Joomla's next generation is in the making! With every new version, our favorite CMS becomes better and better. Time for a chat with the Release Managers for Joomla 6: Gary Barclay and Philip Walton.

Thanks for joining us in this interview! Could you please introduce yourselves? 

Philip: I'm Phil. I've run a web agency for 20 years, employ staff, and am a shareholder in several other companies. I was Vice President of OSM and am now the secretary. 

I juggle, follow test cricket and enjoy real cask ale. I'm owned by five cats, and live with my partner, who is a Dr of medieval history (no, I don't count as that old). I live in Kent, East of London.

Gary: My name is Gary Barclay, my background includes 20 years in property management, 15 years in IT management and 15 years in web development (some side-by-side). I live in West London.

We'd like to know a little bit more about your life outside Joomla: can you share one hobby or interest that's totally unrelated to Joomla or websites?

Philip: I've done fire breathing and can throw knives with fair amount of accuracy but not when riding my unicycle.

Gary: I love riding motorbikes, indoor rock climbing and running, in that order.

Can you tell us how you first came across Joomla? 

Philip: It was Mambo and I used it to replace the rather crude cms I had written for clients. 

I needed to scale and figured I couldn't do it all so using this award winning software was ideal. It then transitioned to Joomla and I took a bet on the fork!

Gary: I had been using Mambo to build a property management site to support my tenants, at the time. Then the fork came and I was passionately in favour of the open-source flavour.  I've always loved the idea of a community coming together to solve a problem. I first encountered this when my 1st xbox was superseded by a faster/better version. A community soon built up around the old device to free it from its limitations, allowing it to be used for alternative things like a home media player. I've been into upcycling ever since.

Can you tell us how you two met in the Joomla universe? 

Philip: My Business partner at the time and I started the Joomla London User group and Gary was a very early attendee. We also met at the Maidstone Joomla day in Joomla 1.0 times. 
I liked Gary's commitment and work ethos.

We did some projects over the years and have had some massive arguments but always seem to come through. 
He stands his ground and makes me think.
He is also prepared to play unsafe and experimental which stretches what can be done and challenges my overcautious ways.

Gary: My memory is hazy, it was either a Joomla day in the UK or it was at JUG London, I can't remember which came first. I was in need of some support to help with my site. I started to go to the meetup each month, I enjoyed the social aspect of the JUG which usually ended up in the local pub, back when you didn't need a mortgage to have a couple drinks out.  I think it was around 18 years ago.  Eventually, I started helping out with organising the evening.

Why did you decide to become a release manager?

Philip: Well I didn't for 6.0. I offered for a minor version as there was a call out and I was turned down!
6.0 was what was offered instead.
I then had to bribe Gary with pizza and beer. Luckily he is a cheap date and settled for saying yes on the first asking. I didn't need to resort to free football tickets and a month's supply of pizza.

Gary: I was bribed and Phil still owes me Pizza.

Phil and I have worked together on several projects relative to Joomla along the way, but not for some time.  I guess the time was right for a new joint project and when the opportunity to RM for 5.3 came along, we put our names forward.  Not sure why that wasn't accepted but as a consolation we were offered the 6.0 release and both jumped at the opportunity.

You are both members of the community. Not every Joomla user chooses to give back to the community; what made you decide to make that journey from user to community member? 

Philip: My business uses Joomla daily, its a far easier product for me to use than WordPress or Drupal, Ive tried, and it just fits better with me.
To use a free project like Joomla and make money and NOT give back would just feel wrong to me, so I have given in ways I also benefit from. I have enjoyed the JUGL creation and development, the feedback we get and the fun in helping others to succeed. 
I became even more active through Benjamin Trenkle and the Pizza Bugs and Fun, which then lead to me taking up the Marketing role when it was empty and no one else would do it. I just felt that Joomla would suffer and although outside of my comfort zone I thought it was the right thing to do.

Gary: Joomla has allowed me to design my own lifestyle through my business which is heavily focused on Joomla. While I tried to convince myself I was giving time back through the JUGL events, it never quite felt enough. From the founders of the CMS, to the devs, to the GSoc coders, to the testers and to all those who contribute at any level, such a huge amount of personal time is invested to help keep moving Joomla forward. It leaves me in awe and so I was very proud to accept the chance to RM for 6.0 and contribute a little bit.

Do you use Joomla 5 in your daily life? And if yes, then what do you like most about it?

Philip: Yes, I run a lot of sites on J5, I don't have any Joomla 4 sites but a few that were stuck on J3 because of extensions that didn't move.
What I like about Joomla 5 is it's a well organised and fast version that has benefited from numerous tweaks over the years. It's not perfect but it's constantly moving in the right direction.

Gary: Migrating my clients from 3 to 4 was difficult. I had on-boarded some new clients that came with a huge amount of overrides and customisations. I'm lucky, my clients were patient through the process. Right now, my clients are looking for a little stability, so only a few have migrated to 5 and for those that are on 4, let's say we're prepping for the jump.

As to what I like about J5, dark mode obviously! And the Guided Tours are great for those clients that make changes themselves. I love this, as it allows for easy retraining when a client has a change in staff.

What's the roadmap for Joomla 6? And how long will 5 be supported?

Philip: Stability I hope, that's our dream. We have a lot of sites between us and so stability and improvement without major disruption is important.
There is a dichotomy between not breaking and keeping efficient, safe and secure.
Just like in life compromises need to happen so it is with keeping Joomla up to date and usable.
I get that more and more as I am involved deeper into the project. 
I was one who shouted for it never to break, but now I have had the privilege of working with the maintainers and seen the huge effort they put in to keeping Joomla stable and relevant, I have a lot more respect for those that say some things need to change for a reason.

