Joomla! Community Magazine™

Working together as a global community can be fun. It can be rewarding. It can make you feel part of something bigger than yourself. And at times it can be frustrating, tiresome and infuriating because in every community there can be disagreement, misunderstanding and lack of comprehension. The question is: how do you deal with that? Or, better, how do you solve it before it turns into conflict, and keep the fun in working together?

We all know that 2021 will be the year of Joomla 4, that is now approaching the Release Candidate phase and will be released during the year. But while the Production Department and many volunteers are working hard to get the release done, other members and teams of the Community are working towards other goals and achievements. In this article, we had the chance to collect some of the goals defined by teams within the Operations and the Programs Departments.

Unlike other open-source CMS projects, Joomla is fully volunteer-driven. This means there’s no large company behind it and no corporate interests to take into account. We have a genuinely non-profit organisation, Open Source Matters, facilitating the project by providing financial, legal and organisational support. Every penny Joomla gets from partnerships and sponsors goes directly into the project, and no one contributing to Joomla gets paid. So why do we do it?

Giving back to Joomla

Troy Hall (aka Bear) has been actively involved in many areas of the Joomla Community including the Bug Squad since the early days. He is often found helping users in the Joomla Facebook group. He knows Joomla well and from the very early days. He has forgotten more about how Joomla ticks than many of us will ever know.

Joomla is an amazing piece of software. It’s extremely powerful, super flexible and very reliable. With Joomla, you can create any kind of website. I know that. You probably know that. But the rest of the world? Not so much, which translates in Joomla’s market share dropping. The good news is: I can do something about that, and so can you.

It all started with a...fork.

Fifteen years ago, a group of people decided to follow their vision and principles and take a different path than the one that was planned for the future.

On May 16, 2020, the Privacy Compliance Team announced the release of the Joomla! Identity Portal, a new website that is meant to serve as the home for all Joomlers’ personal data and as Single Sign On service to access all the *.joomla.org websites.

From 14 to 19 April 2020 the German-speaking Joomla community started the project "Kids bauen Webseiten” (Kids build websites).

In 2001, I had a bright idea. I'd combine my love of writing with my software skills and create a writers' website, a place where writers could share and showcase their work, readers would enjoy a wide range of writing, and publishers could unearth new talent.

Would you like to get more involved with Joomla? Read more about this month’s highlighted volunteer positions below.