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On 24 January 2012 Joomla 2.5 came out – the first long-term release after Joomla 1.5 and the end of a rebuild that had started a year earlier with Joomla 1.6. For this review we installed the last version, Joomla 2.5.28 of 10 December 2014, once more and photographed it: the installation, the website with two sample sites and the backend with its new access rights.
| Released | 24 January 2012 (Joomla 2.5.0) |
|---|---|
| Last version | 2.5.28 "Ember" of 10 December 2014 |
| Versions | 29 |
| End of support | 31 December 2014 – more in the post End of Life: Joomla 2.5 |
| Requirements according to the installer | PHP from 5.2.4, zlib, XML, JSON, MySQL |
| Templates | Beez2 (default), Beez5, Atomic; Bluestork and Hathor in the backend |
| Editor | TinyMCE 3.5.11, CodeMirror |
| Included in the installation | 125 extensions; sample data with 69 articles in 25 categories |
From 1.6 via 1.7 to 2.5
The big leap came as early as January 2011 with Joomla 1.6. According to the Joomla 1.6 announcement, it brought finer access control with user groups and viewing levels you define yourself, categories from one level to as many as you like, packages with several extensions that update with one click, better support for multilingual websites, and template styles. The rigid sections of Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 were dropped.
Joomla 1.6, like Joomla 1.7 of July 2011, was a short-term release in the new six-month rhythm. Joomla 2.5 was the next version after that – the numbers 1.8 to 2.4 never existed. According to the Joomla 2.5 announcement, 2.5 was a long-term release with at least 18 months of support, with 26 new features, 4 fixed security issues and 356 resolved tracker issues. New were, among other things, a notice about Joomla updates in the control panel, overrides for language strings, notes on users and, for the first time, a second database next to MySQL: Microsoft SQL Server.
The installation
The process kept the seven steps of Joomla 1.5 – language, check, licence, database, FTP, configuration, done. New: three sets of sample data to choose from, and at the end a button deletes the "installation" folder instead of you having to do it over FTP.
The website: Beez2 and two sample sites
This time the sample data is a whole tour of Joomla: 69 articles in 25 categories nested up to five levels deep, and 121 menu items. The "Upgraders" column tells people coming from Joomla 1.5 the biggest changes right away: better access control and nested categories. Two sample sites show what that makes possible – "Australian Parks" as a personal blog, "Fruit Shop" as a business site with areas only for customers and growers.
The backend: Bluestork
The menu bar: Site, Users, Menus, Content, Components, Extensions, Help. Users now have a menu of their own, and the control panel shows the logged-in users as well as popular and latest articles.
Content: categories nested to any depth
Users and permissions
Since Joomla 1.6 you create user groups yourself and decide per group what it may do: globally, per component, per category and even per article. Viewing access levels decide separately who may see what. At its core this permission system still applies today.
Extensions, templates, system
The Extension Manager installs, manages and updates extensions – Joomla now fetches updates itself. Templates get styles: the same template with different settings, for example for individual menu items. The sample site "Australian Parks" uses exactly that.
2012 and today
For comparison: the same views in a fresh Joomla 6.2 with today's sample data.
Joomla 1.6, 1.7 and 2.5 in numbers
According to the Joomla downloads:
| Version | First release | Last release | Versions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joomla 1.6 | 10 Jan 2011 | 1.6.6 · 26 Jul 2011 | 7 |
| Joomla 1.7 | 19 Jul 2011 | 1.7.5 · 2 Feb 2012 | 6 |
| Version | First release | Last release | Versions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joomla 2.5 | 24 Jan 2012 | 2.5.28 · 10 Dec 2014 | 29 |
All 29 versions of Joomla 2.5
The last version, 2.5.28, was the final scheduled release of the series according to the 2.5.28 announcement; support ended on 31 December 2014.
- 2.5.024 Jan 2012
- 2.5.12 Feb 2012
- 2.5.25 Mar 2012
- 2.5.315 Mar 2012
- 2.5.42 Apr 2012
- 2.5.518 Jun 2012
- 2.5.619 Jun 2012
- 2.5.713 Sep 2012
- 2.5.88 Nov 2012
- 2.5.94 Feb 2013
- 2.5.1024 Apr 2013
- 2.5.1126 Apr 2013
- 2.5.1223 Jul 2013
- 2.5.1324 Jul 2013
- 2.5.141 Aug 2013
- 2.5.156 Nov 2013
- 2.5.166 Nov 2013
- 2.5.1718 Dec 2013
- 2.5.186 Feb 2014
- 2.5.196 Mar 2014
- 2.5.2030 Apr 2014
- 2.5.2111 Jun 2014
- 2.5.2212 Jun 2014
- 2.5.2324 Jul 2014
- 2.5.2425 Jul 2014
- 2.5.2523 Sep 2014
- 2.5.2630 Sep 2014
- 2.5.271 Oct 2014
- 2.5.2810 Dec 2014
What came after Joomla 2.5
As early as September 2012, when Joomla 2.5 still had more than two years of support ahead of it, Joomla 3.0 came out – with Bootstrap, a backend for smartphones and a three-step installation. That is where this series continues.
Still running a website on Joomla 2.5?
It has had no security updates since the end of 2014. We take your content over into a new Joomla 6 – we name the effort after an inventory.
See Joomla update and migrationHow we did it: Joomla 2.5.28 in the original package from downloads.joomla.org, locally in Docker with PHP 5.6 and MySQL 5.5, reachable only on our own machine, files and settings unchanged. We chose the default sample data in the installer. We skipped the FTP step without a picture. Joomla 6.2 fresh with sample data.
All parts of the series "Joomla history"
