In the past 4 days there was a lot of action again in the Joomla! world. The Joomla! core team released 2 new versions, first 2.5.5 and then yesterday 2.5.6 - because in Joomla! 2.5.5 unfortunately there was again a series of new bugs which had to be fixed.

With the Joomla! update 2.5.5 the developer team added 11 new features, closed 2 security gaps and fixed 113 bugs. With the shortly after following version 2.5.6 another 12 bugs were fixed again - so a great deal of progress has been made again.

Since also 2 security gaps were closed with the update we strongly recommend all readers who are still using Joomla! 1.6, 1.7 or 2.5.4 to update to the latest version to protect the own website and especially the customer data of web attacks (this happens more often than you think).

Finally there is also an important hint for all of you who are still using Joomla! 1.5. Joomla! 3.0 will be released in september 2012. An update from Joomla! 2.5 to Joomla! 3.0 will be with a playing ease. An update from Joomla! 1.5 to Joomla! 3.0 not at all! This is why we recommend all Joomla! 1.5 users to slowly prepare to start the upgrade to Joomla! 2.5 finally.

Moreover it's getting double as interesting for all Virtuemart users. How all other big projects the Virtuemart project around Max Milbers will stop the support and compatibility for the deprecated Joomla! version 1.5 in the near future.

A double delight for all Joomla! 1.5 users to upgrade to 2.5 finally.

The official announcements about the new Joomla! releases can be found here and here. Don't forget to create a backup of your website before the update. Good luck!