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We had the most pleasant surprise last weekend subsequently after the release of the first JomSocial 2.6 Release Candidate. Our development site and this particular blog were visited by thousands of visitors in a matter of hours, with a surge of download activity that almost choke the unoptimized secondary server for the development site. Luckily for us, the little server proved to be a tough nut. 

The first RC version of JomSocial 2.6 is now available (download link at the end of this article). The amount of hours, spilled coffee and littered pizza boxes that have been sacrificed into making this release compatible with numerous extensions and templates out there is massive!

YooTheme Warp templates + Zoo CCK + WidgetKit compatibility

First of all, we have updated our jQuery library to work hand in hand with the popular and highly versatile Widgetkit tools from Yootheme. In older versions of JomSocial, enabling any JomSocial-related modules on the same page with WidgetKit-enabled articles would cause the javascript library to crash. This would also affect Zoo CCK (Content Construction Kit) articles and numerous Warp-based Joomla templates distributed by Yootheme. Our hearts broke knowing about this clash in JomSocial 2.4. Good news is, these potential clashes have all been fixed once and for all! If you are using WidgetKit, Zoo or any of the nicely done Warp-based templates from Yootheme, rest assured that these clashes are a thing of the past.

Great news. Our Affiliate system is now better than ever! This is a great way to venture up with JomSocial, improve partnerships and earn additional income in the process!

How to join the new affiliate system work?

1. Just register to get your link. Register now on our affiliate page.
2. The correct tracking code is the same as the old one:
   No matter if you are new or have previous affiliate account, we will use the same tracking URL: http://www.jomsocial.com/?referrer=youraffiliateid

We are honored to be part of the Joomla ecosystem, a shining beacon of light in mostly disorganized domain of Content Management Systems. All good criteria people most associate in a good system is there, speed, reliability, security, extensibility and community. 

Community is the keyword. While some other open source management systems may boast some of the criteria, little actually have a well-organized and strong community behind it. The Joomla ecosystem is a robust network of code contributors, extension developers, users, and template developers who have colored and shaped this once a reborn of Mambo CMS into a now highly successful and most used CMS on the planet. Joomla, we love you!

We have just reached an important milestone. The release of JomSocial 2.6 Beta 2 signals the completion of all planned features and improvements for the upcoming JomSocial 2.6.

What are the major features in JomSocial 2.6? Glad that you ask. Most updates in JomSocial 2.6 revolve around 4 primary features. 

With the release of Joomla 2.5 a few days ago, we begin to receive quite an influx of requests for guidance on migrating to Joomla 2.5 with JomSocial users and data intact. This tutorial will guide you with hopefully detailed steps on moving Joomla 1.5’s data into Joomla 2.5, and steps needed to safely transfer JomSocial users and data into the brand new site.

If you are not a JomSocial user and looking to only migrate Joomla 1.5, don’t worry, the following instructions are perfectly valid as once you have completed Part 6, the migration is complete.

We have tested 3 migration components listed in JED  and will provide our findings for each of them. We are hoping that this guide will provide our dear users with a thorough and intimate understanding of how each migrator operates and choose the best option to suit your requirement.

Requirements

1. The website must be at least on Joomla 1.5.21 (the minimum version that JomSocial supports)

2. A running JomSocial 2.4.2 or above (optional, if you wish to migrate JomSocial data)

3. An instance of Apache running locally / in localhost. The easiest method would be having XAMPP installed.

4. A mirror of the site runs locally. Guide on how to do that.

5. Some hugs, a steady mind and caramel frappucino, with cream please.

We initiate this migration experiment by utilizing jUpgrade.  jUpgrade is a popular migrator which has helped many to move from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 1.6/1.7 not so long ago. It is frequently mentioned in numerous Joomla migration articles, in the Joomla Community blog, and also within the official Joomla Wiki.

J2XML seems to be the cleanest way to migrate users and content in Joomla 2.5 with the use of XML files. I was almost led to believe this little component should be the focus of this migration tutorial, but I was disappointed at the end of my experiment to find out it has one very serious omission that may cause other migrated components to fail.

If you wish to simply migrate Joomla Users and Content, and to start clean on Joomla 2.5 with new components (these components having fresh data), then this is the quickest path to achieve it. But if you wish to migrate data from other components such as JomSocial, Kunena, jReviews or others, you might want to avoid this migrator and rely on either jUpgrade or SP Upgrade instead.

Ok, remember when I said J2XML seems to be the cleanest? Well, SP Upgrade on the other hand seems to be the easiest. I was first reluctant to try this migrator given its cost (Euro 25), even more so when I notice how tiny the migrator is. At 13kb, it is certainly the smallest migrator, and component that I have ever encountered! Boy I was fooled. It packs a punch for its size. If you are willing to spend a bit, this migrator is certainly the one.