The Joomla Project has released Joomla 2.5 Beta2 for download, making this next version available to developers and administrators for testing and for further polishing leading up to the stable release of version 2.5. The currently expected General Availability date is January 24, 2012. They want to make the community well aware that this new release is due out soon. With this release, the end of the development cycle is just about upon us, which means that version 1.7 is nearing end of life and will no longer be supported.

Website administrators are also encouraged to begin testing the upgrade process from version 1.7 to 2.5. This is reportedly going to be easily done with the automatic update feature. If you are updating from 1.5, however, you will still need to migrate using the jUpgrade component.

One new feature being included in the release of Beta2 is the ability for an Admin to disable outgoing emails to users whenever one is created in the Administrator.

While this version is available for download and testing, it is not yet suitable for production. Make sure you are only installing and using this version on development websites.