Joomla 2.5 Released

Joomla 2.5

Joomla!® is a free, award-winning content management system written in PHP which is allows users to easily publish their content on the world wide web and intranets. Joomla is created as an open-source project where individuals and teams contribute their skills to its development as well as its supporting systems.

While Joomla is packed with features, its greatest quality is that it is extremely extensible. Because ofits extensible structure, there aren't many things you cannot do with Joomla!. A short list of some important features of Joomla! are the following:

1. Page Caching
2. Web Indexing
3. RSS Feeds
4. Printable Page Versions
5. Newsflashes
6. Blogs
7. Forums
8. Polls
9. Calendars
10. Website Searching
11. Language Internationalization

What is new features in Joomla 2.5 ?

        Joomla, one of the world’s most popular open source content management systems (CMS) used for everything from websites to blogs to Intranets, today announces the immediate availability of Joomla 2.5. Along with new features such as advanced search and automatic notification of Joomla core and extension updates, the Joomla CMS for the first time includes multi-database support with the addition of Microsoft SQL Server. Previous versions of Joomla were compatible exclusively with MySQL databases.

Joomla 2.5 new features :

1. Multi Database support.
2. In step-2 shows you, which databases are available on your server.
3. Different database type can be use.
4. Set site offline during installation.
5. Set site offline image.
6. SmartSearch(finder).
7. Joomla Update Notification.
8. Add notes to menu item.
9. Subcategory filtering.
10. Native ZIP support checked during install.
11. New user notification email sent to admin
12. Database version check
13. Debug Plugin reloaded
14. Menu manager linked to module manager
15. New language code plugin to improve SEO
16. Where’s my version number?

Should I upgrade to 2.5?

How to upgrade ?

http://magazine.joomla.org/issues/issue-feb-2012/item/676-Help-With-1-7-Out-and-2-5-Just-In,-What-Should-I-Do-Upgrade-or-Upgrade-me-not

Is Joomla 2.5 Stable ?

Yes, Joomla 2.5 is stable . Next Joomla 3.0 and Joomla 3.1 will release and expire on (July 2012-February 2013) and (January 2013-August 2013) respectively  but Joomla 2.5 will expire only on August 2013.