Use Policy (http://www.rochen.com/legal/aup/) prohibits the use of vulnerable scripts which "Includes scripts (inclusive of all extensions, add-ons or plug-ins) with known security vulnerabilities. E.g. -- An outdated Joomla or Drupal install. Customer must keep all scripts hosted under their account up-to-date and properly secured.".

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[Jacques Rentzke]

hi Johan

Jennifer Gress from the Update Working Group wrote this article for the December JCM:

http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue-dec-2014/item/2398-why-migrate-and-then-how

It should give you and idea about what we are aiming at.

In the article she mentions this new Migration portal page on the Joomla wiki:

https://docs.joomla.org/Why_Migrate

That splits into these 2 pages:

https://docs.joomla.org/Migration_Step_by_Step_Self_Assessment

https://docs.joomla.org/Planning_for_Migration

The aim is to prevent users running into issues due to not planning the upgrade properly, even though for many the process would be very simple.

You'll see that much (or all?) of what you mention is covered there. Marketing is using some of that in visuals, further posts, and a video.

There's also an update included in 2.5.28 that will notify users that 2.5 is reaching EOL, and point them to the help pages for more information.

The Extension developers can use some of what's on the wiki, or what's still to come from Marketing, and use that to inform their users.

Important would be for the extension devs to inform the user how the migration for that dev's extension should be handled. (install latest, or upgrade and then instal 3.x specific, or uninstall and reinstall).

Thanks for the input.

regards,

Jacques Rentzke

Joomla! Update Working Group

[George Wilson]

A. Migration of users

Users do not migrate to a new release just because the software vendor is telling them to do so. Any migration that is more then a simple upgrade is considered to be 'a risk' and is translated in 'a cost'. For a user to take this step the benefit of migrating needs to outweigh the cost it involves.

The numbers Michael en myself posted above confirm this. Users are in no rush to move to 3.x. Today the market tell us that 30% of new installations are still done on Joomla 2.5, with more then 50% of new installations being on 2.5 a year ago.

I disagree with Joomla 2.5  being 30% of new installations - there's still enough people who download the full pack in order to do update via FTP. We still have bug reports about things that break as a result of that from time to time. I think my suspicion of this is backed up by joomla 2.5 being the platform for only 23% of installs of your software down from 47% of installs you quoted earlier (lies, damn lies and statistics right :p) And even with your extension there will always be people who are doing new functionality to existing sites - so even that figure might be high.

1. Benefit 

Joomla 3.x doesn't have any key selling points over Joomla 2.5 that could help users see additional benefit to upgrade. The unique selling point for v3 has been mobile ready and user friendly.  From most users their perspective this is not enough of a reason to migrate. 

For most users this is always the case. For example from 1.5->2.5 you could argue there were no killer features that would ensure users upgrade. If you say smart search I say tags (or whatever) In the majority of cases the reason for us doing this is to ensure a code base update. To make sure people can run on the latest code base with the improvements that brings - to this extend we induce the requirement for them to upgrade - so extension developers can have an improved API (because at the end of the day the USP for any Joomla is the wide extension base). However in anticipation of the response extension dev's can choose to upgrade at any time extension dev's can't afford to loose income from not supporting actively maintained Joomla versions and the majority of people would rather use core supported methods than 3rd party libraries (Nooku, FOF etc).

 

2. Cost

Joomla 2.5 is not yet 3 years old. Officially released in January 2012. For many users a time period of less then 3 years is too short to warrant an additional migrate cost. (as Charlie has also pointed out from his own experience) A migration for most means hiring a developer to help them migrate, if often brings additional costs to extensions etc. 

I'd suggest that this is by far the most significant factor over the previous ones being mentioned.

Kind Regards,

George

[sovainfo]

With release of 1.6.0 on 2011-01-08 makes J2.5 available for almost 4 years! (1 month short).

[Bakual]

https://www.hostpoint.ch/ in the case I was personally involved.
They agreed to tone down the emails and only start with outdated installations. Originally they wanted to do it with all 2.5.x installations. I absolutely understand their reason why they do it. They have a lot of customers with Joomla and they had a lot of hacked 1.5 sites (due to JCE and stuff, not specificially core itself) where their support was simply overrun by those issues.

[Bakual]

Definitively 2.5. I spoke with them face to face for over an hour :)

[Omar]

Hi everyone,

 

I cannot speak on behalf of other hosting companies, however, the standard protocol is to provide the best possible service to clients, especially on a shared hosting environment.

