Do a backup. It's not mandatory, but you will always be glad you have done a backup. I can't emphasize this enough times.

• Before you start you should check to see if there are 2.5 versions of your extensions and templates.
• After the migration, you can run the Joomla Discover and Update feature to automatically fetch Joomla 2.5 versions of extensions and templates for you, but if one doesn't exist, you just won't be able to use the 1.5 version with 2.5.
• Empty your Joomla 1.5 trash before you start. 2.5 does not allow duplicate aliases.
• Collect your database host, user and password for the 1.5 database. To get your database information, check your 1.5's configuration.php file. This tutorial will show you where that information is located.

At this point you have two working sites. You will have the original Joomla 1.5 site and the new Joomla 2.5 site.

• The original Joomla 1.5 site: https://example.com
• The new Joomla 2.5 site: https://example.com/j25

Here's how your new Joomla 2.5 site will look:

• Login to the administrator area of your Joomla 2.5 site.
• Use the Extension manager to install SP Upgrade.
• You will immediately see a warning that you failed to connect to the database. To correct this click the Options icon at the top right.
• Click the Database tab.
• Add the database connection information from the Joomla 1.5 site.

• Click Save.
• You will get a green success message. You are now ready to migrate.

• Watch the process log and wait for it to finish. The log will be visible in a pop up window and also on the site itself. It refreshes every 15 seconds.

• Note that it gives you relevant messages. For instance you can see that the old user edandrea was renamed to edandreav15 and the email address was changed to prevent any conflicts. I am going to want to go to the destination site admin when I'm finished and clean up any changes like this.
• I also had some items that could not be created on the new site. According to the SP Cyend tech support, you can ignore these. However, I'll want to check the source site to what items 19 and 22 were and check the destination. If there seems to be a problem I can fix it.
• Any other warnings or problem will appear in red letters. If you see anything in red, be sure to look into them.

• After the process is complete, compare the old site to the new.
• In the image below, I'm comparing the old and new Module Managers. It's easy to see that two modules did not transfer. Polls and Z Weather did not get moved:
  • Polls did not move because there is no polls manager included with Joomla 2.5. To fix this you'll need to get a Joomla 2.5-ready Polls module. For this, I have installed Ace Polls.
  • Z Weather did not move because it was only ready for Joomla 1.5. To find a replacement, I searched https://extensions.joomla.org and chose SP Weather.

It won't hurt to check the Update, Discover, Database and Warnings tabs to see if there are any errors that need to be fixed as you go.

Now it's time to check my components:

• I've manually installed JCE and JComments and I can see these when I check the Components menu.
• AcePolls is there to replace the Poll manager from 1.5. I will need to recreate my data from Joomla 1.5 because they are different programs.
• Installed SP Weather as a new weather extension. I'll need to go to the Module Manager to check that extension. I will need to recreate my data from Joomla 1.5 here also.

Here's what your new site looks like when you reach this point:

The template has been updated, but things don't look exactly right. You'll need to go into your admin panel and fix these.

1. Formatting is different on Newsflash. Fix: Adjust placement of readmore link in articles and/or change the CSS.
2. List is missing from Latest News. Fix:The basic options on the module have not transferred. Go into the the Module Manager and change the basic options to match the original site.
3. Polls is missing. Fix: There is not a Polls Manager. Use Ace Polls instead.
4. Advertisements are showing images instead of text. Fix: Go into Module Manager and change the basic options for advertisement module.
5. Article Options are not the same. Fix: Change the Global Options for articles and/or go to the menu links to thise pages and edit the options for article display.

If you are using a template that has parameters, go to the Template Manager and check the template's parameters. Make sure the new site has the same settings.

After fine tuning, the site looks almost like the original, as in the image below.

There are still some differences though. The border colors on the modules are not the same, the icon positions are not the same and the content area is too wide.

While the template was transferred, and the basic modifications were made for making it work with Joomla 2.5, not all the CSS is exactly the same. These items will need to be corrected using the CSS files.