Lightquick Web Design - Elements of the past and the future combining to make something not quite as good as either

Is your Joomla 1.0.15 site stuck in a rut? Can't upgrade because the cost/effort is just too much? We now have a solution for you. You can continue using the Joomla 1.0.15 system you have always known in Joostina, Joomla 1.0.15's natural replacement.

Joostina is a content managent system based upon Joomla 1.0.15. When development of Joomla 1.0.15 stopped, replaced by Joomla 1.5, all development of the 1.0 framework came to a halt. All websites that used the Joomla 1.0 framework were forced to either upgrade to Joomla 1.5 or remain in a Joomla 1.0 limbo, becoming more and more out of date as time progressed. The problem was that the migration path to Joomla 1.5 required very large amounts of work, so much so that it was normally easier to build a new site from scratch. The result was that many sites remained in Joomla 1.0 with no possibility of future upgrade.

The cost of upgrading is borne by the client or the web developer and there is very little obvious benefit to be obtained from a Joomla 1.0 to 1.5 upgrade, in fact possibly the opposite, when the client finds functionality missing after the upgrade because a Joomla 1.0 component has not been modified to run on 1.5 or is just incompatible... So, what do you do with your old Joomla 1.0 site that runs well, runs quickly and reliably? Why would you want to upgrade to 1.5?

If you upgrade to Joomla 1.5 you run the risk that components won't work in the same way, it they work at all, some significant work will be involved in migrating all application data and therefore someone will have to pay. It's either the client or it's you. Joomla 1.5 is a chunkier application too and you can pretty much bet that after the migration it will run slower too. Don't forget your client will have to be retrained on the new backend interface and if he has more than one joomla 1.0 site that means you have to do the others too...?

So what is the alternative to just leaving your Joomla sites in limbo? There has not been much choice up until recently. A few Content Management Systems have been forked from Joomla 1.0, MiaCMS was one. At first it looked like a promising upgrade path until it merged with another CMS product and lost it's inherent Joomla-ness. Several other forks of Joomla 1.0 CMS withered on the vine failing to garner the necessary support from users and developers required to keep a CMS alive and allowing it to grow.

Click thumbnail above to view larger image

But finally at last a fork of Joomla 1.0 has borne fruit with a community large enough to keep it going and an active and dynamic development community able to support it. Joostina CMS has come about based upon the good work put in by the Joomla development team into the Joomla 1.0.15 product. The Joostina team have taken the Joomla 1.0.15 code as the starting point and have made some core improvements to the administrator interface, enhancing cacheing and making the back-end language independent of the code. Joostina still runs applications/components/modules and mambot/plugins designed for Mambo and Joomla 1.0.15. It runs them natively and does so as well as Joomla ever did.

So, we now have a possible upgrade path for Joomla 1.0.15 sites. Joomla 1.5 is not necessarily a good path for you as you have to leave so much of your investment behind and duplicate a lot of the work to achieve very little that is new. The only thing you achieve is providing yourself with a supported environment for the future. With the coming of Joostina you can be assured of the same level of support for your Joomla 1.0.15 site without all the lost investment and increased cost.

I have installed both Joostina 1.2 and 1.3 and the cosmetic differences are apparent. The interface is more modern and certianly an improvement over Joomla 1.0 which was in turn carried over from Mambo. The functionality improvements are undoubted, the site should be faster and there is exciting new stuff that even the Joomla 1.5 team could adopt. I am still testing Joostina and it all seems to be in place, however  English language support is still being developed but when it is finished Joostina 1.3 will be a real candidate for progressing, upgrading and improving your Joomla 1.0 site. If I were you I would really give it a once over.

Joostina comes in three versions, 1.1 and 1.2 which are closely related to Joomla 1.0.15 and Joostina 1.3 which is under development.

Joostina 1.1 is unusable by the english-speaking community as it has the Russian translation hardcoded in place of the English directly in the code.

Joostina 1.2 is eminently usable as it has the language specific items separated from the code. The translations are provided in language files. Russian and English (90%) are available.

Joostina 1.3 is under development and the English translation is not yet available.

# Translation system changed to UTF-8 character set.
# The mass removal of language strings in separate files.
# SQL console allows you to make SQL changesto live database
# Completely revised procedure cache
# Mass optimization of SQL queries for faster response.
# Single installer now handles components, modules and mambot plugins (1.3)
# Ability to block access to unused components/modules
# Automatic CAPTCHA which will lock your profile after a failed authentication in the control panel.
# You can lock the control panel through a secret word.
# Ability to create a drop-down menu tree, step by step.
# Administrator control panel can be customised
# The installed components menu in the backend can be edited
# You can display the content author as a link to a profile or as just text,
# Fixed a bug with GZIP-compressed pages.
# Allowing timed authorisation to the Control Panel.
# Revision of internal API for getting rid of the use of global variables.
# Lots of small bugs fixed
# Adding mass content
# Private Messages
# In-built File Manager
# In-built backup Manager

This is what you always wanted Joomla 1.5 to be!  Joostina is a faster, improved version of Joomla 1.0.15 with improved functionality, faster and more tools. The improved language handling makes Joomla/Joostina truly international! All your components will install and work. It's a dream come true for all your Joomla 1.0.15 sites.

To download it click here:

http://lightquick.co.uk/virtuemart-downloads/joostina-cms-1.2.0-stable.html

Comments (0)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/hide comments

Name

Email

Title

Comment

smaller | bigger

Subscribe via email (registered users only)

I have read and agree to the Terms of Usage.

Add Comment