renaming Joomla

[just another al]

All right, Joomla folks. Pls do not shoot the piano man, which is me.

With all due respect to the J! team and Joomla! fans I would like to start a campaign for renaming Joomla. Our beloved beauty CMS Joomla! at least needs a cool name enclosing, surrounding its top features.

Any ideas?

[ranwilli]

Yeah, it ain't broken, so don't...

[mandville]

Our beloved beauty CMS Joomla! at least needs a cool name enclosing, surrounding its top features.

like what?
welcome to "epandableflexibleeasy" efe?

[just another al]

Joomla! is a great not-too-technical solution for beginners in web development

EasyPower (doesn't require say Drupal's level of technique and runs with no prob on most web servers)
MyWayOK (I can easily customize my site look the way I want)
Easy Store (J! is ok for building great commerce websites)
Easy Help (fantastic yet still cheap support)

EasyPower is ok to start to talk it over. Let's keep brainstorming it!

[Marvin_Martiano]

Main thoughts:
--1 Why threaten your entire marketshare (and it's the second-largest) by changing your name, unless it's become toxic (I wouldn't use ReiserFS without afterthoughts, and John McAfee has thoroughly damaged his ex-company)? Why re-arrange the deckchairs while the ship is sinking (if that's your impression), or re-paint the anchor while stuck on a sandbar?! What good is it going to do -- "just the same, only with a name you don't remember ever hearing"?
--1b It's already hard enough to convince clients not to go with the one CMS they've heard about, if you now give them a name that hardly comes up in Google; and if you say "yeah it used to be called Mambo then Joomla" they'll ask "'mkay, Mambo to Joomla was a restarting of the project with relatively clean slate, what drama underlies this latest change?" and I just cannot answer them (except "their marketing team presented this new all-singing all-dancing name as just phase1 of a restructuring" "What's phase2 and phase3?" "I don't know, but they played recordings of whalesong and didgeridoos while presenting it, it was bang on trend").

--2 Anything with "Easy" in the name sounds like a knock-off of a superior program. "EasyCDCreator", "EasyForms", "EasyWhatever".

I guess "EasyJet" is the only one that gets away with it, at first sight, and their aim is to sound cheap & cheerful, because that's their marketing strategy. Not a genius plan if all your competitors (=majority of non-niche CMSes) are equally free. Actually, the "CMS for Dummies" position is thoroughly taken up by WordPress*, so unless you have an actual strategy to take over that position you will get a very bloody nose in any attempt to that.

Joomla's clear winning position is as midway between Drupal and WP is difficulty administering (but keep an eye on Drupal as they crank out tweaked setups to different uses) and technical solidness. The big selling point should be the extensions to Joomla: WPs are frankly a joke, there's not even a distinction plugin/component/module (all 'plugins') and the vast majority are deckchair-rearrangers. Joomla has its fair share of "FantasticShinyCarrousselPlugin-7" type extensions, but also many more sensible ones, and a quite reasonably structured lookup (with WP it's "guess the tag/buzzword" to find them). If anything, a "security basics checkup" for registered extensions would be a very very strong advantage to Joomla.

Yeah, why don't I propose that as a request?


-----

*No religious/partisan disrespect of WP intended: The have solidly marketed themselves as THE go-to CMS if you've never touched another one, and they are by all means spectacularly and disproportionally successful as such.

[Sind-Bad]

Joomla! is a real brand, almost like Panasonic or Coca-Cola. Many people feels respect and has some expectations associated with this name. I guess, current name successfully represents the main concept of this CMS: all in one.