Final Sobi2 Template Release - Sobi2 Retreat

Written by Robert Vining | 31 October 2011

The Sobi2 Directory Component for Joomla 1.5 has been a large part of my business and website development work for more than 3 years now. I've come to know the developers at Sigsiu.net, Radek and Sigrid Suski, and consider them great friends today.

It was the release of the new SobiPro Component for Joomla that sparked the idea more than a year ago for the Sobi Templates club you see here today. SobiPro is superior to Sobi2 in many ways, including it's super-charged template system. There's nothing else quite like it in the Joomla Extensions Directory.

I initially planned to offer templates for both Sobi2 and SobiPro, since our initial poll showed there was equal interest in both types of templates. But that poll was taken almost a year ago, and SobiPro was still in early Beta. Since then, SobiPro has become stable, and our download and support numbers show SobiPro is quite a bit more popular among our members. It's nearly a 90/10 split for SobiPro.

Sobi2 only works with Joomla 1.5, but SobiPro supports Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.7. Joomla 1.7 and SobiPro should be what everyone is building new sites with, since Joomla 1.5 will become 'End of Life' in April of 2012. That's just 6 months away.

So if you build a site today using Joomla 1.5 and Sobi2, in 6 months there will be no more security updates for your Joomla 1.5 site. Not to mention there is no direct upgrade path from Sobi2 to SobiPro, so it will require a complete rebuild of your site if you choose the older software now.

These factors, along with the reality that there is just not much interest in Sobi2 templates today, has resulted in my decision to make the Sobi2 Retreats template our final release for the Sobi2 Directory Component.

We will continue to support the Sobi2 templates currently available to our members, but we will not be releasing any more new templates for Sobi2 in the future.

Our focus will be solely on the development and support of SobiPro Templates to Sobi Templates members. This will allow us to really start to explore the power of the SobiPro template system. We've only scratched the surface!

If you haven't seen the new Sobi2 Retreat template, checkout the demo site to see it live in action. You can still sign up for full access membership for $47 to all sobi2 and sobipro templates for the next few days until our new membership structure goes live next week.

I'm going to miss working with Sobi2, but SobiPro has already far exceeded my every expectation, and then some. Thanks to Sigsiu.net for giving us the world's best directory software... for free!