Where there are problems created I would like Gary and I to lead some groups to explain best practices in updating and overcoming those changes so extension developers have a clear and supported way through. 

Gary: Well, we have the alpha release next month, from there things will move very quickly through the Beta and RC releases with the 6.0 release in mid October.

J5's 2 year development cycle ends in October when J6.0 is released with support in place for at least 2 years from then.

In what way is Joomla 6 different from 5?

Philip: We are working on several fronts. I can see more power tools for the web agencies and advanced users starting in 6 and a push to simplify some aspects for the casual hobbyist user.
I think a mixture of simplifying and empowering will be hard to pull off but we can aim to start it in 6.0 so that future versions have a better and more guided update route.
There is also the TUF security layer making its full way into the Joomla core.

Gary: Good question. Not sure I have a solid answer for that. There's a lot of changes under the hood that may never get noticed by general users.  Removal of legacy code, re-architecting and the like. Joomla's focus on security and a solid clean codebase continues through Joomla 6.0.  But all this was done in J5 too, it's part of Joomla's DNA.

What can we expect for Joomla 6 in terms of features and functionality?

Philip: It's not down to us to make the features, we are managing. So to some extent there may be an amazing feature that's not happened yet and makes its way into the release after this piece is written.
We have some simplification to install on the way. Some tools to help with SEO, and site management which will start with the Health Checker. This is a new panel that you can switch off but is designed to pull together those things you require for the best practice in site management.

Gary: I guess the biggest "feature" will be the HealthChecker which is intended to help users get the absolute most out of their Joomla experience but this will cover many elements of the CMS and its use, so it might not feel like just one feature. We're trying to bring some love to Cassiopia to help new users hit the ground running with that template. And we want to bring some more consistency to the UI in Atom when interacting with different options and features.

What are you most looking forward to?

Philip: At the time of writing my 60th birthday on Tuesday and spending the time with my partner Kat.
If you mean in Joomla terms, the Health Checker and the SEO features as they are things I have been writing and will actually use all the time in my working day with Joomla. 

Gary: A holiday in Asia. 

What challenges have you faced so far?

Philip: Tooling up. As a lone coder in the company it is a real learning curve to understand how to code in a community and fully embrace a much slower and considered way of doing things.
There is such a gap between the loud voices that complain from the outside and the considered and professional way that the maintainers go about their work, but they don't shout about it and it's the same old voices that are heard. I can see it's difficult to be a maintainer and not feel affected by the negative and hostile comments some throw. I feel privileged to see the time and patience they put into the work. How they put the negativity to the side and still consider the PRs with Joomla's best interests truly at their heart is amazing to see.

Gary: I think the biggest challenge has been trying to embrace the sheer technicality of the project and the huge amount of consideration that goes into every choice and decision relative to the appropriate development of the CMS and the platform for everyone.

In Joomla's history, we've had relatively smooth upgrades (J4 to J5, in most cases) and not-so-smooth ones. Will J5 to J6 be smooth and easy? Why (not)? 

Philip: I really hope it's as smooth as can be. I get that there were blind alleys that Joomla coded into in the past and some of those do need to be redeveloped, that can cause some issues if developers relied on these with their own code. But the maintainers do consider and try as much as they can to nudge the code base in the right direction.

Gary: Our intent is for the path from Joomla 4/5 to 6 be as smooth as possible, even though the .0 release rules allow us to break things to move forward. The issue with this is that a huge amount of the Joomla ecosphere relies on stability and consistency for planning and developing their extensions. Joomla has to be responsible around this and find the best path between progress and least disruption. It's not always easy but there is a passionate core, working hard on that goal.

What would you like to say to people with sites still running on Joomla 4 (or 3)?

Philip: It won't be long before there are no securely patched servers that can run the older sites and with Joomla 4 to 5 being so easy it's really not an option to leave it on Joomla 4. Joomla 3 was a big leap but I have managed to migrate over 50 Joomla 3 sites to Joomla 5 and I am really looking forward to the move to Joomla 6.

Gary: Well, everyone's situation will be different, but one thing is clear: the internet never stands still. The further you fall behind, the more you reduce your options, due to stack version incompatibilities and/or issues with extensions/templates. Actually, now is a great time to upgrade, 5.3 release is upon us and is a fantastic stable release. A lot of work has been put in by a lot of people to get the CMS closer to where it needs to be. The migration from 4, I'm reliably told, is a smooth one. If you're stuck on 3, reach out, there's a lot of support out there.

If you could use five words to describe Joomla 6, what would they be?

Philip: Improved health and efficient SEO, I think that's 5!

Gary: Joomla 6.0 Project codename is Kuimarisha ... strengthen revitalise reinforce fortify

Anything we forgot to ask?

Philip: I think you covered it well, we will be using Joomla London as its two presenters to engage and encourage people to help out, and to showcase any issues and solutions so keep your eyes out for JUGL updates.

Gary: What was the Arsenal score against Real Madrid? Where do you stand on Trump's tariffs? Does Phil actually know any good jokes?

Ah, yes, of course. Sorry about that. Oh, just one other question: what does Flo* have to say about all this?

Philip: Flo is very excited by this update. She has put a lot of suggestions and requests forward, most centering on finding ways to automate an opposable thumb and she has suggested extending the 418 status code to cover BISCUITS as well as Tea and Coffee. 

Gary: I don't know for sure but the last time I spoke to her it sounded like "Meoow", "MatMeow", "Mowwwww".  I think that translates to "my owner does not give me all the b-i-s-c-u-i-t-s"…but actually, it could mean anything.

*(Flo is one of the cats that own Phil)