Should Joomla adopt a gentler and more practical release cycle? #38407
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It was recently announced that Joomla 5 will be released in August of 2023—two years after the release of Joomla 4. Since major releases also usually involve major breaking changes and new features, I am concerned the pace is too aggressive for the Joomla ecosystem to survive. I understand that a two-year release cycle is fairly standard in the tech world, but I don't think it's realistic for the people who actually use, support, and maintain Joomla. From the perspective of the end usersPeople who have sites built for them on Joomla by site integrators are often concerned about how often they will have to budget for major updates. These budgets have to be planned in advance and are typically viewed as one-off expenses, as opposed to routine maintenance like point releases or updating extensions. That's because historically, major releases in Joomla are a major deal and require significant time investment, both to update the site as well as for the end users to relearn the new UI. I personally have some clients who have still not yet updated to Joomla 4 because they need to make sure they are ready to do so. If they have to do another major update in a year, I am certain they will ask about moving to another platform...and frankly, I wouldn't blame them. From the perspective of the site integrators and template developersPeople who are building Joomla sites on a daily basis need to both communicate the updates to their clients, negotiate the updates etc, as well as spend a significant amount of time learning how to best implement a site on the new version. It's a full year after Joomla 4 came out and there are still features I'm learning about and not quite comfortable using yet. There are also features that feel like they're not quite ready for use on actual sites yet, despite being available in the stable version. It is discouraging to think that just when I feel comfortable building sites on J4, I will have to start all over (since there's very little available about how the Joomla 5 plans will be implemented). Not to mention, we haven't even fully documented Joomla 4 yet. From the perspective of extension developersBreaking changes so often mean that extension developers have to work overtime just to keep up with Joomla's shifting code base, let alone working on their own extensions and supporting their own users. If J5 is really coming in a year, in order for extension developers to adapt, test, report bugs, etc in time for a full release of J5, there would have to be an alpha version available now....but there's not. Not to mention that there are many extensions which are still not yet supporting J4 despite public plans to do so. From the perspective of core contributors and core communityWell...I guess that's why I'm posting here. As a contributor myself I am wondering how we will do all that work in time? It feels like we are over-promising, because I doubt a stable, reliable release will be available as promised in August. Which leaves us with two upset groups:
So what should we do instead?I think there are two possibilities that would be significantly more realistic for everyone involved, without Joomla falling behind in PHP compatibility etc. These are implemented in the real world with great success by major companies:
I see benefits to both approaches and would be much more comfortable with either, as opposed to the current 2-year major feature release cycle. As a personal asideI'm sure some people will say that I'm being pessimistic and unsupportive of the project. But...I've learned the hard way that over-promising unrealistic timelines leads to nothing but bitterness and disappointment. So I don't think that it's negative for me to begin a discussion like this. I really believe in Joomla and the community, I love it as a product, and I think it can grow and evolve and become even better. We just have to be realistic about it instead of rushing and trying to "catch up" with products that serve totally different markets. Thanks for your time and I look forward to your thoughts. |
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Replies: 44 comments 212 replies
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Relevant Facebook threads on the same topic:
I'm sharing these here because a discussion on Github is easy to track, but will exclude some critical voices also. So I recommend reading responses to these posts as well. |
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I know for most of my clients a site is a huge business expense. For the clients I have that are charities a major expense must be approved by the board. And often board is made off fossilised humans that don't understand the web at the best of times. Often the feed back is like "My cousins son does some computer stuff. He'll do the site for free!" or "We'll get our new temp to do it - she knows about computers she's always on her phone." In the non-charity industries I have other clients dealing with the post Covid world of chip shortages and are slow because they can't get parts. Hell even businesses that squeaked through Covid lock downs barely. They are a solid NOPE on updating to 4 still. It just isn't in the budget right now. The one client that may have been willing to upgrade specifically chose J again because we don't use Gutenberg. Now you are talking about adding it? If I wanted it I would use WP. If I wanted to use that kind of framework I would choose one of the many available without inflicting my choice on everyone else. Because it is that. A choice. Some people love them others ... ya not so much. Leave it as a choice. From the mega discussion when I posted the article in the NoSpam group on FB Norm did remind me that not every site must be updated. That there are lots of 1.5 sites still in the wild. While this is true I'm also really aware that secure sites are up to date sites. As a builder I held off on new builds during the 3/4 transition because morally I think it is bad business to build a site for someone on software at the end (yes I have a client that had been in that space) and then waited longer getting used to 4's shift and pending extensions. This isn't sustainable for me either. I'd personally prefer to see the many facets of J4 polished up to work better, get our documentation in place etc. I love Joomla and my life so much a part of it but cut us site builders some slack here. |
