Web Design and Web Development Blog from Webilicious in Tasmania

Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 2.5 Migration

The VW Club of WA asked me about some changes to their Joomla 1.5 website. It made sense to to migrate the website to Joomla 2.5 now so that work would not have to be repeated later, and so that is what we have done.

Web Design

The excellent "Momentum" template from RocketTheme has been installed and customised for the web design. Much of the original layout has been retained but the new template is more versatile and allows the forums and events calendar to be displayed at the full width of the page, something that couldn't easily be done with the original template.

Migration

The challenge with this project was ensuring that users and their associated gallery, forums and events data were all migrated together. A migration tool such as jUpgrade or SP Upgrade needs to be used to ensure that user IDs are the same on the source and the target website so that forum posts and so on are attributed to the correct user.

I used SP Upgrade and at €24.95, this is excellent value. SP Upgrade migrates most of the Joomla core features including users, categories, articles, images, contacts, weblinks, news feeds, menus and even modules if you want. With the modules, you still have to install the Joomla 2.5 versions and usually choose new module positions etc as these are often different.

Migrating JoomGallery, JEvents and Kunena are not so straightforward and these will likely be the subject of future blog posts.

Update: Click on the links for the relevant articles.

Features

Other features implemented on the website include:

• "accordion" news feature using RokNewsPager from RocketTheme
• social networking "share" and "follow" buttons

Nibbler Test Score

The website scored 7.3 in the Nibbler test tool at launch time which is reasonable. The social networking buttons that have been added to the website should help boost the score when members and visitors start clicking on them!

Feedback is welcome!

Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 2.5 Migration

The folks at Echidna Springs decided it was finally time to upgrade their trusty Joomla 1.0 website and agreed that Joomla 2.5 was the best way to go.

Web Design and Development

For the web design, the original layout has remained substantially the same but we have used the more modern "Camber" Template from RocketTheme.

Some extra functionality has been included:

• automatic language translation using Google Translate
• local weather forecast
• gallery using "SigPlus" image gallery

Nibbler Test Score

The website scored 7.6 in the Nibbler test tool at launch time which is a respectable score, even for an established website.

Feedback is welcome!

New Joomla 2.5 Website

Ramsay Constructions wanted an online presence and trusted us to do the honours.

As usual we chose Joomla as the best solution.

Allan Ramsay is a quality home builder based in Midland in Perth.

Web Design and Development

The "Enigma" template from RocketTheme has been installed and customised for the web design.

As with most website projects we complete, the website code is W3C compliant. If we can't find suitable extensions that are W3C compliant, we often fix the code ourselves and provide the amended code to the extension developer to incorporate into the next release. This is our way of giving something back to the web development community, especially for free extensions.

Other features include:

• social networking "share" buttons
• JoomPlace Testimonials for clients to leave feedback
• gallery (see image on the left) using SigPlus Image Gallery

Nibbler Test Score

The website scored 7.1 in the Nibbler test tool at launch time which is good for a brand new website.

Update: This has since been improved to 7.9.

Feedback is welcome!