Technical guidance needed for migration from Joomla 3.10 (PHP 7.4) to Joomla 5

[Oleh Shchepelin]

Dear Joomla Support / Technical Team,

I am currently managing a migration project for a client’s website and require professional guidance to ensure a stable transition.

Current Environment:

• CMS Version: Joomla 3.10.x (End of Life)

• PHP Version: 7.4.33

• Hosting: HostProfis (Plesk)

The Challenge: The website is outdated and currently running on an obsolete PHP version. We intend to migrate the site to a new domain and upgrade it to Joomla 5. However, the site uses several legacy extensions and a template that we suspect are incompatible with PHP 8.2 and Joomla 5 core.

Our Proposed Strategy:

1. Create a full backup and deploy it in a sandbox/test environment (subdomain).

2. Perform a clean installation of Joomla 5 on the target destination.

3. Manually migrate database content (articles, users, and media) to avoid carrying over "technical debt" or broken code from the 3.10 version.

Could you please confirm:

1. Is a direct "one-click" upgrade from 3.10 to 5.x advisable given the legacy environment?

2. Is a "clean install + content migration" approach considered the safest industry standard for sites this old?

3. Are there specific risks of "White Screen of Death" errors if we attempt to run this Joomla 3 site on a modern PHP 8 server?

Thank you for your professional expertise. I will share your recommendations with the site owner to finalize our roadmap.

Best regards,

Oleg Shchepelin

[Rajesh Nanda]

3.x will be upgraded to 4.x then to rest - yes all these steps will be one click. 

But you have to do it on local dev site for testing.

All third party extension should be disabled - also  Joomla shows which extension might conflict.

Yes death white screen chances is there(if you skipped disabling any old extension)

Fresh install not advisable - as Joomla one click upgrade are made for making things easy. This is how mostly every Joomla sites upgrades. but you can do fresh install & do data migration if it suits you. Data migration will also be challenging & that’s not one click.

Follow these, you will get 100% success.

1st: set a local site with backup.

2nd: disable all 3rd party extensions(Joomla will show you potential unsupported extensions, it helps)

3rd; 2nd step is the most important step, if you do that perfectly, all upgrades will be just one click.

If possible, use pen & copy to note down what you disabled, because you might have to repeat the process again.

Rajesh Nanda

Developer 

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