Jeremy Roberts. A Blog

When a new version of a Joomla! extension becomes available, you usually have to un-install the current version, download and then install the new version. This will often make you lose any saved parameters for the extension being removed.

However, with two words, extension developers can save you all this heartache, resulting in an upgrade process of simply, download new version and install, upgrading your existing version of the extension.

How you ask?

Simple. In the XML installer file, declare the install tag in the following way

<install type="component" version="1.5.0" method="upgrade">

The method is the key! When set to upgrade, Joomla! will simply overwrite any files being installed. Of course, these files need to be writable either by the web server, or the FTP user in order for the install/upgrade to be successful, but it will let you know about that.

You can use this attribute when doing a clean install of an extension too, it’s not restricted to upgrades only!

Extension developers, please start using this feature! It makes keeping a Joomla! site up-to-date much easier and keeps the whole process simple for end-users!

Phew! What an effort! I’ve just released the jTips 2.1.5 update publicly. This update was a big one with over 30 (yes thirty) bug fixes and features.

I’ve had my head down over the last few weeks preparing and developing this update, which, should be the last update to the jTips 2.1 series… though I have said that before. No doubt, someone, soon enough, will find something amiss. It’s difficult enough to develop a web application using the latest technologies that is compatible with a most web server stacks. I know this might sound trivial at first, but there are subtlties in the way different versions of PHP operate on different Operating Systems.

And I won’t even get started on Internet Explorer! What a lame excuse for a web browser, and what a nightmare to do debugging in! I hear good things about Internet Explorer 8. Let’s hope M$ can get it a little better this time, and hopefully people might start to upgrade from Internet Explorer 6!

Anyway, enough of my rant.  Welcome the jTips (and other things) blog!

There will be a dedicated jTips page available soon that will provide a good description of just what exactly is jTips.