Community Magazine 
Twenty-one years is a long time in technology. Long enough for features to arrive and disappear, terminology to become archaeology, updates to become migrations and perfectly sensible developers to develop strong opinions about cache.
But twenty-one years of Joomla has created something else too: its own language, folklore and collection of shared experiences that make perfect sense to another Joomler and may sound faintly unhinged to everybody else.
So, for Joomla's twenty-first birthday, we asked the community to share the phrases, memories, frustrations and "if you know, you know" moments that only another Joomla user would truly understand.
And you didn't disappoint.
There were mysterious template overrides, disappearing buttons, compatibility ceremonies and backups that really, really should have existed. Some answers took us all the way back to Mambo. Others had almost nothing to do with software at all.
Taken together, they tell a surprisingly good story of Joomla's twenty-one years. So, in no particular order, here are 21 things that only Joomla users understand.
1. "Have you cleared the cache?"
We have to start here.
Because if there was one answer that echoed through the survey more than any other, it was cache.
You've made the change. You've saved it. Joomla confidently tells you it has been saved.
You refresh the website. Nothing. So begins the ancient Joomla ritual.
Clear Joomla's cache. Purge expired cache. Clear the browser cache. Check whether there's a CDN cache. Refresh. Hard refresh. Question your career choices. Clear everything again.
And eventually discover that the module wasn't published.
Of course it wasn't.
2. First, take a backup
Before updating Joomla.
Before updating an extension.
Before migrating anything.
Before making that tiny change that definitely couldn't possibly break anything.
Take. A. Backup.
Neil Robertson nominated the familiar Joomla mantra of taking an Akeeba Backup before doing anything adventurous.
Bjørn Ove Bremnes provided the reason:
"We all have been there the day the backup wasn't there."
Some Joomla lessons are learned through documentation. Others are learned once.
3. Mambo
Two survey responses simply said:
Mambo.
That's it.
No explanation.
For Joomla veterans, none was required.
For newer members of the community, Mambo is part of Joomla's origin story. Joomla emerged in 2005 following a split from the Mambo project, and for those who were there in the early years, the name instantly opens a door to another era of the web.
Twenty-one years later, there are Joomlers who remember where it all began.
4. You're not a Joomla user. You're a Joomler.
WordPress has users. Drupal has users.
Joomla has Joomlers.
JoeJoomla nominated the word itself as one of those things the community understands, recalling its use going back many years. And perhaps there is something rather important tucked inside that slightly peculiar word.
You can use software. Being a Joomler sounds more like belonging to something.
5. The menu designs the page
James offered a phrase that may cause experienced Joomla users to nod sagely and newer users to stare at the screen:
"The menu designs the page."
Welcome to Joomla.
An article contains the content. Categories provide structure. Modules add other elements. But the humble menu item can determine how that content is displayed and what visitors actually see.
Once Joomla's menu system clicks, an enormous amount of the CMS suddenly makes sense.
Before that moment? Well... See number one. Clearing the cache can't hurt.
6. The initial "WHAT THE???" stage
Robert Fairhead recalled being introduced to Joomla around 2007 or 2008. He was told that it was:
"SUPER easy to use … after the initial WHAT THE??? shock!"
Which may be one of the more accurate unofficial Joomla onboarding descriptions ever written.
Joomla has its own logic. Menus, modules, positions, categories, articles, templates, permissions. At first, there can be quite a few moving pieces. Then something clicks. Robert is still using Joomla all these years later, so apparently the shock wears off.
7. SCAM
Section.
Category.
Article.
Menu.
Or, as some early Joomlers learned to think of the Joomla 1.5 workflow: SCAM.
Ahmed Jibril's contribution sent us digging into a piece of Joomla archaeology, and yes, this one really did exist.
In 2011, Joomla trainer Brian Teeman described SCAM as one of the first things he taught new Joomla users: create your Sections, create your Categories, create your Articles and then create the Menu items that display them.
It was a simple way of explaining Joomla's content structure, and apparently rather effective. Then Joomla 1.6 arrived, Sections disappeared and Brian declared that Joomla was no longer a SCAM.
It was now all about CASH. But that's another story!
8. "That's not an update. It's a migration."
Sigrid gave us this one.