 

This is usually to guarantee the server uptime in the highly competitive market.

SERVICE UPTIME GUARANTEE

We offer a Service uptime guarantee of 99.9% (“Service Uptime Guarantee”) of available time per month. If we fail to maintain this Service Uptime Guarantee in a particular month (as solely determined by us), you may contact us and request a credit of 5% of your monthly hosting fee for that month. The credit may be used only for the purchase of further products and services from us, and is exclusive of any applicable taxes. The Service Uptime Guarantee does not apply to service interruptions caused by: (1) periodic scheduled maintenance or repairs we may undertake from time to time; (2) interruptions caused by you from custom scripting, coding or the installation of third-party applications; (3) outages that do not affect the appearance of your website but merely affect access to your website such as FTP and email; (4) causes beyond our control or that are not reasonably foreseeable; and (5) outages related to the reliability of certain programming environments.

That being said, if any site has:

 

1.       Old extensions, component, plugins etc. that can or does cause server performance issues and/or interruptions on the server, the site will automatically get suspended

a.       The client will then be notified to correct the problem (similar concept to Google’s webmaster if your site has a virus/spyware)

 

Typically, we work with clients to upgrade their systems or provide links/resources to Joomla if we cannot do it ourselves.

 

Obviously, if a client is on a dedicated server, the above would not be an issue.  But, who would invest in a dedicated server while still using Joomla 1.5 or 2.5?  That wouldn’t make much sense.

 

Thanks

Omar

--

[Charlie Heath]

Is the API for V4 frozen, or is there a sufficiently documented subset of the admin api that is tagged for support through V4 and an example component that uses that subset?  Developers would then have the ability to add about two years to the expected life of their work at the time they send out their migration instructions for end of support on V2.5.  QA could include that component unit test in build release requirements for future V4  line.  Set end of security support on V2.5 core to release date plus three months from a working V4.0 pre-alpha release supporting that API, cut many extension developer's and QA's work in half.

Charlie Heath

Town Websites

[Hannes Papenberg]

There is no plan for a Joomla 4.0, let alone anything that could be
released. So there is also no API that you could rely on.

Hannes

> <https://docs.joomla.org/Migration_Step_by_Step_Self_Assessment>
> https://docs.joomla.org/Planning_for_Migration

> *A. Migration of users*

>
> Users do not migrate to a new release just because the
> software vendor is telling them to do so. Any migration that
> is more then a simple upgrade is considered to be 'a risk' and
> is translated in 'a cost'. For a user to take this step the
> benefit of migrating needs to outweigh the cost it involves.
>
> The numbers Michael en myself posted above confirm this. Users
> are in no rush to move to 3.x. Today the market tell us
> that 30% of new installations are still done on Joomla 2.5,
> with more then 50% of new installations being on 2.5 a year ago.
>
> Lets look at the benefit vs cost factors that could influence
> users to migrate.
>
> 1. Benefit
>
> Joomla 3.x doesn't have any key selling points over Joomla 2.5
> that could help users see additional benefit to upgrade. The
> unique selling point for v3 has been mobile ready and user

> friendly <http://www.joomla.org/3/en>. >From most users their

> perspective this is not enough of a reason to migrate.
>
> - The mobile readyness is only an issue for users on the
> frontend and can easily be solved using a mobile ready and
> responsive template. Most if not all Joomla 2.5 templates
> support are responsive and a large part is mobile ready.
>
> - User friendlyness (in the administrator) is a feature Joomla
> 3 has failed on. The major feature request today for all our
> extensions at Joomlatools is the ability to manage everything
> from the frontend. When asked why, users are telling us the
> administrator in 2.5 and 3.0 is too complex.
>

> The /Why Migrate/ document you proposed confirm this. If i'm a

> user on the fence the document doesn't help me make that
> decision. It doesn't demonstrate enough benefit.
>
> 2. Cost
>

> Joomla 2.5 is not yet 3 years old. Officiallyreleased in

> January 2012. For many users a time period of less then 3
> years is too short to warrant an additional migrate cost. (as
> Charlie has also pointed out from his own experience) A
> migration for most means hiring a developer to help them
> migrate, if often brings additional costs to extensions etc.
>

> *B. EOL of Joomla 2.5*
> *
> *

> I respectfully doubt that users are aware that Joomla 2.5 is
> reaching EOL and they know what EOL actually means. It has
> been published, and talked about for sure. The data speaks
> different though.
>
> If still 30% of new installations are done with Joomla 2.5 a

> month before EOL the only possible conclusion is that : *users
> are not aware and the process to make them aware has failed*.

