Our previous blogpost was an April Fools joke. While most people got the joke and while most people appreciated the joke as well, we still felt we needed a counter blog to rectify things: We are not stopping with Joomla. Not at all.
Joomla is on a decline
We jokingly added that one of the reasons to stop with Joomla was that Joomla is on a decline. While the tone of the April Fools joke was not to be taken seriously, the undertone is. We seriously see that Joomla is on a decline. Less people are using it, more and more I hear that Joomla is seen as something of the past. This is not only because of the bigger competitors (Drupal, WordPress, Typo3) but also because of the smaller (Grav, Ghost, OctoberCMS). Understanding that Joomla is on a decline might be the best way to actually deal with its survival.
Convincing developers
On the developer side, Joomla is seen as deprecated as well. Joomla has had a hard time convincing developers that the times of Joomla 1.0 and 1.5 are way passed, but they still refer to Joomla as crappy. Well, I talk about WordPress in the same way. But while Joomla (and WordPress?) has changed hugely over the years, this opinion has not changed. The only way to convince developers for real is to come up with an architecture that gets rid of shit for real. We should debate on what that shit is (bad extensions, complex UI, half-baken architecture?).
Joomla 4 turbo
So there's the opportunity to change things for the good: Joomla 4. Slowly Joomla 4 is coming into realization and while there still is a lot of work to do, we believe Joomla 4 will add a more advanced architecture, that will allow attraction from developers again plus it will make it easier for end-users to use the CMS.
Yireo and Joomla
Personally, I have written a book that I think every Joomla developer should read - Programming Joomla Plugins. It teaches developers the proper way of dealing plugins. Most - if not all - people that bought the book recommended the same thing, that every developer should read this book. The only ones that did not get the book were the ones that actually built the Joomla core (respect!) and on the other hand archaic developers that think they are too good to learn something new. Apart from the book, we are still focusing heavily on developer trainings (custom and class-room based), plus our income is still largely based on Joomla extensions. Are we letting go of Joomla? Hell, no!
About the author
Jisse Reitsma is the founder of Yireo, extension developer, developer trainer and 3x Magento Master. His passion is for technology and open source. And he loves talking as well.