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I am against the inclusion of the block editor (Gutenberg) having worked with it both as a user and as a developer. Let's start with the fact that it is completely inaccessible to users with motor or vision issues, something its developers not only refuse to accept BUT went as far as deleting comments on WordPress.org saying that and banning the users who posted that. Let's continue with the fact that it produces something which is not exactly HTML, it's a farce. There are no P tags. There are two newlines. Yeah, I kid you not. Want to write some decent HTML? Not possible. Want to make an HTML template? Not possible. All of which is possible with TinyMCE! Then let's get to how it's extended. The plugins are a weird form of React.JS with some custom cruft which is almost nowhere documented. Even if we want to ignore the fact that the Joomla 3PD pool does not have the skillset to develop such plugins readily available (we learn fast, whatever) we have to get to how configuration parameters of block instances are stored with the article. If you guessed “inside HTML comments, as simple key-value pairs with no thought about updating / migrating them” you won! Yeah, they are actualyl far worse than the way we use “plugin code” in Joomla the past 17 years! This has already come to bite WordPress block developers in the butt. New versions of their plugins simply break with old articles. They have no idea how to fix that problem. Meanwhile, Joomla's custom fields and template overrides offer a far better future-proof alternative, albeit with more code involved. Ignoring all of that — and at this point I feel that your suspension of disbelief has crumbled far worse than the subprime mortgage market did in 2010 — we have the other “small” detail: how do you RENDER these blocks in the frontend. WordPress is an utter disaster. Each block plugin spits out its HTML and adds a number of CSS to support it. Even though in Joomla we could use layouts (easier to override) we still have to contend with the fact that we'll be loading a bazillion CSS files, moving the state of the art back by 20 years and making slow as molasses sites. Let's say that you are somehow willing to accept all these problems — I understand, some people are clinically stupid and we can't fix stupid. Is the block editor a good solution for your end users? There's nothing to prevent them from mixing blocks in a way that makes no sense and breaks the layout of the page. Yeah, you can KINDA create “templates” for them to follow... but so does TinyMCE so what now, did we reinvent the wheel only making it square?! The way the WordPress market “solved” these issues is by using... THIRD PARTY PAGE BUILDERS! Well, never mind that the content created there is no longer core content and any redesign of the site requires the site integrator to redo all the content with the new layouts. Page builders are not a novel thing. They have existed for a long time and they even do exist in Joomla as well. Also, with custom fields and template overrides a site integrator can create a far more future-proof page builder. Finally, as an end user, please do try to write long-form content — even something like Joomla's release announcement — using the block editor. You will do one of two things. You will curse the entire extended family tree of the morons who inflicted this subpar crap upon you, requiring you to use the mouse to define headlines, links, bold text etc. Or, you will just say f..k it and write all your content in a single HTML block, with far less features than TinyMCE, thus completely negating the reason of existence of the block editor! The block editor is a useless gimmick which works against the user, the developer and the site integrator. Even worse, it drastically increases the Total Cost of Ownership of a site which is anything other than a quick throw-away marketing affair. Then again, WordPress is made for quick, throw-away marketing affairs so no wonder they went with the block editor. PS: The block editor in WordPress also has a politics reason of existence. Matt Mullenweg said very clearly back in WPEU 2017 in Paris that his vision for the next 10 years of WordPress is that WordPress would be a hosted CMS with pure JavaScript-based plugins delivered as SaaS. Are you sure you want to bring that crap over to Joomla? Or were you totally unaware of the connotation? |
