We have been receiving lots of emails, facebook comments, and questions on the forum related to our plans for Joomla 1.5, and the upcoming release of Joomla 2.5. I thought I would take this opportunity to reiterate the planned Joomla releases cycle and our stance on supporting them.
Joomla 1.5 is what the Joomla team refer to as an LTS or Long Term Support Release. It was released in January of 2008 and has seen only minor bug fixes and security releases in nearly 4 years. The current version is 1.5.25 and support for this LTS version is set to end in April 2012.
Joomla 2.5 is the LTS version number that is the culmination of updates that started off life as Joomla 1.6, and subsequently Joomla 1.7. Joomla 1.6 was initially released in January of 2011, and was then replaced by Joomla 1.7 in July of 2011. The upcoming Joomla 2.5 release is planned for January of 2012, and will replace Joomla 1.7. At that time Joomla 2.5 will become the new LTS release for the Joomla project with support slated through October of 2013.
RocketTheme will adhere to the Joomla lifecycle and continue to release new templates and extensions for Joomla 1.5 through April of 2012. We will then continue to support these in our forums with updates and fixes through the end of 2012. Also we will continue to aggressively release Joomla 2.5 compatible versions of our older templates over the next several months. If you have not already done so, you should be strongly thinking about moving to Joomla 2.5 in the near future to ensure that you are running on the most stable, secure, and best supported Joomla platform.
NOTE: One point of confusion is the jump from 1.6 to 1.7 then to 2.5. The numbering of Joomla releases was changed after version 1.7 was released based on community feedback and a vote. The end result was that LTS versions are to receive X.5 release numbers and as the next version of Joomla should of been started at 2.0, it would of reached a 2.5 it’s Long Term Release version. As a point of interest, the next version of Joomla will start at 3.0, and eventually reach LTS status at version 3.5.