There was a time when choosing a Content Management System wasn’t even a difficult decision.
If you wanted to build a business website, a government portal, a university website, or a multilingual platform, Joomla was one of the first names that came to mind.
WordPress was still largely known as a blogging platform.
That was the era I grew up in.
I’ve been a Joomla user since its earliest days, and before that, a Mambo user. Over the last two decades, I’ve watched Joomla evolve from one of the world’s most influential open-source CMS platforms into a product that now serves a more specialized audience.
The numbers tell part of the story.
According to W3Techs, Joomla currently powers around 1.2% of all websites and about 1.7% of websites using a known CMS. WordPress, by comparison, powers over 43% of all websites and nearly 62% of the CMS market.
Looking only at those numbers, it’s easy to assume Joomla lost the race.
I don’t think that’s the whole story.
Joomla Never Lost Because of Technology
If there’s one misconception I hear repeatedly, it’s that Joomla declined because it couldn’t keep up technically.
I disagree.
Today’s Joomla is arguably the strongest version the project has ever released.
Native multilingual support.
Enterprise-grade Access Control Lists (ACL).
Custom Fields.
Template Overrides.
Web Services.
Modern PHP architecture.
Strong security.
Clean code.
These aren’t features that Joomla recently added to catch up with competitors. Many of them have been part of Joomla long before they became common elsewhere.
Technology has never been Joomla’s weakness.
The Real Challenge Was Confidence
The biggest challenge wasn’t innovation.
It was confidence.
Over the years, several major releases introduced significant architectural improvements. While those changes modernized Joomla, they also came with painful migrations, compatibility issues, outdated extensions, template rewrites, and changing APIs.
Every major version felt like a new beginning.
Businesses delayed upgrades.
Developers spent months maintaining compatibility instead of building new products.
Agencies hesitated before recommending Joomla for long-term projects.
Many extension developers simply couldn’t justify the continuous investment.
Some moved to other ecosystems.
Others stopped developing altogether.
The issue wasn’t the quality of Joomla.
It was the uncertainty surrounding long-term investment.
The Biggest Loss Wasn’t Users
Most people say Joomla lost users.
I think it lost something even more important.
It lost developers.
A CMS is only as strong as the ecosystem built around it.
Extension developers.
Template creators.
Agencies.
Hosting providers.
Educators.
Community contributors.
These people are the force that keeps a platform alive.
When developers stop building, users eventually stop arriving.
That was perhaps Joomla’s greatest challenge over the last decade.
What Joomla Still Gets Right
Despite everything, Joomla continues to excel where it matters most.
Flexibility.
Security.
Scalability.
Developer freedom.
Unlike many platforms that rely heavily on plugins for essential functionality, Joomla includes many advanced capabilities directly within the core.
Its multilingual system remains one of the best in the CMS industry.
Its permission system is still unmatched by most competitors.
Its architecture gives developers the freedom to build almost anything.
And its security record has consistently earned the trust of businesses, governments, educational institutions, and enterprise organizations around the world.
As cybersecurity becomes more important than ever, I believe Joomla’s focus on stability and security will become one of its biggest competitive advantages.
Why I Still Build with Joomla
People often ask why I continue investing in Joomla after all these years.
The answer is simple.
Because I still believe in it.
At Infyways, we’ve spent years developing Joomla extensions used by customers across the world.
We continue to release new products, maintain existing ones, and actively contribute to the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED).
If we didn’t believe Joomla had a future, we wouldn’t still be investing our time, resources, and passion into its ecosystem.
Every extension we publish is our contribution to helping Joomla remain relevant for the next generation of users and developers.
Joomla Doesn’t Need to Become WordPress
One mistake people often make is comparing Joomla with WordPress.
I don’t believe Joomla should try to become WordPress.
It has a different philosophy.
WordPress succeeded by making publishing incredibly simple.
Joomla succeeded by giving developers and businesses extraordinary flexibility.
That identity shouldn’t change.
Instead of chasing market share, Joomla should continue improving what already makes it exceptional while making the platform easier to learn, easier to upgrade, and easier for developers to build sustainable businesses around.
The Future Is Still Bright
Open source has always been about more than numbers.
It’s about community.
It’s about people who continue building, contributing, teaching, supporting, and believing.
Joomla still has an incredible global community.
Thousands of developers continue improving the core.
Extension developers continue expanding the ecosystem.
Volunteers continue reviewing submissions in the Joomla Extensions Directory.
Community members continue organizing JoomlaDays, writing documentation, helping newcomers, and making the platform better with every release.
That is something statistics can never fully measure.
My Hope for the Next 21 Years
Joomla recently celebrated its 21st anniversary.
For me, that’s not just a milestone.
It’s a reminder of what this community has achieved together.
Yes, mistakes were made.
Yes, there were difficult years.
Yes, rebuilding trust will take time.
But I remain optimistic.
The web is changing.
Businesses are looking for secure, flexible, open-source platforms that give them complete ownership of their websites and data.
Those are exactly the strengths Joomla has spent more than two decades perfecting.
I’ve been part of this journey since the Mambo days.
I’m still building extensions.
I’m still contributing to the JED.
I’m still recommending Joomla when it’s the right solution.
Not because of nostalgia.
Because I genuinely believe Joomla still has enormous potential.
The next chapter of Joomla won’t be written by market share statistics.
It will be written by developers who continue building.
By businesses that continue investing.
By contributors who keep improving the project.
And by a community that refuses to give up on one of the most powerful open-source CMS platforms ever created.
Here’s to the next 21 years of Joomla.
