Joomla upgrades open source CMS package to v1.7

Popular open source content management system (CMS) Joomla unveiled version 1.7 of the software today, adding better security, search options and migration tools.

The development lifecycle for Joomla has also been changed, making future updates more predictable and enabling easier upgrades to future Joomla versions.

Joomla production leadership team member Mark Dexter said: "Upgrading from one version of Joomla to another usually involved typing in command line arguments, but now users will be able to click through several wizard-driven screens that automatically set up the system."

He also explained that Joomla will now release new versions on a six-monthly cycle – every January and July, rather than every couple of years.

That release cycle has been made possible by splitting the base platform (the framework) from the actual CMS application, allowing the Joomla platform to be used for other applications.

The CMS and framework will now be developed in parallel with two different teams concentrating their specific expertise.

Joomla is coded in PHP and was split off (forked) from the Mambo CMS package in 2005.

Joomla uses the well-known open source LAMP stack (Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python) stack, although Dexter said there was a project in the works which in the next release would allow Joomla to run on different databases. However, he added that the software currently only supports MySQL.

Joomla claims its package has been downloaded over 24 million times, with third-party developers adding over 7,900 extensions to the software.