As many of you may be aware, upgrading Joomla in the past involved either the help of an extension (see our past blog about that here) or a manual upgrade. All of this is now a thing of the past!

To see just how simple an upgrade from Joomla 1.6.5 to Joomla 1.7 check out the official documentation on this process here: http://docs.joomla.org/Upgrading_1.6.5_to_1.7

This is the new "standard" in Joomla. It's going to make things a whole lot easier for Joomla Core updates, as well as future extension updates.
A few things to note:

• This method is only present in Joomla 1.6.5 and beyond
• There is no upgrade path from Joomla 1.5.x to Joomla 1.6.5 and beyond, instead it's a migration. See more details on that process please see: http://docs.joomla.org/Migrating_from_Joomla_1.5_to_Joomla_1.6
• Joomla 1.7 is a security release, if you are using Joomla 1.6.x you should upgrade asap.