No Joomla! 1.6 extensions from Chill Creations
Chill Creations will not release any Joomla! extension for Joomla! 1.6. This is less dramatic as it may sound, and in the following article I’ll try to explain my motivations.
The most important reason has little to do with Joomla! 1.6 actually, but with what my goals are for Chill Creations. Also, it is important to note that Joomla! 1.7 is expected to be released in July 2011, and our decision is not for all future versions, just Joomla! 1.6.
A very short summary
- We will not develop our extensions for Joomla! 1.6 because:
- we still have to many features to add in the Joomla! 1.5 versions of our extensions
- and we don’t want to maintain different versions of our extensions for Joomla! 1.5 and 1.6
- Joomla! 1.6 is a “short term support” version and will be end of life in 4 months
- We will develop extensions for future Joomla! versions, probably starting with Joomla! 1.7 or 1.8. We will probably start development after we complete the planned functionality for the Joomla! 1.5 extensions. How, what and why will be decided and communicated on this blog, you can subscribe to get updates.
A note for Joomla! insiders, if you don’t understand, just skip this: this blog post is not advising users to not use Joomla! 1.6, and we are not boycotting it. We are also not joining the “anti-Joomla! 1.6” movement. This blog is about a strategic business decision, nothing more.
Quality is our number one goal
The number one reason that our Joomla! extensions will not be made compatible with Joomla! 1.6 is: quality. And I’m talking about the quality of our own extensions, like ccVAOM and ccInvoices. Some of our newer extensions where just 6 months old in January during the release of Joomla! 1.6, and I still have big plans for new feature releases in the Joomla! 1.5 versions. I feared that starting to re-develop them for Joomla! 1.6 would take our focus away from making the extensions more feature complete, stable and user friendly on Joomla! 1.5.
So, when Joomla! 1.6 was released in January 2011, I decided we would continue our work on the planned versions for Joomla! 1.5, focus on stability and new features, and rethink our options in April. April came, and because of the following reasons, I decided we will not support Joomla! 1.6 at all:
- Joomla! 1.6 is a “short term support” release in the new Joomla! development strategy (more on that later). This means it will be replaced by Joomla! 1.7 in a few months (July 2011). If I feel our work for Joomla! 1.5 is done, we will probably start focusing on Joomla! 1.7 or 1.8. Joomla! 1.6 will be EOL (end of life) at the end of summer 2011.
- Joomla! 1.6 still has a lot of instability issues which need to be ironed out. These issues appear to be so serious that different extension developers (Virtuemart, Akeeba Backup) have decided to stop supporting Joomla! 1.6 for now. I don’t have time to run into these issues. We are on a mission to make our users happy with stable extensions which still need to get the new functions I envisioned when we started in 2010, and thats where I want Chill Creations to have its priorities.
- Until now, we haven’t actually had a lot of users asking for Joomla! 1.6 versions of our extensions, and also, sales are still climbing. So it seems that the decisions I made do not affect our bottom line.
Support for future Joomla! versions
Because of the newJoomla! development strategy, I am thinking about how we will handle the new 6 month release cycle. I do not think it’s logical to support every Joomla! version that is released once every 6 months. I am considering to have our extensions support the “long term support” versions, and not focus on the “short term support” versions. If I make a decision about this, it will be posted on this blog.
I hope to write blog post about the new Joomla! development strategy, and a blog post answering the question whether you should be using Joomla! 1.6 yourself (answer: it depends). I do keep seeing that the Joomla! community still needs to be educated about the new Joomla! development strategy. It changes the way we work and play in the Joomla! world, so you should be up to date with the impacts it has on your Joomla! activities.
If you have any questions about this, feel free to contact me directly via our support email!
Kind regards,
David-Andrew
Chill Creations