There are updates. And then there are updates.
Long-time Joomla users will remember when moving between certain major versions wasn't simply a matter of clicking an update button and going to make tea. Those bigger moves earned their own vocabulary. Migration.
Thankfully, Joomla has moved on too. A great deal of work by the CMS Release Team and wider contributor community has gone into making updates and major-version transitions a much more structured experience.
9. The post-update compatibility ceremony
Vlada Stankovic supplied this beautifully: "Joomla update complete. Now begins the traditional ceremony of discovering which extension no longer believes in compatibility."
The Joomla core update has completed perfectly. Excellent. But one ancient extension has apparently decided it belongs to another era.
And so the other update process begins.
Disable a plugin.
Check the site.
Still broken.
Enable it again.
Disable the next one.
Check again.
Repeat until the culprit finally reveals itself.
As Vlada put it: "The real update process begins only after you start disabling plugins one by one."
Every ceremony has its rituals. This one apparently comes with a process of elimination.
10. "Whaddya mean there is no JFactory‽"
Allan Dowdeswell's contribution is only a few words long, but developers of a certain Joomla vintage may already be smiling.
"Whaddya mean there is no JFactory?"
Joomla has changed enormously over twenty-one years, including the way developers interact with the CMS under the bonnet. Names, methods and practices that were once second nature have been replaced as Joomla's codebase has modernised. Sometimes progress means learning a better way.
Sometimes it means staring at your old code and muttering: "But... JFactory."
11. You edited the wrong template override
You've changed the code. Nothing happened.
You've cleared Joomla's cache. Nothing. Browser cache. Nothing. Server cache. Nothing.
You've inspected the HTML, refreshed the page and begun questioning the fundamental laws of computing.
Then you find it. You edited the wrong override. Vlada described this beautifully as digital archaeology.
Somewhere beneath layers of templates, child templates, layouts and overrides lies the thing you're actually looking for. Probably right next to your missing afternoon.
12. Never paste directly from Word
Julie Steffers nominated a rule many experienced Joomla administrators have learned to respect: Don't paste content straight from Word.
It looks innocent enough. A heading. A paragraph. Perhaps a little bold text. What could possibly go wrong?
Then you inspect the source and discover Word has smuggled a small civilisation of unwanted formatting into your beautifully clean article.
Copy.
Paste as plain text.
Live happily ever after.
13. Where did "Empty Trash" go?
Martin Kopp raised a wonderfully specific Joomla frustration.
You want to permanently remove trashed items. Simple. Except the Empty Trash button you remember isn't where you remember it being. Now you filter by Trashed. Select the items. Delete them. Confirm.
Functionally, the job still gets done.
Emotionally, however, some Joomlers are apparently still looking for their button.
If you've ever muttered "I'm sure it used to be here", this one's for you.
14. "Joomla probably already does that."
Need granular access control? Structured content? Email functionality? Custom fields? Multilingual functionality? User management?
Before disappearing into an extension directory, experienced Joomla users often ask a different question:
Can Joomla already do this?
Ton summed up the feeling nicely: "No need for many plugins! Joomla has it all in the core."
Andrew Smith expanded on the idea, highlighting Joomla's built-in granular access control and structured content handling, as well as email functionality. His point was that you can run a serious website without needing half a dozen third-party plugins competing for your attention every time you log into the administrator.
That doesn't mean Joomla needs no extensions. Its extensibility is one of its strengths. The distinction is that an extension should add something you actually need, rather than compensate for something the CMS never provided in the first place.
After twenty-one years of development, there's a surprising amount sitting inside Joomla before you install anything else.
Sometimes the extension you're looking for is called Joomla.
15. Admin2/secret
Alex Walker gave us two words separated by a slash: "Admin2/secret"
Some Joomlers already know where this is going. Alex explained that learning how to create a Super User through phpMyAdmin had saved him from losing access to plenty of Joomla sites over the years.
It's the sort of emergency knowledge that doesn't necessarily appear on your list of Joomla skills.
Until the day you need it.
And on that day, somewhere in the back of your brain: Admin2/secret.
If you know, you know.
16. "This would never have happened with Joomla."
Jennie offered a confession that will be familiar across technology communities. After moving a WordPress website to its live URL, she discovered that all the image links were broken. Her reaction?