> <http://docs.joomla.org/Why_Migrate>. Furthermore, the

> websites, or Joomla 2.5 still takes for *1/3
> of the market share.*

> <http://joomla.org> :
> http://www.joomla.org/download.html

> <http://docs.joomla.org/Why_Migrate>.

> <http://groups.google.com/group/joomla-dev-cms>.

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> https://groups.google.com/d/optout

> <https://groups.google.com/d/optout>.

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[Johan Janssens]

Hosts are indeed right to do so if the project has abandonned support for a specific release. The more reason in the case of Joomla 2.5 to nor mark it EOL yet.

Johan

[Sergio Manzi]

Good point, Johan!

Also look here: https://www.snowtechmedia.com/announcement-end-life-announced-joomla-2-5-migration-options/ They already start talking about "Crossgrading" as "The upgrade from Joomla 2.5.x to 3.3.x is a major one. This can be relatively expensive."

Methink we are shooting in our feet...

Don't get me wrong: I (as a sites developer/hoster) have already migrated to Joomla 3 all my websites (well, one remaining...) and I think everybody should start migrating ASAP if has not already done.

But again, "Joomla 2" has had a life cycle of just 2 years (we everywhere say that a normal Joomla Major release lifecycle is 4 years...): 2 years is not enough.

My personal opinion (and I know many will disagree) is that we should support (support = provide security patches and fixes for major, blocking, bugs) two major releases.

Sergio

[Johan Janssens]

Hi George, 

On Sunday, December 7, 2014 4:08:23 AM UTC+1, George Wilson wrote:

A. Migration of users

Users do not migrate to a new release just because the software vendor is telling them to do so. Any migration that is more then a simple upgrade is considered to be 'a risk' and is translated in 'a cost'. For a user to take this step the benefit of migrating needs to outweigh the cost it involves.

 

The numbers Michael en myself posted above confirm this. Users are in no rush to move to 3.x. Today the market tell us that 30% of new installations are still done on Joomla 2.5, with more then 50% of new installations being on 2.5 a year ago.

I disagree with Joomla 2.5  being 30% of new installations - there's still enough people who download the full pack in order to do update via FTP. We still have bug reports about things that break as a result of that from time to time. I think my suspicion of this is backed up by joomla 2.5 being the platform for only 23% of installs of your software down from 47% of installs you quoted earlier (lies, damn lies and statistics right :p) And even with your extension there will always be people who are doing new functionality to existing sites - so even that figure might be high.

Feel free to disagree. I'm using objective data; nor personal hunches. If the data is wrong, please show me otherwise. Until then I will assume the data is right.

 

1. Benefit 

Joomla 3.x doesn't have any key selling points over Joomla 2.5 that could help users see additional benefit to upgrade. The unique selling point for v3 has been mobile ready and user friendly.  From most users their perspective this is not enough of a reason to migrate. 

For most users this is always the case. For example from 1.5->2.5 you could argue there were no killer features that would ensure users upgrade. If you say smart search I say tags (or whatever) In the majority of cases the reason for us doing this is to ensure a code base update.

I disagree, the unique selling point for 2.5 where a lot bigger then those from 2.5 to 3.x. The biggest selling point for 2.5 was and still is ACL, (albeit very complex and badly executed) it's feature users have been asking for since the birth of Joomla. 

The biggest feature request we extension developers got from users was support for the ACL. Closely followed by a request to support smart search, (but this was never a deal breaker for most users more a nice to have).

Joomla 3 doesn't have any unique selling points. From a users and feature perspective Joomla 3 is a the same as 2.5, with a bit of a different look and feel : http://www.joomla.org/3/en

 

To make sure people can run on the latest code base with the improvements that brings - to this extend we induce the requirement for them to upgrade - so extension developers can have an improved API (because at the end of the day the USP for any Joomla is the wide extension base).

I understand the Joomla projects wants people to upgrade and so do I. I'm not saying you shouldn't move towards that goal. My comments are about how you do this, when you do it and why you do it. 

The Why Migrate message doesn't make sense at all in a time where you still allow people to install new Joomla 2.5 sites today. Your message will frustrate them and frustrated users are not loyal users. 

 

However in anticipation of the response extension dev's can choose to upgrade at any time extension dev's can't afford to loose income from not supporting actively maintained Joomla versions and the majority of people would rather use core supported methods than 3rd party libraries (Nooku, FOF etc).

