Joomla 2 to Joomla 3 migrations

If you still have Joomla version 2.5 (hopefully 2.5.28) or an outdated version of WordPress, it’s time to upgrade if you haven’t already.  In fact, your Joomla migrations process is way overdue. If you’ve been untouched up to this point consider yourself extremely lucky.  Your hosting company is most likely above average when it comes to blocking specific script injections, known vulnerabilities and has a backup strategy.  However, due to the fact that Joomla has dropped support for 2.5, there’s only so much your hosting company will be able to do by mid 2016.

Hackers are coming. Joomla 2.5 defacements are coming.  Sitecats offers migration services and a plan to keep your new site safe and secure.

First we’ll identify the important features of your site (calendars, forms, document handling, memberships) and we’ll suggest the most effective replacements or upgrades to this components.  We identify a good component based on it’s support, popularity and ease of use.

From there we’ll get to work moving data and content.  Now is also a good time to change your design and get a responsive theme if you don’t have one.  Mobile phone use has increased enormously as you may know, and Google is penalizing web sites who are not up to speed on responsive design.

Last, we’ll get your approvals on our work, and finally we’ll launch your new site.  If you host with Sitecats, you’ll be under our protective security blanket.  We use a multitude of redundant security measures and we back up every site, every day.  Plus we back up twice per month for two years.

More on Joomla Migrations:

Joomla issued a warning about this way back in December 2014. That said, they recently issued a patch to 2.5.28 which caught a vulnerability, and responsible developers applied this to all of their Joomla client sites.  Joomla stated at that time this would be ‘the final patch for 2.5’ and recommended immediate migration to 3.5. If a site is injected with shell code, hackers can create directories and programs inside your site. Mostly this is for defacing all of the sites on the server, or they will install fake pages that resemble PayPal and popular banks in order to phish out user passwords.

They can also redirect your site to a malware site that will infect your website visitors. Google will make note of this in their search, and will require you to prove that your site is virus-free before re-instatement.

Maybe worst of all, your host may shut down your site until it’s in the clear.

If you need help with your migration you should contact your web developer as soon as possible.  Stay current.  And find a qualified web host that will watch your back.