Joomla Upgrades & Migrations

Moving from Joomla 3.10.1 to 3.10.4 is considered an update.

Within each version of Joomla, i.e. Joomla 3, there will be regular "maintenance" updates released. These will be for bug fixes, security fixes and sometimes enhancements/extra functionality.

Typically, Joomla has a monthly maintenace release cycle and sometimes, if a security vulnerability is found, there may be an additional security releases. It is the same for 3rd party extensions. There will be bug and security releases. Some extension developers are more active than others and release updates every couple of weeks or so. Others may not release updates for a year or so. You can get a good idea how active a develop is by searching on Google for the extension name changelog. This should bring up search results for the extension changelog, which will list all the updates for the extension, including the version number, date and what the changes were.

Moving from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4 is considered an Upgrade.

Joomla 3.10 comes with a pre-upgrade checker, which lists all your extensions and templates and lets you know if they are compatible with Joomla 4. Some extension developers have made the same installable extension compatible with both Joomla 3 and 4. But some extension developers have two separate versions, one for Joomla 3 and another for Joomla 4. You must check with each extension developer, what the recommended upgrade path is. You may need to uninstall the extension in Joomla 3 and then install the new version of the extension in Joomla 4. In these cases, when you uninstall, the data isn't deleted from the database and is waiting for the new version to be installed.

Although Joomla 3.10 provides a "one click upgrade", it isn't necessarily that simple. Upgrading always requires planning.

Moving from Joomla 1.0, 1.5 or 2.5 to the latest version of Joomla 3, or Joomla 4, is considered Migrating or a Migration.

People often think that it will be cheaper to migrate their website from Joomla 1.0 or 1.5, than to have a completely new website built, but what they often don't realise is, you cannot upgrade directly from Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 to upgrade to Joomla 2.5, Joomla 3 or Joomla 4. You have to build a completely new website and then migrate the data over.

Joomla 1.0, 1.5 and 2.5 templates won't work with the Joomla 3 and Joomla 4, so you will either need a completely new template, or your existing template will need to be modified to work with Joomla 3 or Joomla 4. Even Joomla 3 templates won't work with Joomla 4, without being modified.

3rd party extensions created for previous version of Joomla won't work either. So these will need to be upgraded and the data migrated as well.

Unless you have a lot of content or 3rd party extension data that you need to keep, it is often cheaper and easier to add your articles into your new website.