What IS Joomla and what is the future of Joomla?

[yosha]

Hey everyone,

before I begin to rant, I would like to say that I am a Joomla enthusiast since the very early stages when Joomla just forked from Mambo decades ago. I was a volunteer for the JED for a year or so a couple of years back and I created a component (free GPLed) for Joomla which lasted over 14 years, until now. I always loved Joomla and did my very best to contribute to it; what's possible to me and my life.

But recently, actually since the last one or two years, I was more and more questioning the purpose of Joomla (or the main core of Joomla), as it seems to me that Joomla and I a drifiting appard from each other. I would like to see this post as a starting point for a discussion rather than me ranting on things; and I know I am not in the Core Team but it feels to me like, recently Joomla has lost the core purpose. It feels to me, that Joomla is adding features with every release without making the ones established any better. But maybe I am just old now :-)

So, what is Joomla?
Is it a bloging system? Yeah, but no. We don't feature ping backs, cookie consent or sitemaps to send to google etc.etc. out of the box (But plugins can do it). Ok, so is it a community sytem like drupal? Yeah, but no. We don't feature comments or interaction out-of-the-box (but plugins can do that). What's the reason to register at a Joomla website when there is nothing to do?. OK, so maybe it is a professional system to create big newspaper pages, like Typo3 (or TypoLight)? Yeah, but no, we don't have the strict workflow that T3 has and we don't have strict enough view (plugins can do that for you). Ok, so is it like a WHSIWYG system-out-of-the-box? Yeah, but no. There are page-builder systems out there that can do that for you. (plugins can do that for you)...but who is going to use the whole workflow system with that comes Joomla and at the same time uses a Page-Builder, when the purpose of Joomla + page.builder is to merely create a SPA? Ok, so, is Joomla a headless CMS? Yeah, but no. We have a rudimentary API interface now, but it works differently to those standards like JWT+Bearer (plugins should handle that, but they don't exist). OK, so is Joomla like a platform for a marketplace for people to sell plugins that no one should need? Maybe. At the moment it looks like.

Joomla feels rather flaky recently, as it can do a lot of things, but nothing really good, or complete. And it doesn't stick to the nowaydays standards of "modern" programming. The learning curve for a new Joomla programmer is rather high, because of... ... decisions.

Programing a component for Joomla has exponetially been more and more complicated, at the same time, creating a simple SEO-optimised website is not possible without the use of additional extensions (like cookie consent), without programming skills. There are so many drawbacks on Joomla that are extrenely old, like multi categories, login with e-mail (or OAuth) which make the whole system feel rather old and out of time.

What I am trying to get down at, is the question to WHAT Joomla actually is, or what it wants to be? Because I don't know anymore.

PS: I still love Joomla but I feel like featurews that are getting added are not worth the necessity, while Joomla lacks flexibilty when it comes to really simple things (log in with email, or multi categories), that should have been solved a decade ago.

PPS: I hate to say this, as a lot of people are trying to do good things with and to Joomla, but I don't think Joomla's core functionality is actually capable of creating a very simple website, without the use of additional plugins, which might be abandoned, or cost a money, or mess up SEO (I've been there).

So, my question is still there: What IS Joomla? Can Joomla build a succesfull website out-of-the-box with no additional plugins? I have my doubts, but pease enlighten me.

Looking forward for your replies :-)

[Chaarita]

thanks, that was a good read. pshhh! It definitely helped me get a better understanding of joomla and I'll be able to better navigate this forum

[pe7er]

Programing a component for Joomla has exponetially been more and more complicated, at the same time, creating a simple SEO-optimised website is not possible without the use of additional extensions (like cookie consent), without programming skills.

I agree that component programming has become more difficult.
However, that's the result of following modern OOP programming paradigms.

You can create a simple SEO-optimized website with just the Joomla core.
Joomla itself only uses a functional cookie that is removed when the session expires.
You do not need a cookie consent plugin for SEO.

So, my question is still there: What IS Joomla? Can Joomla build a succesfull website out-of-the-box with no additional plugins? I have my doubts, but pease enlighten me.

Yes, you can create a successful Joomla 4 website out of the box. It has all functionality for SEO, multilingual, ACL (Permissions), Accessibility already in the core.

For my Joomla websites I use only very few non-core extensions. That makes your website fast and easier to update.
However, I am not a CSS specialist so I for the front-end I use a non-core template extension to make it easier to create different layouts that are also optimized for mobile phones.

[darb]

@yosha. well I think that Joomla very well can create simple websites very easy and fast with different "template" quick packages from good developers and then you are up an running within 30 minutes if you know what you are doing and then just create the other logic and content.

Joomla since Joomla 4.+ is very fast, secure, flexible and stable and have a lot of quality code infrastructure built in. So if you compare and use other CMS systems you can see that Joomla fits the bill in many cases and as you say you also have the possiblity to also build enterprice sites for companies with a great ACL system, if you understand the basic for RBAC systems for example.

So its depends on what you need to do. I see you have not posted and asked things here for more than 8 years so Yes a lot have been improved since then...

Cheers!

[darb]

@yosha you say "PPS: I hate to say this, as a lot of people are trying to do good things with and to Joomla, but I don't think Joomla's core functionality is actually capable of creating a very simple website, without the use of additional plugins, which might be abandoned, or cost a money, or mess up SEO (I've been there). "

What you really mean by this bcs this is just false statements and after you been away from Joomla 8 years maybe never use it you have no idea what you are talking about regarding this statement. I know bcs I have working with many other other of these CMS you mention and Joomla is in most way far better than these when you understand how to compare them. Joomla is very secure, fast, flexible and easy to set up to build maintain any type of site for a company, e-commerce, blog or specific type of web services you want to achieve. So your post here doesnt make any sense about your conclusion in the end.

Joomla is also the winner of CMSCritcs "Best free CMS" in the world 2022 ( latest award ) https://cmscritic.com/cms-critic-awards