Before Christmas I posted about a new Joomla update that had been released to fix a new security issue. The Joomla team did something unprecedented – they released an update for Joomla 1.5, which has been “end of life” since 2012.
Good intentions
At that time, I made a short list of 81 sites in Arizona still using Joomla 1.5. And I emailed them to let them know they need to secure their site. Of course, I made an attractive offer to update them. Which means for many site owners they went to the trash. I understand.
But 15 of those 81 site owners took action and got their sites secured. They didn’t all use my Joomla update service, some had their own web designers who took care of updating them.
Now comes the scary part
10 of the remaining 66 sites have been compromised. Some are down, some have an “SEO Hack” that siphons off Google ranking and some are blacklisted because of malicious code that could infect visitors. This is far worse than I expected.
If you have a site running Joomla 1.5 or even later, you need a Joomla Update
There are still more sites than the 81 I put on my short list running Joomla 1.5. And sites running 2.5 and even versions of Joomla 3 earlier than the 3.4.5. Some will just be a one-click update, others take more effort.
Call your web developer and give him a serious kick in the pants. If your developer isn’t available, call me and we’ll get you updated. This doesn’t end well unless you take action right away.
480-258-4135 is my mobile number.
You can order an Joomla Update here. If you want to stay with Joomla 1.5 for some reason, you can order a Joomla Patch here.