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What did 2022 bring for Joomla?

December-Jin2022

What did 2022 bring for Joomla? 

More awards than ever before followed by growth after many years of decline. 

Two new minor versions and another year winning a place on Google Summer of Code and much more.

Let us take a look together and see what's hinted at in 2023!

January

The year started off with an article in which we got to meet the release leads for Joomla 5, Harald Leithner and Niels Braczek, the article entitled Joomla 5 in the planning, meet the release leads. This, along with other Joomla 5 articles, really got the social media channels buzzing.

We then had a call for mentors for Google Summer of Code (GSoC). It was hoped we would win yet another place in the 2022 run of the program. The criteria for entering had changed and it was open to a much wider audience. We submitted the plans and hoped with our fingers crossed.

February

Next saw the release of Joomla 4.1 under the management of Benjamin Trenkle and with it some significant advances: Task Scheduler, Child Templates and an Accessibility Checker. These three additions to the core have proved useful but many smaller features were hidden away in the release as well as a host of bug fixes.

We also saw war break out in Europe but significantly one independent nation invaded another independent nation with both sides having active members of the Joomla community. Some were evacuated to the countryside while others found they had no voice to protest what their country was doing and wanted to say how upset they were at what was happening. The community rallied around and put out a statement which was earlier than most and not without some opposition. Then after a while, other organisations and companies followed.

March

As the year progressed an article introducing the new Open Source Matters (OSM) board members Benjamin Trenkle and Harald Leithner appeared in the magazine. We also won several awards, a trend that was to continue throughout the year.

April

With Easter came a stunning result: the Joomla team that went to the Cloudfest hackathon won, and with a project that has potential benefit for all CMS systems. Their work on TUF, allowing secured updates is still making its way into the core but the work they did at the event propelled the project forward.

We also won a place on GSoC, with Shivam Rajput taking the lead to organise the application

Towards the end of April Joomla Day USA arrived and with it many speakers and talks to attend. By all accounts, it was a great success.

May

It was with sadness that May saw the passing of Antonio Copiello, a prolific blogger and forum poster on all things Joomla.

With in-person events opening up, more Joomla Day France gathered many in Europe to learn and talk all things related to the CMS

Joomla also won more awards, making it the best year ever for the ever-popular CMS.

A big thank you to all the members who voted and did their part to make it a winner.

We also started to prepare for Joomla 3.10 to enter its Security Support Phase which was approaching fast.

June 

As the northern hemisphere approached summer and the southern winter, another TUF sprint was arranged to help nudge the code ever closer to being part of the core.

But June also saw Peter Russell pass away, one of the founding members of Joomla who helped shape the CMS in its early years. 

July

Things ticked by peacefully in the Joomla world with the usual releases coming out: Joomla 4.1.5 and 3.10.10 although they did mark the end of the line for Joomla 4.1, with 4.2 heavily in testing and about to make an appearance in our update notices. But it ended with a bang when the production department released Joomla! 5.0 Bold in one year - But can WE do it? Forums, Twitter and GitHub all lit up with different views and opinions, but that was the point of the article and some really great discussions came out of that article once the dust had settled.

August

The month proved more than just a holiday time with members meeting in Germany for a Docusaurus sprint and then as Joomla reached the age of 17, both Joomla 4.2 and 3.10.11 were released. The first of the 4.2 branch and the last of the 3.10. Franciska Perisa and Roland Dalmulder were the release managers and it brought Keyboard Shortcuts and Multi-factor Authentication as well as a host of bug fixes and minor features.

September

An important message from Production: Joomla! 5 - Panta Rhei (The follow up) which brought together a lot of the points raised by members of the community following the previous article. It set out the vision for Joomla 5 but with some important changes which were driven by the members and listened to by the members who are part of the teams.

Virtual User Groups also became a thing. Something born out of the pandemic but hopefully a positive here to stay!

And something not so virtual took place: DACH, a large gathering of the German-speaking community at their yearly conference.

October

Something from the boiler room. Cypress, a new way of writing tests. Vital for the stability of the CMS.

November

A major change in the way we do things came this month. It was a big and bold move with many months spent planning by Harald Leithner and Luca Marzo: the community's migration from Glip to Mattermost. So far it's going better than expected with a few hiccups and many benefits. It's definitely a more active and productive home.

December

The holiday season arrived and another reward, this time growth. Joomla is growing again as a CMS in the open market. It was a great way to end the year - but wait, what does 2023 hold for us?

What will 2023 bring?

2023 will see Joomla 4.3 take up the baton as Olivier Buisard and S.D. Williams have become the new release managers.

As the year ended a new partnership was being worked through to bring gamification to the Joomla development using a great new product, Holopin.

There are elections already in the early stages with a change in Production as well as a new President to be elected. You can play your part by exercising your vote when the time comes or perhaps you would like to put your name forward for one of the open positions.

A new year brings new awards, and it would be really helpful if you alert us to any awards we could enter by making it known in the Mattermost Town Square (https://joom.la/chat). 

The main thrust of 2023 will be documentation, documentation and documentation! So if you would like to get behind this initiative to bring the development documentation to where it needs to be then please do drop me a line at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or find me in Mattermost. If there’s anything else you would like to get involved with, as always there is a place for you in the community. You just have to get involved.

Some articles published on the Joomla Community Magazine represent the personal opinion or experience of the Author on the specific topic and might not be aligned to the official position of the Joomla Project

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Comments 1

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Patrick on Wednesday, 25 January 2023 14:40
Joomla is getting better and better every year.

Joomla 4 is strong and powerful, new features like “Child templates” are really great. I also can see that Joomla 5 is going the right way to make that CMS rise again to where it should be comparatively to the others systems.

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Joomla 4 is strong and powerful, new features like “Child templates” are really great. I also can see that Joomla 5 is going the right way to make that CMS rise again to where it should be comparatively to the others systems.

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