Joomla enjoys the fame of being one of the most popular content management systems (CMS) worldwide, trusted by millions of websites. Because of the dynamic nature of web technologies — Joomla is also changing rapidly, evolving from one version to another.

Because of the fact that new Joomla versions are continuously released — the old ones are no longer supported. Joomla 2.5 provides its users with new extraordinary features, long-term support and a huge number of templates and extensions. In fact, there are many reasons why you should upgrade your 1.5 Joomla and leave the old 2.5 behind — but we point out the most prominent 5. So, top 5 reasons of Joomla upgrading are:

1. Security improvements. From April 2012, Joomla 1.5 supports and updates are no longer available, and your site has become much more vulnerable to attacks. That’s why Joomla upgrading is vital in order to keep your website secure and to lower the risk possibility of your site being hacked.
2. Extensions. For old 1.5 Joomla extensions are no longer developed. In case you don’t want your site to be outdated — upgrade to new 2.5 version and you’ll have an opportunity to refresh your website.
3. Vast collection of new features and templates. There are so many new templates out there that it is hard for anyone not to find one that suits his needs. Such extraordinary features as Smart Search, CAPTCHA plugin, Multilanguage Support and User Notes improve new Joomla performance.
4. Enhanced SEO. Thanks to SEO improvements you have the possibility to get higher search results in Google that will certainly lead to more traffic to your website.
5. Support. Because more and more resources and support tools from the old versions are becoming obsolete — it is quite necessary to upgrade to new Joomla and get the guarantee of long-term support release.

One more important thing to keep in mind is that the changes between two versions are so significant and substantial that the move from Joomla 1.5 to 2.5 is indeed a website migration, not upgrading. If you prefer a more “hands on” approach — try manual method that means copy every piece of content from your old website and paste it to the new one. It’s quite reliable way — though it expects much time and effort investments. Upgrading to Joomla 2.5 may be relatively simple with CMS2CMS automated migration tool by means of which you’ll convert to new Joomla swiftly and accurately. Fortunately, the migration procedure is very simple from a user’s point of view. There are several steps to walkthrough and none of them is more complicated than filling out a few text fields. It’s time-saving way, besides you may be sure about the correctness of data conversion.

It case you have estimated all the benefits of Joomla 2.5 and made the right choice upgrade, here we provide a short tutorial with easy-to-follow steps:

1. Create your CMS2CMS account. Provide your username, email and password. Alternatively, you may login through Facebook and Google.
2. Specify websites URL. Type the URLs of your Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 2.5 version.
3. Establish the connection between your sites. Download and install the bridge file. It will be saved as “cms2cms” zip. When ready, connect to your Joomla websites via FTP client software. Within FTP dashboard copy the “cms2cms” folder and paste it into the root directories of your Joomla websites (existing and new versions).
4. Choose migration preferences by activating the following migration options: migrate media, make URLs SEO friendly, clear Target website data, get design suggestion.

5. Test Free Demo Migration to see how the CMS2CMS service works and to estimate your new website visual look.

6. In case you are completely satisfied with the results of Demo version — perform Full Migration by pressing the matching button. After that click, your Joomla 1.5 will be upgraded to 2.5.