How to upgrade Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.x

* Updated in December 2015

Joomla! 3.0 was released a long time ago (and now the latest version is Joomla 3.9), so if you want to upgrade your website from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.x, you can follow the steps below. Let's take a look!

Before you decide to upgrade your Joomla website:

• Joomla 3.4 is the newest version, recommended for most new installs.
• Not all of the third-party extensions are a one-click upgrade.

Upgrade Joomla! from 2.5 to 3.x

1. Back-up your website

To back-up your website, you should use Akeeba back-up. If you do not know how to back-up your website, you can read instructions here: How to use Akeeba to backup your site.

2. Check to make sure all your running extensions are the latest version

In your Joomla back-end, check the "Extension Manager" to make sure that you are running the latest version of each extension.

3. Make sure you are running the latest version of Joomla 2.5 

4. Check your system to make sure that it meets Joomla 3 requirements

In your Joomla back-end, Go to "Site" -> "System Information", check all your settings and make sure that they meet all the requirements here: http://www.joomla.org/technical-requirements.html.

Joomla 3.x requirement:5. Check all extensions / templates for Joomla 3.x compatibility

You need to check all the templates and extensions that you want to use on your website to make sure that they are now compatible with Joomla 3.x. Some Joomla extensions do not support Joomla 3.x

6. Create a test site

If your website meets all the requirements above, you should create another back-up site and a test site on your server in a sub-folder. If you don't know how to create a test site, you can read a tutorial from Ostraining here.

7. Try upgrading in the test site first

• In Joomla test site back-end, go to Components -> Joomla! Update

• Click the "Options" button -> Choose "Short Term Support" in the "Update server" parameter, then Save & Close.

• Click "Install the update" and you have finished the upgrade process.

8. Apply the upgrade in the live site

After you successfully upgrade Joomla on your test site, you do the same process in your live site.

I have just instructed you how to upgrade your Joomla website from Joomla 2.5 to Joomla 3.x, and I hope that this blog post is useful for you. Besides, you will need to upgrade PHP for Joomla sites frequently to give your sites the best performance.

If you are looking for modern and creative designed templates, have a look at our Joomla templates library. 

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Moreover, if you want us to write about any Joomla topic, just feel free to contact us and we will consider writing about it. As usual, any comments are welcome!