"This would never have happened with Joomla."
Is that a scientifically controlled comparison of content management systems? Absolutely not. Is it an extremely recognisable Joomler moment? Absolutely.
Every community is entitled to the occasional moment of CMS superiority. It's Joomla's birthday. We'll allow it.
17. Joomla's birthday, hidden in the headers
This one is a genuine Joomla Easter egg.
In November 2015, Brian Teeman submitted a pull request that he himself described as a "(silly) PR". The HTTP Expires Header had previously used a date in 2001. Brian proposed replacing it with something rather more meaningful: the date Joomla was founded.
As he explained in the pull request, other open-source projects had used significant dates from their own history for the same purpose. The change was approved and merged into Joomla's staging branch for the Joomla 3.5.0 milestone.
So, tucked away somewhere most Joomla users would never think to look, a little piece of Joomla history made its way into the code. And if hiding Joomla's birthday in an HTTP header isn't wonderfully geeky enough, the pull request itself was submitted from a branch named: hidden-secret.
Of course it was.
Read Brian's original pull request on GitHub.
18. "We now have a toilet override."
There are template overrides.
Layout overrides.
Module overrides.
And then, apparently, there are toilet overrides.
Sigrid remembered JoomlaDay Germany in Hamburg in 2015, where unusual arrangements meant attendees had to use different toilets. After a day containing plenty of Joomla discussion about overrides, David Jardin reportedly announced: "We now have a toilet override."
19. PBF
Another three letters that mean far more to a Joomler than they probably should: PBF.
Pizza, Bugs and Fun.
Christiane Maier-Stadtherr remembers her first Pizza, Bugs and Fun event from around 2012, during the initiative's early years. The idea was later reactivated, and PBF became a familiar fixture in Joomla community life.
People come together, work on Joomla, test, fix bugs, learn from one another and, crucially, eat pizza. Because open-source contribution apparently runs better on melted cheese.
For Christiane, PBF is now a name: "every Joomler should recognise." And we suspect quite a few do.
20. No, the website doesn't necessarily need rebuilding
Anja de Crom highlighted something experienced Joomla users often understand very well: Joomla sites can evolve.
A client may arrive convinced that the only answer is to throw everything away and start again.
The Joomler looks at it differently. Could the template change? Could the structure be improved? Could new functionality be added? Could what already works be preserved?
Sometimes the best new website isn't actually a new website. It's the old one after a Joomler has quietly worked out what it really needs.
21. "This is Joomla!"
We could finish with another cache joke. But the survey reminded us that some of the things Joomla users understand have very little to do with Joomla itself.
Martijn Maandag remembered attending the Joomla World Conference in 2015. His wife Lia and their travelling companion weren't attending the conference, but nevertheless found themselves welcomed into the evening drinks and then invited to join everyone for dinner. His summary was simple: "This is Joomla!"
Morteza Honar shared another version of the same idea after taking part in Pizza, Bugs & Fun 2026: people in different countries, collaborating almost simultaneously on the same project.
And then one anonymous active community member perhaps summed it up best:
"Joomla is not just software - it's people."
They described that feeling when people from different countries, cultures, backgrounds and time zones come together, volunteer their time, share ideas, solve problems, occasionally disagree, laugh about it later and somehow create something amazing.
After twenty-one years, they reflected, Joomla has collected far more than code. It has collected friendships, stories, shared challenges, late-night conversations, community events, victories, frustrations and plenty of those little moments that only another Joomla person would understand.
They added:
"We don't always take the same route, but we keep working towards the same goal."
And perhaps that is the real "if you know, you know" moment.
Joomla is code.
It's articles and modules, menus and templates, access control and overrides.
It's backups, migrations and more cache clearing than any reasonable person should have to contemplate.
But for twenty-one years, Joomla has also been the people who build it, improve it, translate it, document it, organise events for it, answer questions about it and welcome the next person through the door.
Technologies change.
JFactory disappears.
Buttons move.
Sections become Joomla archaeology.
But somehow, all over the world, Joomlers keep finding one another.
And if you've ever experienced that particular part of Joomla... You understand.
Happy twenty-first birthday, Joomla!
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