One of our clients from Maine who runs several Joomla non-profit websites on his server emailed me the following question: "I have been working on a few projects on our web site and I am finding that it is becoming more difficult to find extensions for Joomla 1.0. What are your thoughts on upgrading to Joomla 1.5?"

Now, as a technology guy who owns joomlaupgrade.com domain name but thinks business value is always more important, I would recommend:

Three main reasons to upgrade from Joomla 1.0 website to 1.5:

1. Goals of your organization or business have changed so much that the website is no longer aligned to support those goals and your new objectives cannot be easily met by modifying the existing website.
2. There are new high value business items that that cannot be sufficiently supported by the existing website: new products or services, business process automation, desire to refresh your brand or drastically improve your lead generation or sales.
3. Increased security. While open source projects are typically more secure than commercial software, this is only true if you keep up to date with the latest security patches. Additionally, keep in mind that Joomla 1.0 is no longer officially supported by joomla.org.

Three main reasons NOT to upgrade from Joomla 1.0 to Joomla 1.5:

1. You like Joomla 1.5 or 1.6 because of their features and shine but there is no true benefit to your organization or business. 
2. You have an expert team that provides you support and maintenance and ability to sufficiently secure your website and resolve any immediate issues (example: OGO Sense regular maintenance clients).
3. You don't have necessary financial, human or time resources so you would rather wait until the stable version of Joomla 1.6.

Want your Joomla website question answered by a Joomla expert? You may ask me free questions during our general purpose webinars every Tuesday and Thursday.