Symphony.

Why should my client upgrade from 1.7 to 2?

What are the benefits in non-techy speech?

I have said they get a more robust code architecture, which quite simply is going to fly right over their heads.

I have said they have a wealth of extensions and functionality available in the newer version, but their current one works for them fine.

To be honest: If you don’t need frontend editing or any special extensions that are only available in Symphony 2 and if the site is running fast and stable, I don’t see a specific reason to upgrade. Of course Symphony 2 is a great improvement (as Symphony 3 will be a great improvement, too) but these things are related to the inner workings of the core and the areas of the system interface that are maintained by you, the developer, and that are never visible to the authors of a site.

Right, but how about upgrade paths. 1.7 isn’t upgradeable to 2 is it? Is 2 upgradeable to 3? I think it’s a case of preparing for future developments.

As both, Symphony 2 and Symphony 3, are major updates I would not speculate on a smooth upgrade path between these versions. Although Symphony 3 is in public beta it’s still a long way to go until the release of the final version and no one knows yet, if or which core concepts will change during the development process that break general compatibility.

NIck,

I think your circumstance (with the editing/upload issue) is the best reason: 1.7 is not really supported any more, at least not nearly as effectively as 2.

Also, I don’t have numbers, but I bet there are many more live installs of 2.x then there were of 1.x (or at least there will be by the time 3 is released). This means a couple things to me. First, 2 will probably be supported after 3 for longer than 1 was supported after the release of 2 (if that makes sense). Second, There is a greater possibility of 2-to-3 solutions appearing from the community (that might be an upgrade solution, or maybe just a way to develop extensions for both).

In reality it still comes down to the project itself and your projected cost of doing the conversion. I recently had to go back into a 1.7 site, and between my relatively inept XSLT (it was my first Symphony project) and the relative awkwardness of 1.7, I probably could have recreated it in 2 with the time I took to put together an update in 1.7. YMMV of course.

but their current one works for them fine.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Unless they’re paying :-)

Nick is right.

@NickToye - If you need to upgrade to Symphony 2 from 1.7, XML Importer extension for Symphony 2 will make your life much easier.

To be honest, thats not going to sell it to the client. I’ll probably have to give up on this one - not to worry though.