3 minutes reading time (675 words)

Tracking the Trends of Joomla

A couple of days ago I came across yet another article announcing the decline of Joomla and the ascension of WordPress. As an admirer of the author's past work and presentations, at first I expected this would be some kind of fun article. I was astonished to read a serious article, where WordPress, Wix, Orkut, Facebook, journalists, and digital media agencies were cited as an anticipation of Joomla's demise.

Is Joomla going to die? Some day, that's a possibility. After all, it is important to remember it is a fork of another system called Mambo that now rests in peace in CMS heaven. Mambo was the first content management system I ever knew and I worked with it for two years. When Joomla was born, for several reasons, I chose to move on with it. I don't miss Mambo, but I'm definetely sure my life changed with what I learned from it.

Back to the Joomla's death article, one of the examples used was the (in)famous Google Trends graphical comparison result between the two CMSs.

01-joomla-wordpress

As we can see above, the graphic displays the information that, apparently, the search for the term Wordpress is going up through the roof, while Joomla is going down for the past five years. Looks scary, eh? But, is it?

I stopped for a while to ponder about it and imagined terms that have a significant meaning in both platforms: extensions and plugins. I know this is somewhat of a wildcard as its results extend way beyond the CMS realm, still, I decided to give it a try. I thought I might see something similar to the previous graphic, with extension going down or flatlining, while plugins would be on a rise, thanks to WP. But lo and behold, look what I got!

02-extensions-plugins

According to Google, extensions is somewhat a stable term but, though jumpy, it is clearly not going downward. While plugins, on the contrary, seems to be on its way to kissing the floor somewhere in future. I suggest now that Wordpress plugin developers should STOP DOING IT, because people are not looking up for the term plugins anymore in Google. I'm SURE the fact that one can look up for whatever plugin from within a WP has NOTHING to do with it.

I decided to take a step further and add the word free to the search.

03-free-extensions-free-plugins

Hm…no problem in that. No one is looking for free extensions or free plugins simply because people are loaded with money! Isn't it clear? Hello developers who release free versions of your products: YOU'RE LOSING MONEY!

Now, seriously, from my point of view Google Trends presents its results based on elements that I havo NO idea of, that goes way beyond the amount of times a term is sought. In short, these results should be analysed carefully, otherwise, anything can be.

Joomla is alive now! If you are having a hard time finding prospects interested in Joomla, there might be a chance the vast majority of the market is still unaware of what Joomla can do for them and their business or whatever need they may have.

How about spreading the Joomla love?

It's time to promote Joomla! There's a lot of work going on to provide everyone with all the information on why Joomla can be the right or better choice for different demands.

You can do a big part on this by reaching out to your local community, educational institutions or even companies who may have a need of a CMS and don't even know it. How about attending a non-Joomla event where you can make a quick presentations about the project?

How about bringing together people interested in Joomla and create a Joomla User Group (JUG), if your city doesn't have one? Or even if it does, check if there is a need for a second JUG in your area.

Joomla would face its demise if its community stalled. I don't see that happening now.

And I believe I won''t see it for a long, long time.

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