No worries! The Joomla toolkit and web platform has a future full of opportunities!
We from Perfect Web Team believe and see there is a future for Joomla. But maybe not where some people seem to expect it. Not as competitor in the “small” websites builder market. Not where Squarespace, Wix, Weebly and of course WordPress and many others may have a cheaper return on investment and a smaller total cost of ownership for small businesses. Joomla is not the easy solution for all websites: there might be better choices possible, depending on the goal and user base. So where ís the future of Joomla?
Why Joomla?
So why are we using Joomla? I think there are enough live production examples out there that give an answer to this question. But to give the short answer now anyway: For us Joomla is the best toolkit to help our clients with their websites and web applications: https://www.joomla.org/core-features.html.
This means we will continue to use Joomla and only Joomla so we know it the best and we can help improve it where we can.
Some examples:
Most of our team work with Joomla for longer than ten years, some almost fifteen!
Joomla as "toolkit"
Most of our team work with Joomla for longer than ten years, some almost fifteen. We started building “simple” websites for our sports clubs, our friends, neighbours, local shops etcetera. But we have learned a lot since then and we specialized.
We got into more and more challenges and complex projects. And the last years we have seen more and more examples of Joomla being used for advanced and complex websites and web applications. As marketing tools, as interactive user platforms and even as SAAS solution for business processes and services.
Some examples:
Dutch public radio stations
NPO Radio1, NPO Radio2, NPO 3FM, NPO Radio4, NPO Radio5 and FunX all have Joomla as basis. They show live data from the radio shows, offer podcasts, sound fragments, playlists and a lot more and use all kinds of API’s with other systems. They have millions of unique visitors every month.
Exact
Exact is the market leader in financial and business software. They serve Internationally operating organisations and local businesses. With 1,400 specialists, they help more than 400,000 entrepreneurs and accountants with innovative software solutions, allowing them to manage their numbers and successfully run their day-to-day business. They use the Joomla platform for their websites.
Build from scratch, the NIH-Syndrome
From a technical point of view, why would any web builder or programmer start using Joomla? Please let me reply with a question. Is it, at this time, clever to build a web content management system or a web application platform from scratch? Why not use a library, a framework, a system that has all this functionality and build from there? It’s open source so you can read it and learn from it and you can copy, paste, override or extend what’s already there. Is it not good enough? Well, improve it or tell the world about something better.
There is no owner of Joomla, only those that work to share knowledge and improve Joomla have informal rights of ownership. That is or could be you.
The Joomla Project: Sharing cookies and knowledge
And what is the strongest point of the Joomla project? Some would say “the community” but if you follow social media and the many discussions there I would say this point is also one of it’s weaknesses. No, the strongest point of the project is sharing. Sharing to help others. Sharing without expecting (financial) benefits in return. The sharing of knowledge, maybe the most important one. But also the sharing of cookies, relations, common goals, code, history, events, gossip and of course, drinks.
This sharing will keep the project alive worldwide, no matter what happens. People will keep coming to give and share and people will keep going and taking with them whatever they have learned. We should be grateful either way so thank you to all and everyone who are contributing and have ever contributed!
Conclusion
No worries! Both as an Open Source knowledge sharing project and as a tool for professional web builders and organisations that need a good web platform, there is a future full of opportunities with Joomla.
