Disclaimer: This is not a real blog post, this is an April Fools joke. We have invested so much in Joomla (extensions, book), run our entire site on Joomla and are making money with Joomla. Plus, we love the community and its work. We are not stopping with Joomla.

Why Joomla is great

Let's first start with some positive notes: Joomla is still a great CMS. It allows for the setup of smaller sites quickly, while the Joomla libraries also have enough flexibility to build enterprise sites. Besides the solid codebase, the community is great too: There's a lot of enthousiasm, a lot of events world-wide with chances to meet up with global friends, or local usergroups where practical knowledge is shared. The critical note here is that sometimes Joomla seems to be more about community, then about technology - even though without technology the community would not exist. Following from this, the community is still strong, but the technology is slowly failing.

Joomla on the decline

Joomla has been in decline for years, partially because of competition getting stronger (for instance, WordPress), but also partially because of internal issues in the Joomla project. While we have been using Joomla for our own goals all these years, we have seen also a decline on various levels: Progress in development has slowed down, with the uncertainties of Joomla 4 being a good example of this - we're not blaming anyone (except perhaps for ourselves not doing enough voluntary work), but we see it as a fact: Joomla is in decline.

Where are the developers?

One of the things that we have noticed is that PHP developers are leaving the community: While new techniques like namespaces and composer are being embraced, this progress is not going fast enough. If you are a PHP developer and you want to expand your knowledge, it's much better to focus on frameworks like Laravel instead of just sticking with Joomla.

On top of this, the political climate of Joomla has been focused too much on end-users (from our own perspective) with weird discussions on PHP 5.3 compatibility, composer being implemented in the wrong way (?) and legacy classes being swapped out with interfaces but still being used everywhere. It can all be explained - again not blaming anybody. But fact is that this does not create a healthy environment for PHP developers that gain knowledge fast. Cutting edge currently does not apply to Joomla.

Magento 2 in focus

Since we first developed MageBridge in 2009, we have been focussed on Magento 1. In the beginning we also focussed on Drupal, but keeping up to date with three platforms was too much, so we ditched Drupal (thank god). Recently, Magento 2 has been released and because of its architecture being so different from Magento 1, again we face the issue of embracing too many platforms. Because Magento 2 has embraced modern PHP practices, it is a welcome replacement for Magento 1, but it also requires a lot of learning to get used to this.

Commitment

We have committed ourselves to Magento 2, but because of this, we are struggling to commit to Joomla. And sometimes it is better to cut your losses, instead of trying to commit to too many things. So there it is: It is time to say goodbye to Joomla.

Wish you the best

We have enjoyed Joomla for many years. We have built many Joomla extensions on top of a CMS that we love. But we will stop with this. As of today, all Joomla extensions will no longer be maintained, except for security updates. Besides this, we also update our site upcoming weeks to remove Joomla services and training. We will still be looking to migrate customers to other Joomla partners.

It's radical but it feels good somewhere. We are looking forward to embracing new technologies and growing in our role as training provider. Again, Joomla has brought us so much but it is time to let go. So the last thing we can say: So long, and thanks for all the fish!

#aprilfools