I recently got the question: "What is the risk of not migrating my Joomla 1.5 site to a newer version?".

That's a really good question, as the task of migrating to Joomla 2.5 can seem like a daunting one. Nonetheless, there are several compelling reasons to migrate your site from 1.5 when it reaches end-of-life in April 2012.

The guys over at JoomStew have started an initative to help Matias Aguirre. He's the developer of the jUpgrade migration tool for Joomla 1.5 to 1.6.

He will benefit greatly if he's able to attend the J and Beyond event in The Netherlands this May. And so will you - as it will improve the way his migration component works and what it supports.

Unfortunately, he doesn't have the $2500 required for attendance and accomodation.

That's why the JoomStew people have started a fundraising initative to help him go to the event.

One of the hot topics after the release of Joomla 1.6 was how to upgrade from version 1.5. The only viable solution at the moment is using the jUpgrade component by Matias Aguirre.

Below, I've embedded the video made by people in the Joomla project to show how to upgrade your site to 1.6.

I picked up a small comment from Hannes Papenberg from the Joomla 1.6 development team some time ago. He was talking about the process of upgrading from Joomla 1.5 to 1.6.

Today, Joomla is upgraded by copying all the files for the upgrade into the web root of the site. This works fine, and there are also some upgrade scripts that makes this process even faster.

Upgrading to a completely new version of Joomla is another case. Joomla 1.6 will have a lot of new functions and changes. Not only the files will change but also the structure of the tables, and some files will be deleted. Those things don't happen in a regular upgrade. Thus, the upgrade process is not just about copying files. Normally, the process would be to delete all of the files for 1.5, and then migrate all data, image files and setup into Joomla 1.6 manually. This is not ideal. For this reason, Hannes from the development team has proposed that a migration script be made.