The Joomla! Extensions Directory ™

The best thing about this was retaining all the articles, categories, menus, users which saved a bunch of time. You have to fix your templates and replace old components/modules. But it gives you a good place to start from.

There are some heavy duty gotchas so this is what i did to get it working.

Make sure you're at J1.5.26. Use Akeeba backup (3.4.3 - not higher) to make a copy of the site. Set up a test server, create a new database and restore a copy of the site. During the restore (i used akeeba kickstart) make a note are you using mysql or mysqli (probably mysqli).

On the test server, rename your htaccess file to htaccess.txt and create a folder on the root called jupgrade. Inside that folder extract joomla 2.5.4 (not higher, jupgrade won't work otherwise). Doing it this way means you don't have problems with curl and its just faster. Log in to the test site and under config > site, uncheck use Apache module_rewrite if its on. Under plugins > system enable MooTools Upgrade. Now install JUpgrade 2.5.2 and in the Parameters menu, change skip checks, skip download and skip decompress to YES. Note that jupgrade uses the mysqli driver by default so if you chose mysql during the akeeba restore you will need to change that here also. Save those changes and click on the upgrade button.

If it fails/stalls, you can try again but remember to dump out any j25_ tables in the database, clear out the jupgrade folder and start over. If it works, it does it in a couple of minutes. Your original site is preserved, your new site is in the jupgrade folder - so you have 2 different paths for each. But both are there for reference and you can start to fix stuff til its right.

Firstly thanks to the developers - great plugin. It is totally up to date using the Google Maps v3 API, and it was a snap to produce the map I wanted with the right zoom level, a marker and an info window. Once you install the plugin and enable it, the button comes available with your editor in the article itself. It allowed me to put in the zoom/pan controls (there are more controls), and I could have added driving directions but I didn't need them. I had a little trouble getting the right width and height, but was able to change that easily in the html source code after I embedded it. I'm very happy with it, saved me loads of time.

This is your basic dropdown menu with mootools special fx. If you're happy mucking about with some simple CSS and images then this one is a delight to work with, is very straightforward and behaves nicely in the browsers I tested (FF, IE7/8, Chrome). If you're looking for a dropdown 2 column menu try DJ-MultiTreeMenu - same excellent functionality. And it's really free.

Almost all my Joomla installs get this extension added because it makes custom php coding a breeze. You can add custom javascripts too (just tag your js file with a php ending like myjavascript.php) and the nicest thing of all is that Mr Jumi will go to any length to help you solve your problems. The forum is hosted here at the Joomla forum, btw.

Certainly solved my cross-browser problems with a swf file. I tried embedding with JCE media plugin but got the 'click to activate' problem with IE7, then tried mgmedia2 bot but that produced problems with Firefox. Then I hit on this and darn! it worked. Job done in 5 minutes. The only drawback is that you can only set one 'master size' for your player but I believe that's going to be rectified in the next release.