How to actually upgrade Joomla 1.5 to 2.5

Joomla 1.5 has no upgrade path to 2.5. If you are still using 1.5 you need to upgrade or you will get hacked. It’s only a matter of when not if. However their upgrade path is utter garbage. It’s broken 10 times over and absurd. Here’s how.

1. Enable System – Mootools Upgrade in Plugin Manager
2. Download JUpgrade, except the download page sucks and took me a few hours to figure out I had to “add to cart” the free plugin. Did you know Mega is a site you can host files on? Install the plugin when you have it.
3. Click components, JUpgrade
4. Don’t even try upgrading it won’t work and the plugin is totally broken. Click Parameters and skip the checks and download. Save.
5. Copy the latest Joomla 2.5 (a zip file) into /your_joomla/tmp and make sure it’s named exactly joomla25.zip
6. Now start the upgrade. Upgrade is a bad name more like copy some of your pages maybe if I feel like it. It’s a partial migration tool at best that I assume was made by the WordPress team to encourage users to switch.
7. Fix the 1000 problems you’ve introduced. Don’t worry it makes a copy for joomla 2.5, your 1.5 site is still fine for now (till it gets hacked any day now). You can start here.
8. Migrate to wordpress when you have more time because any product that has no upgrade path sucks. WordPress is a one click upgrade and I’ve never seen it break templates (YMMV).