This has nothing to do with Nooku or FOF. Nooku and FOF are build to make it easy for extensions developers to support various Joomla versions to take the pain away the Joomla project causes them by breaking API's. They are build out of necessity. 

Those developers among us that make a living selling extensions are since long on both 2.5 and 3. Why because we need to, if we don't we loose 50% of the market potential. I suspect that many of use will keep supporting Joomla 2.5 long after the project has marked it EOL. 

At least at Joomlatools we will. We don't force our users to migrate, we help them if they choose to do so. We have tools available to allow people to migrate from as far back as Mambo 4.5.2, and even today we still have people who do this and we are glad to help them with that. 

 

 

2. Cost

Joomla 2.5 is not yet 3 years old. Officially released in January 2012. For many users a time period of less then 3 years is too short to warrant an additional migrate cost. (as Charlie has also pointed out from his own experience) A migration for most means hiring a developer to help them migrate, if often brings additional costs to extensions etc. 

I'd suggest that this is by far the most significant factor over the previous ones being mentioned.

I choose to disagree. Cost is a contributing factor, unique selling points are more important to urge people to migrate. Joomla 3 simple doesn't provide enough unique selling points.

The risk you run into is that under pressure of migration and because of low benefits in Joomla 3 users will choose different systems. This is not a new trend. Market share of Joomla is dropping, today the combined market share of Joomla 2.5 and 3 installations is lower then the total active install base of Joomla 1.5 sites. 

Johan

[Johan Janssens]

Thanks for the link Sergio. This is a good example of the market at play. The lack of key benefits in Joomla 3 makes it more interesting for people to crossgrade. 

It really doesn't matter what we believe or, we think, ... the market's opinion matters. Today the market is primarily on Joomla 2.5, with 25% of new sites sitll being installed on 2.5 today! 

Our challenge is 'how do we move most of these people to Joomla 3' without frustrating them. The timing in which this happens isn't not important the overall end result is. 

Johan

[Hannes Papenberg]

The first release of the 2.x release series was 1.6 and that happened in january 2011, giving 2.x a lifetime of 4 years.

--

[Sergio Manzi]

That link, Johan, unhappily pop up in the first page of Google results when you search for "Joomla 2.5 EOL announcement".

https://www.google.it/search?q=joomla+2.5+EOL+announcement&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gl=US&hl=en

--

[Johan Janssens]

I would not take 1.6 an 1.7 into account. The release date of 2.5 was January 2012. http://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5403-joomla-250-released.html 

Joomla 2.5 was a LTS release (this scheme has since been abandoned) but in light of en EOL of 2.5 it an important aspect to take into account. 

Johan

[Sergio Manzi]

Hannes, this can be the truth form a technical and "insider" point of view, but hardly anybody who is not a "Joomler" will agree the version 1.6 is the first 2.x version...

[NoNumber (Peter van Westen)]

"Joomla 3 simple doesn't provide enough unique selling points."

I think the major USP of Joomla 3 is now (will be) that it is still supported by Joomla ;)

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[Michael Babker]

Maybe the features unique to Joomla 3 aren't attention grabbing for the masses, but they have been in response to changes in the web industry, features that have made things easier for developers, or trying to address some user wants.  Joomla made it easier building responsive sites by adopting a responsive framework with Joomla 3, but as you've pointed out, template clubs could have and probably did do this before 3.0's release.  We've taken steps to improve the underlying platform security, from strengthening password hashing to incorporating support for two factor authentication.  Admittedly, users could probably care less about the latter (actually I've seen a few posts which call for Joomla to remove core support for any Google services because of US politics).  And because of a change contributed by some of our developers, providers like Akeeba have shifted from a self-built upgrade system to using the core platform.

So what do we have left to sell users on?  Two things that immediately come to mind are the CMS roadmap (even if dates need to be adjusted, though a review of it should occur with every release) and the features it proposes and the support lifetime of the 3.x series.  An issue we've all highlighted is the support term for 2.5, 3.x isn't projected to have a similarly short lifetime.

As for future features, I'll be the first to admit that a lot of work has gone into improving the platform for developers but there isn't necessarily any immediate benefit for users in many cases.  They might not care about optimizations in the routing code, but they surely appreciate quicker loading sites; that was a selling point of 3.3.  So how can we sell those developer improvements to users?

I feel like I've gotten far enough off topic for what this thread aims to do, but there are definitely some valid talking and action points to be taken out of the posts that have been made here thus far.

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