The Migration Process

We're going to use the following steps to move this site to Joomla 2.5:

• Install Joomla 2.5 in a subdirectory
• Make the migration from 1.5 to the new 2.5 site
• Deal with third party extensions
• Deal with template issues
• Go live with the new site
• Move the 2.5 site from the subdirectory to the main directory

Basically SP Upgrade will make a new copy of your site in Joomla 2.5 and leave your existing Joomla 1.5 site intact.

This might sound like a lot to do, but SP Upgrade really does the heavy lifting. Your main job is to stay calm and go slow! We've covered everything we can imagine that a beginner might run into during migration and suggested possible solutions.

Do a backup. It's not mandatory, but you will always be glad you have done a backup. I can't emphasize this enough times.

• Before you start you should check to see if there are 2.5 versions of your extensions and templates.
•  After the migration, you can run the Joomla Discover and Update feature to automatically fetch Joomla 2.5 versions of extensions and templates for you, but if one doesn't exist, you just won't be able to use the 1.5 version with 2.5.
• Empty your Joomla 1.5 trash before you start. 2.5 does not allow duplicate aliases.
• Collect your database host, user and password for the 1.5 database. To get your database information, check your 1.5's configuration.php file. This tutorial will show you where that information is located.

• Install a new Joomla 2.5 site in a subdirectory of your main site. For example, you might install this new site into a folder called /j25/.
• Install the new Joomla 2.5 site with NO sample content.

At this point you have two working sites. You will have the original Joomla 1.5 site and the new Joomla 2.5 site.

• The original Joomla 1.5 site: http://example.com
• The new Joomla 2.5 site: http://example.com/j25

Here's how your new Joomla 2.5 site will look:

• Login to the administrator area of your Joomla 2.5 site
• Use the Extension manager to install SP Upgrade.
• You will immediately see a warning that you failed to connect to the database. To correct this click the Options icon at the top right.
• Click the Database tab.
• Add the database connection information from the Joomla 1.5 site.

• Click Save.
• You will get a green success message. You are now ready to migrate.

• Extensions: Choose the core features you want to transfer from the list. Use the checkboxes to select. If you click the checkbox next to Extensions, this will select all the core items at once.
• Templates: Enter the name of your template directory at the bottom of the screen to copy the template to the new site. This will only copy the directory and all its contents. It will not update your template to a new version and you will probably need to make some modifications to the template.
• CAUTION! Before you migrate everything, go back to the 1.5 site. If you haven't done so already, empty all items from the trash on the Joomla 1.5 source site.

• Click the transfer icon. This will begin the transfer.
• If the process stalls, you can always click this again. SP Upgrade will resume the transfer from where it left off.
• If you left out some items, and decide to add them later, you can migrate only those items in a separate transfer.

• Watch the process log and wait for it to finish. The log will be visible in a pop up window and also on the site itself. It refreshes every 15 seconds.

• Note that it gives you relevant messages. For instance you can see that the old user edandrea was renamed to edandreav15 and the email address was changed to prevent any conflicts. I am going to want to go to the destination site admin when I'm finished and clean up any changes like this.
• I also had some items that could not be created on the new site. According to the SP Cyend tech support, you can ignore these. However, I'll want to check the source site to what items 19 and 22 were and check the destination. If there seems to be a problem I can fix it.
• Any other warnings or problem will appear in red letters. If you see anything in red, be sure to look into them.

• After the process is complete, compare the old site to the new.
• n the image below, I'm comparing the old and new Module Managers. It's easy to see that two modules did not transfer. Polls and Z Weather did not get moved:
  • Polls did not move because there is no polls manager included with Joomla 2.5. To fix this you'll need to get a Joomla 2.5-ready Polls module. For this, I have installed Ace Polls.
  • Z Weather did not move because it was only ready for Joomla 1.5. To find a replacement, I searched http://extensions.joomla.org and chose SP Weather.

Go to Extension Manager and install the 2.5 versions of any templates or extensions you are going to need to use.

Once you have done your planning steps and have all your resources ready (e.g., new template, new extension, etc.). you can follow these steps:

1. Make a backup of your Joomla 2.5 website before starting - even better to clone your Joomla 2.5 website and test the upgrade process on the clonned site before replicating it on your production site.
2. Verify that your Joomla 2.5 site is on using Joomla 2.5.28. If it is not, you can easily upgrade to Joomla 2.5.28 from your Joomla 2.5 Component → Joomla Update page
3. Verify that your third-party extensions are the latest Joomla 2.5 (and Joomla 3.3 if possible) compatible versions. You should have done this in step 2 of the planning process, but you can also do a sanity check by making sure that there are no reported upgrades in your Joomla 2.5 Control panel Updates icon or your Extension → Extension Manager → Update tab.
4. Go back to your Joomla 2.5 Component → Joomla Update page and click on the Options button and then change the Update Server parameter in your Update Source tab from Long Term Support (recommended) to Short Term Support and click the Save button. Please note that these parameter settings are no longer accurate as Joomla 3.X will be supported for at least 2-4 years.
5. Your Joomla 2.5 Component → Joomla Update page should now show you the option to one click install the latest Joomla 3.3.6 (or better) release. Click in the Install the update button.

Your Joomla 2.5 website has been upgraded to Joomla 3.3

Follow these steps

• Browse to Components, Joomla! Update
• Click on the "Install the Update" Button and Allow the Update to Run