Coming back to CB

I have been using CB on J!1.0 for my sites since years.

Now, I have invested on J!1.6 because my clients need now the new ACL features.

I'm ready to add CB, but faces a question.

First let me correct some things :

I read on the forum that J!1.6 is just a beta for J!1.7 : please let me say that this not true. J!1.6 is working good. Also, some post were based on the idea that J!1.7 would arrive at the end of the year (more or less with CB 2.0). J!1.7 is arriving in July (in fact it is a sort of J!1.6.4 with separation of the framework and the CMS : a great feature).

The question is about choosing the right track :

If I choose to day to implement CB with CBSUbs and GroupJive (CB+), is it a good time to do it ?
Will the transition to J!1.7 be smooth with CB+ ?
Will the transition from CB 1.x to CB 2.0 be smooth ?
I mean that on production sites.

Whats make me confident is that the CB team pays great attention to backward compatibility.
But I'd like to hear any good advice and be sure that no one would say "To begin with CB to day you should better go with J!1.5".

CB 1.4 runs fine on Joomla 1.6.x (except for a big bug in 1.6.2 itself), 1.5.x, 1.0.x, and mambo 4.6.x and 4.5.2.

CB (then latest version) will be running fine on Joomla 1.7.x after it becomes stable.

Thanks for your corrections on Joomla 1.7 scheduled release date, you are right. Let's see when it gets released. I hope it will be July. Joomla 1.5 and 1.6 have had many months of delay, and thus we would all be pleasantly surprised if Joomla 1.7.0 comes on time and really stable (as you know, stabilizing software has a hardly predictable time) while it just got into first alpha stage and still have feature changes scheduled.

Regarding Joomla version to use: Our recommendation to stick with 1.5 unless you need the features of Joomla 1.6 stays for several reasons: I would say that reason number one is that Joomla.org itself is not using it... My rule of thumb if a software is safe enough to use is if the developers themselves are using it, or if they stick with their previous stable version. Now if you need Joomla 1.6 features and extensions you want to use run on it, it is probably stable enough to use today, if none of the bugs affect your own use.

Regarding ACL of Joomla content, there are several solutions for Joomla 1.5 too. One of them is CBSubs (even without the payments part), as CBSubs has ACL included without any hacks onto Joomla.

Joomla upgrades are not easy: Joomla 1.5 and 1.6 upgrades have been migrations, and not upgrades. 1.7 could become an upgrade if the ideas shuffled around these days become reality.

CB upgrades have been pretty easy so far, also accross joomla versions.

CB 2.0 will be an upgrade too, not a site migration. We'll make it as easy as possible as usual, although some settings might have to be done after upgrade.

EDIT: adding:

From today's knowledge, Joomla 1.6->1.7 upgrade might become easier than 1.5->1.7, but that's just a guess. Thus new sites planing for 1.7 might want to go 1.6 route if no bugs are affecting them.... just as a guess.

So, to be clear: regarding CB, you can go with whatever Joomla version you choose, there is no restriction and there or advice given. CB will be running just fine on all of them.

Our recommendation was just for joomla versions to use, not for CB issues.