Joomla 2.5 was launched just last week, but a security release has already been announced. Yep we’re up to 2.5.1 now and so if you have been holding off upgrading, now is the time to take the plunge. Thanks to our Joomla forum regulars, we have seen a few common issues reported. The following advice will ensure your upgrade is smooth sailing. These instructions assume your site is currently running version 1.6 or 1.7. Do not attempt to do this if your site is running Joomla 1.0 or 1.5.
Before Upgrading
Backup your site. Always, always, always backup using Akeeba Backup.
Start by visiting the developer sites for each of your extensions to ensure that they are compatible with 2.5. Download and upgrade extensions where necessary.
If you are using an extension that is not yet compatible with 2.5, you should instead manually upgrade to Joomla 1.7.5. Download the relevant package here, extract the files, and upload them to your site, overwriting any existing files.
How to upgrade
You can use the Update function within Administrator. Watch last week’s video on What’s New in Joomla 2.5 for a quick demonstration of this function. It is a good idea to place the site in Offline Mode during the upgrade.
After Upgrading
One of the new features in 2.5 is there are two new quick icons. When your upgrade is finished, your initial control panel page might display all the quick icons in a single vertical list. Fix this by refreshing the page (F5 key on your keyboard). If that doesn’t work, try clearing your browser cache.
There are new user features and you may have to perform an extra step to get this working. Go to Extensions – Extension Manager – Database. Click the Fix button towards the top right.
What if it all goes wrong?
You did make a backup didn’t you? If your site is so broken you can’t use it, you’ll need to restore using your backup and investigate further.
With one of my sites, as soon as I started the upgrade, the site went blank and I couldn’t access the frontend or Administrator. Instead of reverting to my backup, I manually upgraded instead. As soon as the new files were uploaded, the site worked. To do this, download the 1.7 to 2.5.1 upgrade package here. Extract the files and upload them to your site, overwriting the existing files.
If you have any questions, feel free to drop a post in our Forum or the official Joomla Forum. Joomla Pro customers should post in our priority forum for fastest response. Everyone else is welcome to post in the General forum which is monitored by our community.