I want to upgrade from Joomla version 1.0 to Joomla! 1.5. Can you outline the differences please?

Joomla 1.5 has gone through some major restructuring of it functionality and offers many new features:

The goals for the Joomla 1.5 release are to:

• Substantially improve usability, manageability, and scalability far beyond the original Mambo foundations.
• Expand accessibility to support internationalisation, double-byte characters and Right-to-Left support for Arabic and Hebrew languages.
• Extend the integration of external applications through Web Services and remote authentication such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).
• Enhance the content delivery, template and presentation capabilities to support accessibility standards and content delivery to any destination.
• Achieve a more sustainable and flexible framework for component and extension developers.
• Deliver backwards compatibility with previous releases of components, templates, modules and other extensions.

Below is a list of differences that you will experience when upgrading to version 1.5 

Extensions: Components, languages, modules, plugins and templates are now collectively known as Extensions.

The Installer has moved: The improved installer can be found under the extensions option. With versions prior to 1.5 you needed to select a specific extension type when you wanted to install it. With Joomla 1.5 you just select the extension you want to upload, and click on install. The installer will do all the hard work for you.

The Locale Setting: This is now defined in the language .xml file in the language metadata settings. If you are having locale problems (dates don't appear in your language, for example) you might want to check/edit the entries in the locale tag. Note that multiple locale strings can be set and the host will usually accept the first one recognised.

Create a Read more...:This is now implemented by inserting a tag (button is in the editor area) a dotted line appears in the edited text showing the split location for the "Read more...". A new bot takes care of the rest.

Plugins versus Mambots: Mambots have been renamed as "Plugins". Mambots were introduced in Mambo and offered possibilities to add plugin logic to your site mainly for the purpose of manipulating content. In Joomla, Plugins will now have much broader capabilities than Mambots. Plugins are able to extend functionality at the framework layer as well.

Static Content versus Normal Content: In Joomla versions prior to 1.5 there was a distinct difference between static and normal content. Both content types are still around, but are not handled as separate items. If you want to create static content, just select "uncategorised" as section and category and the content is handled as static content.

Developers: This is the release that developers' have been waiting for. A massive effort has been made to refactor and reorganise the core of Joomla into a true extendable framework. The new features in the framework are too many to list here but additional documentation can be found on the Joomla Developer Network site.

Compatibility: The Joomla developers have made every effort to make this version backwards compatible with Joomla 1.0. In order to install 1.0 extensions you will probably need to activate the legacy code plugin. This can be found in the Plugin Manager (it's called "System - Legacy") and you just need to enable it.
 

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