This new version includes a number of nifty new features, lots of bug fixes, and an easy upgrade path from Django 1.0. You can also read the list of security updates here.

This new release is a security release made to solve a high level security issue, then it’s recommended to upgrade immediately.

Some websites are already being owned because of this security flaw, do not risk to get owned too and update your website software as soon as possible.

If you need help read the migration/upgrade instructions in here.

At the moment I’m running Joomla! 1.5.5 stable.

Yesterday after I installed the software I’ve looked for some tutorials that would guide me through the process of developing a component for this version of Joomla!.

It would be expectable to have some great tutorials in Joomla! Developer Network but to be honest I’ve got to say that the ones that are available are a bit poor, and most of Documentation is written for the older versions.

After a lot of searches I’ve found these tutorials and they are great, at least for helping me out in these first steps.

Another thing that I’ve noticed was that there are a lot of people with problems related with the installation of extensions and a lot of discussions about this in Joomla! forums, it seems that there isn’t a final solution for this kind of problem.

One popular solution (and from what I’ve read it does not solve this problem for everyone) is to change directory permissions to 777. In my opinion that’s not the best way to solve this problem, because if you have a shared host, you’ll probably get into troubles soon or later since other users will have permissions to mess with your files.

Another thing you can do, if you have enough privileges, is to change the user/group in your httpd.conf that way when your script creates any files/directories, they are created with the same user/group as your account.

I’ve used the second option, because at the moment I’m working locally, then I have root privileges. In the future I hope to find a better solution otherwise I’ll stick to this one, since I’ll also have root privileges in the production server too.

Some of the features are:

• Built on top of PHP 5, for me that’s a plus since I’m only working with PHP 5 at the moment.
• MVC support makes application building faster and easier.
• CRUD generator will reduce code repetitions and useless boring time spent on building this tasks.
• Lots of support, when you start learning something new, all the support available you can get is a plus.
• And a lot of other features, such as: Ajax support, smart URL’s, cache management, multilingualism and l18N support, scaffolding, among others. You can check the features list at Symfony Project website.

The only thing I think it’s a bit hard, is the learning curve. What I mean is, you really have to “waste” some time to get to know how the application works, but I think in the end it will compensate.