Support for Joomla 3.10 has officially ended and now all Joomla 3 sites warn administrators to migrate to Joomla 4 as soon as possible. In this article we'll show you what that process entails, so you can decide to start migrating directly or ask for help where you need it. Here at The Joomla Expert, we provide fixed price proposals for Joomla migrations! We have been offering Joomla development services since the very beginning of Joomla, from 1.0 through to today's Joomla 4 migration needs. 

Can we skip the Joomla 4 migration?

In the short term - Yes - Joomla 3 is a very stable CMS and over the years we have noted that Joomla CMS tends to degrade quite gracefully. Typically, when there is a failure it typically presents a message that tells us what the problem is. However. the main reason we find customer require Joomla 3 to Joomla 4 migrations are because hosting companies are now also upgrading server software, such as updating PHP to PHP8. This often causes PHP to throw errors, as code is deprecated. Typically, this is code in the template or a 3rd party extension rather than Joomla core itself. This is a pretty bad scenario because typically it will mean your business website is either entirely offline, or is showing serious errors to your customer base. 

Joomla 3.10 is soon to be at its End of Life (EoL) stage and so all Joomla 3.10 sites are now warning administrators to migrate to Joomla 4 as soon as possible. In this article we'll quickly run you through the scope of that process so you can get started migrating or ask for help where needed. At The Joomla Expert, we have provided Joomla migration services since the very beginning of Joomla, from 1.0 through to today's Joomla 4 migration needs. 

Warning
Support ends on 17 August 2023 for Joomla 3.10. Migrate to Joomla 4 as soon as possible.

Do we really need to migrate our Joomla website?

The short answer is no - the Joomla 3 CMS is very stable and tends to degrade gracefully - i.e. when there is a failure it typically presents a message that tells us what the problem is. In fact, we even have some past clients still running Joomla 1.5 sites, the codebase for which has been EoL since January 1st 2012, and is still running 11 years later! That said, older versions of Joomla are slower and can be vulnerable to malware because no new security patches are to be released for these versions. The main reason we find people requesting Joomla 4 migrations are when their hosting company upgrade the PHP or MySQL version on the server, which causes PHP code deprecation to run and either display issues or make the software throw a server error. This is really the worst scenario, when your live site is no longer available. Which leads us to the long answer.

Well managed Joomla upgrades can mean you keep the same valuable content you have curated, the same valuable links, SEO effort, software and extensions working hard for you and your business. Trying to update too early or without correct precautions is asking for a headache. In this article we take you through deciding when to update to Joomla 4 and how to ensure a safe & smooth process so you can enjoy Joomla 4 working for you for years.

TL;DR Wait until lots of the community have switched over, and all the bugs have been found. Summer 2022 is a good bet, but watch the Joomla release roadmap for changes.

 

Do you need help with a Joomla update or migration? Get in touch for a free assessment.

 

Upgrading from Joomla 3.x to Joomla 4.x should be a carefully managed process. It should not be done directly on a live website because that is a very risky option. Instead, we prefer to test the migration on a development clone. This way, if an issue arises we can solve it and move forward without scrambling to manage a site down situation. This sort of risk averse approach is the gold standard for good web development.