1. Just because Brian's given free hosting to endorse a service it doesn't mean it's better than a different service. My honest recommendation is if you don't have a problem don't switch hosts, regardless of what your current host is. There are definitely more than one good hosts out there and I'm pretty sure both Scala and Rochen make that list :)
In the interest of full disclosure: Our site was hosted 2009 to 2013 on Rochen, 2013 to 2020 on SiteGround and from 2020 onwards back on Rochen. Neither company charged our company for hosting. Rochen does charge me normally for my other sites, like my blog. My opinion about each hosting provider is genuine and reflects my experience with them. When my experience with SiteGround made it so I can no longer recommend them I mover our site out of SiteGround. In short, I do as a preach and I preach as I do. Brian does the same.
2. Most extensions have already migrated to Joomla 4 or at least have a public roadmap. Make an inventory of your extensions and check on their developers' sites. Also remember that most Joomla 3–era templates will NOT be updated to Joomla 4; you should factor that into your migration plan. Further to that, take into account that the sand in Joomla 3's hourglass is running out: it will become End of Life on August 17th, 2023. Beyond that you will get no security or bug fix releases for Joomla 3 and its extensions. In my opinion, the best time to start the migration process of your sites (taking stock, running a few tests, get to grips with Joomla 4) is... 9 months ago at the latest.
As you can see, once again I do as I preach and preach as I do. Yesterday we completed the migration of our own site to Joomla 4. I started this process when Joomla 4 was in beta 2. Obviously, the first migration was ready to be deployed long before Joomla 4 stable but I decided to wait until we could rewrite all of our software as Joomla 4 native extensions. This was completed in early March. I held off the deployment because a. Joomla 4.1.0 was just out, meaning we had more work overall; and b. the best time to do a migration of our site which is busy 24/7 is during holidays. The former was further complicated by the Joomla 4.1.1 bugs. The latter is complicated by the fact that Joomla now releases new versions on August 17th, making a traditionally low traffic month into a maelstrom of activity (and forever ruining my only chance in the year to take much needed vacation). This leaves me with Christmas and Easter to deploy updates. Christmas is a no-go, Easter has the benefit that my Orthodox Easter is different than most people's Catholic Easter on most years, giving me a Sunday and Monday to work on. So that's what I did, I deployed the Joomla 4 migration on Easter Sunday for most people (my Orthodox Easter Sunday is the coming weekend).
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!
