Joomla Site Developer's Pledge

Written by Jeremy Wilken 20 Sep2011

This past week I (Jeremy) was invited to speak at Joomla! Day Austin, a full day of Joomla from start to finish. It was a unique concept where the speakers walked attendees through the steps of building a website, from the planning phase, to a design workflow, to choosing and developing extensions, to site deployment. If you weren't there, you missed out, but have no fear some pieces should be available on the website at some point.

My presentation was about using and evaluating Joomla extensions. Its a big part of a Joomla site developer's responsibility, and at the end I made all of the attendees stand up and take a simple oath to be responsible when using extensions. Jen Kramer mentioned that I ought to make an official version, and post it for all to see.

Reason for the pledge

First I'd like to go through a couple key highlights from my presentation. This will make the pledge more comprehensive. These are the key takeaway points, and I won't spoil the whole presentation with the details but here they are:

1. Test extensions on a test website before installing
2. Backup your site before installing
3. Evaluate the extensions carefully before selecting
4. Keep everything up to date

Most of the time, Joomla site developers will just start installing everything and anything. Some people even leave the useless extensions installed. You might say because it is so easy to install and add things to Joomla that we take for granted the many issues that can arise from any number of potential pitfalls. Essentially I think it comes down to lack of discipline or education as to why its important to keep your site clean and well managed.

Site Developer's Pledge

I could easily talk about this all day, and the problem is I'm guitly of some of these as well. I don't always backup or evaluate properly. It takes time, and thats not always an option. However, I challenge each Joomla site developer to take this pledge, and to seriously attempt to follow these guidelines, to improve the quality of your sites, and properly maintain them.

"I (name) as a Joomla site developer, pledge that I will use Joomla extensions responsibly. I promise not to install without testing, and I shall always maintain a recent backup. It is also my responsibility to keep the site and extensions up to date, to remove and clean up any unnecessary parts, and to attempt to use as few extensions as necessary."

So say we all?