The Future of Joomla

We have been working on Joomla websites since the creation of Joomla (before that we were working on Mambo websites). We consider ourselves Joomla experts, we know all the ins and outs of Joomla. Not only that, we are experts in web development in general, and we can see trends when it comes to web products, and we have reached a point where we can successfully predict the future of any web product that we currently support.

So, since Joomla is obviously a web product, what is its future?

We think that Joomla has a very bright future, and here’s why:

• Interest in Joomla is growing in general: Take a look at the following chart that represents the number of visits to Joomla’s main website for the past 6 months:

  

  Joomla.org traffic – 6 month chart (courtesy of compete.com)

  As you can see from the above chart, US traffic to the main Joomla website has increased 30% in 6 months.

  Joomla is also one of the most downloaded CMS’s in the whole world, and it powers more than 1% (some say up to 3%) of the world’s websites.

• The government uses Joomla: The are countless governmental websites (across the world – not just in the US) that are powered by Joomla. Just Google this. This is an important factor as governmental website are usually very reluctant to adopt a free CMS, and this means that governments and governmental agencies trust Joomla and they are confident that Joomla is here to stay.

• The Joomla community is thriving: Just visit any Joomla forum, you’ll be able to see that there are more and more users joining this forum, this is another proof that Joomla is getting more and more attention and there are more developers working to support your Joomla website.

• Joomla is coping nicely with the latest advancements in the Internet: Whether it’s mobile integration (there is now a Joomla app to manage your website from an Android device) or social networking, Joomla is on top of it. The Joomla creators are ensuring that Joomla remains and advanced and a cutting edge product.

Now that we know that Joomla’s future is bright? What are the things that we think will happen to Joomla in the future?

In order of no importance, here they are:

• Seamless mobile browsing: Joomla’s functionality, templates, and extensions will be 100% compatible with smartphones, especially Android and iOS based smartphones.

• Ability to cope with heavy load: Internet traffic, in general, is increasing. Joomla has long been criticized for not being scalable, but this will no longer be the case in the future. Joomla developers are continually working to make Joomla a lighter and yet a more powerful CMS, which means that Joomla websites will be able to cope with heave traffic load in the future.

• An easier interface: While Joomla is not that hard, it’s not easy either. There are ways to make Joomla easier and those who are working on Joomla’s core know this. We expect that Joomla will feature an easier, more enjoyable experience for the end user in the (near?) future.

• An easier installation: Joomla’s installation is easy, but it can be even easier. In the future, Joomla will feature a one form – one click installer that will make Joomla’s installation a breeze even for the most non-technical people.

• More robust quality control: Anyone using Joomla can attest to the fact that Joomla’s core is extremely well written. However, the same cannot be said on some Joomla extensions that make it to the Joomla’s extensions directory. Joomla’s community is aware of this and will most likely enforce quality/security control on new Joomla extensions before they can make it to the Joomla’s extensions directory.

• More integration with other products: Joomla currently suffers from poor integration with other prominent products, such as WordPress (for blogging) and osCommerce (for e-commerce). In the future, Joomla will be fully integrated with these products (Joomla developers will be soon coordinating with the makers of other products in order to accomplish this).

• More extensions: Every day there are more and more extensions in the Joomla’s extensions directory. We expect that the number of extensions will keep growing for the foreseeable future.

• Even more adoption: A faster, more robust, more flexible, and a fully mobile Joomla will increase Joomla’s adoption. This will make Joomla’s future even brighter.

If you have a Joomla website and you don’t want to wait for the future to have a certain functionality then we can help you develop it. Just contact us and we’re confident that we’ll be able to assist you.