During conversations with clients over the last few months, one key question keeps coming up: "should I use Joomla 1.0 or Joomla 1.5?" In fact, I can trace the first time I was asked that question back to October 2006.

Now that 1.5 has officially launched, I tend to point the non-technically minded to 1.0 and those who don't mind dealing with a few bugs to 1.5.

However, until this week I don't think I've found a compelling reason for anyone to use 1.5 rather than 1.0. That may have changed:

I've had the chance to do some reading about the direction of other projects. I found one theme in common ... lots of other projects also aiming to provide a great CMS together with a great forum.

Currently its an either or situation. You can have a great CMS in Joomla but you're stuck with Fireboard. You can have a great forum in VBulletin but you'll have lackluster content management.

The Forum and CMS Integration Projects

• VBulletin is looking to add blogs and is able to become a portal with vBadvanced and a social networking site with its new features.
• Drupal is able to extend its relatively basic forum with DrupalVB.
• Simple Machines Forum are planning a CMS to add to their forum.
• Joomla has two projects that aim to integrate it with phpBB3.

I can see Joomla coming out on top in this battle. Joomla and Simple Machines have and advantage because they will be available for free whereas a full VBulletin installation can easily cost over $500. Joomla then has the upper-hand over Simple Machines because SMF will need to build their CMS from scratch.

I'm tempted to think that that a successful integration with phpBB3 will become the killer app that persuades a large number of people to upgrade to Joomla 1.5.

Do you agree? Is Joomla well positioned to beat these rivals? Are there other compelling reasons to upgrade to 1.5?

Update, a Challenge and Free Links

OK, Barrie from CompassDesigns has answered and he thinks that Joomsuite Content can be the killer app for Joomla 1.5.

This is my challenge to you ... post what you think will be Joomla 1.5's killer app. Then drop a link in the comments and I'll add an additional link to your site right here.

Update 2

The developers of one bridge are asking for donations to help finish the project. More at Rocketwerx.com.

Source: Alledia.com
Photo Credit, Elven Nicole