Yii 1.1 is currently in maintenance mode following Yii 2 being released way back in May 2013.
Support and bug fixes for Yii 1 were only provided until December 31, 2016 and security fixes and PHP 7 compatibility ends December 31, 2020.
That means that right now the only reason updates to Yii 1 are being created and made available are for security issues found in the existing codebase, and from 2021 it’s mothballed completely.
If you’re maintaining a Yii 1 codebase it’s time to start thinking about how to migrate away from Yii completely, or upgrade your codebase to Yii 2.
There is an official guide aimed at supporting the upgrade process, but it is unlikely to get you from Yii 1 to Yii 2 without significant pain and head scratching.
Converting from Yii 1 to Yii 2 is completely unlike developing code for either framework, and you’d want to source a Yii upgrade professional rather than getting an inexperienced developer or team involved with a large or mission critical codebase.
Personally I’ve now upgraded four codebases from Yii 1 to Yii 2. All the upgrades have been different. All follow a similar path, and the repeatable process I’ve created, but each has its own edge cases, bespoke widgets and complexities.
The work takes many days per codebase before testing and perfection can happen, and where an existing development team are involved with ongoing development or support of the Yii 1 system, it’s best handled as a team effort. Acceptance that the process isn’t anywhere close to just flicking a switch or downloading a patch is required from day one.
At this point I’m considering two next steps.
Firstly, if your company has significant budget and is in need of support moving from Yii 1 to Yii 2, I’d be interested in hearing from you. You may want a supportive voice helping your existing developers to make the move. You may also be looking to hand over a Yii 1 codebase and get it back ready for some testing and iteration.
Secondly, I’m considering sharing some or all of the process I’ve created for manually moving a codebase over from Yii 1 to Yii 2, the gotchas, the process and how to update specific things within Yii 1, where it isn’t as simple as a like
Feel free to send me a direct message on Twitter @harrybailey or leave a comment below if you’d like to contact me.