Will Joomla ever be what you want it to be?

Written by Jeremy Wilken 25 Oct2011

At Gnome on the run, Joomla is a major part of our work. Having been speakers at and organizers of several Joomla events, naturally we have a focus on the future of Joomla and what impact we can make. This past weekend we saw the first Joomla Roadmap Meeting (watch clips here) happen at Joomla Day New York. It seems to have sparked a lot of discussion on social media channels about what Joomla ought to be, where it ought to go, and why.

Watching and participating in this discussion, I began to wonder more about if it is possible to come to a reasonable consensus about what direction Joomla should go. I realized very quickly: it probably will never be exactly what you want, but there are ways to change that.

Joomla will never be exactly what you want

The Roadmap Meeting was the first formalized attempt at bringing people together to do just that, and I think its a great effort (lead by Andrea Tarr) that will hopefully yield some very good results. I suspect it will take some time to be able to see the fruits of that work, but at the immediate moment it is unclear what impact it will have.

Since everyone has their own opinion there will never be a universally accepted vision for Joomla. You can't please everyone, but when it comes to making the hard decisions about what Joomla should look like we start to get caught up in debates, fights, or wars about our preferences and lose focus and traction to make improvements.

I argue that it all comes down to expectations. Some people expect it to be the best CMS to create their content with. Some people expect it to be the best platform to build custom applications on. Yet others don't think about it and just hope they can use it to solve their problems. Everyone has a different set of expectations, and ultimately nobody can be completely satisfied. 

Let's find the baseline for Joomla

Rather than try to be everything to everyone, I think Joomla should focus on finding a solid baseline for the absolute minimum Joomla can be. The baseline for Joomla would be the minimum set of features and extensions that Joomla needs to be able to function, within the current design and structure but still fulfill the purpose of being a CMS. That means anything that is required for Joomla to run and basic site management (content, administrator management, menus).

I think we can have a better consensus about a proper baseline, mostly because its more of a technical question of what is the most minimal set of extensions and features Joomla requires to still be a CMS. This is the same concept I use with client work, stripping away a project until we drill down to the vital and non-negotiable items that define the project in order to find the baseline.

There is a lot of power being able to start at square one, because that means you can then build more effectively on top of it. There has been discussion over and over on the mailing lists about dropping the newsfeeds or weblinks components, with people who have never used it debating its merits with people who use it 90% of the time. In my mind, if its not universally needed, it doesn't belong in the baseline. That doesn't mean they aren't useful and practical features, but they are not part of the baseline. Joomla should make it easy to customize and include or exclude a lot of these core features we spend so much time debating, giving us more control.

Joomla can capitalize on customization

The only way to satisfy a lot more of people's expectations is to provide them with better, smarter options to customize their system. It also has to be simple, or else you lose the benefits. Joomla has long benefited from a large extension eco-system for customization, but that isn't enough. In fact, those extensions can quickly make a site more complex and difficult. The system itself needs to be more adaptable and configurable.

If Joomla begins with a solid baseline and provides simple but powerful options to quickly customize and control their site, Joomla will be a much more powerful system that can be more of what you want it to be.