Upgrade from Joomla 1.0 to joomla 3.2

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Upgrade from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 3.2

The other day I had a request to upgrade a certain website from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 3.2 version while still retaining the Joomla Fireboard (now known as Kunena). The request came from one my friends and he asked me if its possible to do this. After some reading, I was able to get an answer to him that the process is possible, but you really need to revert back a few PHP versions so that you can properly run Joomla and upgrade your forum board.

For those of you who don’t know, upgrading Joomla 1.0 to the next version is really simple, but it will not keep the extensions you had, it will only get the core mysql tables backed up and the rest you should move manually and prepare a new upgrade directly from the component install.

The process was not easy …

It was a lot of trial and error to get a proper process of this, basically I had to create 2 virtual machines with the following:

  • PHP version 5.2.17 stable for joomla 1.0 – Joomla 2.5
  • PHP version 5.3.28 stable for Joomla 3.2
  • Mysql version 5.1

The real issue was that the request was to keep the forum board database, this complicated things a bit … He was using Joomla Fireboard extension for his forum so basically once it reached Fireboard 1.0.5 it got discontinued and Kunena has been started to be developed instead.

Why I say this was an issue, its because Joomla was developed around the same time when PHP version was still in its early stage, around php 5.2 if I’m not mistaken. So if I wanted to upgrade the forum board also, I had to make sure the php version is compatible for all php functions to work.

Next was me installing one upgrade of the forum at a time while keeping track of the requirements of the extension. Some of them could only be installed on a specific Joomla version and that Joomla version also required a specific PHP version.

Also, you should keep in mind that PHP 5.2 as well as Mysql 5.1 are no longer developed, so if you are still using this, you are in a security risk. 

For my case, as I said before, I had to compile PHP 5.2.17 manually but I was surprised to find out that I also have to compile MySQL 5.1 from source. You can only install MySQL 5.1 on a bare installation of Centos or Redhat it seems or older version of linux like Centos 5 or Debian 6, which I wasn’t using just so you know, I had the installation of Centos 6.4 and Debian 7.

Well anyways, I believe that is the whole process you need to keep in mind while upgrading Joomla 1.0, not everything works as you expect also, you need to adapt to the specific case, this is why this article is more of a “What I did in my little free time …”, it is not a tutorial, but rather a specific case of mine that you can take in mind while doing your upgrade.

I can perhaps help you do the upgrade of your website for a small fee and will try as much as possible to preserve the components if they still exist by now …

Well I’ll see you again in my next article, see you soon.

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