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I wrote this elsewhere but as no one really saw it I will copy and paste it in verbatim here. Timed Releases and a Continuous Upgrade PolicySummaryA major release need to flow into the production process as easily as minor ones. They shouldn't be felt, but they should open up new possibilities. By following a continuous upgrade policy any upgrade to a major release should be no more disruptive than that between minor releases. Removing the perceived pain of an upgrade to a major release is beneficial to both users and extension developers. In most cases it will also remove the need for an extension developer to maintain multiple versions of their own code. A new major release just becomes another release in the existing schedule with a few extra requirements and deprecated code removal. It may require more effort from a Marketing perspective than a minor release but it places little or no additional effort for those involved in pre-release testing. A new major is just the next scheduled release in a timed release policy and allows for a new major to be moved earlier (or later) in the schedule as required. A continuous upgrade policy removes the need to maintain two major releases as required currently as a user does not require additional time to upgrade to a major any more as it is not disruptive. Note this might imapact any current policy on the release of security patches. A change is disruptive if it :-
New Features and APIsAny non-disruptive new feature or API should be added in a minor release and should not be held back for the next major release. This is fundamental to the concept of continous upgrades and is basically the current practice in the 4.x timed release schedule. DeprecationAPIs and features may be deprecated at any point in the release cycle but may only be removed in a Major release. Whenever possible a deprecated API or feature should first be replaced (in parallel) with the new preferred API or feature in a Minor release before removal in the next Major. This might require the new API or feature to be added in a BC way in the Minor release before further changes in the next Major. Breaking ChangesTo enable “continuous upgrades” in the most pain free way a Major release should only include
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@softforge As someone who's been around since PHP 4.3 and has provided support for new PHP versions as soon as they have come out I can tell you in all honesty that the pretext of PHP support is nonsensical. In most cases it's a matter of adjusting your code, not rewriting it. Heck, my code supports PHP 7.2, 7.3, 7.4, 8.0 and 8.1 — and having done work on 8.2 support already. I don't think I am some kind of genius who cracked a problem that y'all can't figure out! The most reasonable PHP version support strategy is to raise the minimum supported PHP version to be the last EOL'ed version of PHP every time you make a release in February (since all versions of PHP are released in late November to early December as per PHP release policy). For example, if Joomla were to follow this policy Joomla 4.3 (released February 2023) would raise the minimum PHP version to 7.4 (EOL'ed in December 2022). Joomla 5.1 would raise that to 8.0, 5.3 to 8.1, 6.0 to 8.2 and so on and so forth. As long as someone pays attention to the messages warning them about the PHP version that Joomla prints in its backend they will have two years to address the PHP version upgrade on every site. If you're worried about semantic versioning, please do remember that Composer packages with SemVer already follow a stricter PHP support policy: new MINOR versions of most packages only support the actively supported PHP versions which at the time of this writing are 7.4, 8.0 and 8.1. I would also say that Joomla should also have a maximum supported PHP version baked into each minor release, check it and refuse to run if the PHP version is "too new". People don't understand why the new PHP version doesn't work with their old site. In the end of the day it's a simple matter of having a predictable, well communicated policy instead of arbitrarily choosing a minimum PHP version with every major release. |
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"I would also say that Joomla should also have a maximum supported PHP version baked into each minor release, check it and refuse to run if the PHP version is "too new". People don't understand why the new PHP version doesn't work with their old site." |
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@AlisonAMG At the time of this writing the maximum released PHP version is 8.1 and the in-development version is 8.2. There is no 8.5 (neither will there ever be; PHP will go to 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 and then 9.0). The person who talked about “8.5” really meant either 8.0.5 or 8.1.5, most likely the latter. What I often see is that my clients try to upgrade the PHP version of their site beyond what Joomla and the extensions they are using actually support. I've seen people with Joomla 3.9 and 4.0 sites trying to upgrade their sites to PHP 8.1. Nope, not gonna work, these versions predate the release go PHP 8.1. |
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The guy talking about 8.4 and 8.5 on Facebook was just too stupid to quote version numbers and meant either 8.0.4 and 8.0.5 or 8.1.4 and 8.1.5. |
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That was kind of my thought but PHP isn't "in my lane" as it were and I just keep to current recommended and left his comments to those of you who work with it. |
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Thank you @crystalenka for bringing this up. @brianteeman already listed exactly the reasons for the switch to the new release cycle. I see two options how we could have proceeded after the 4.0 release:
I would like to point on your linked post.
In the 4.x series we also heavily invest in secure updates (thanks to @joomla/security TUF is on the way) which also should lead to less hassle on updates. Regarding the block editor and Gutenberg. This is a very hot discussed topic and as written in the post:
There was no decision made yet, we brought it up to get feedback on it. There are several options out there, Gutenberg is one of many. It could also be a solution between (and no, it will most likely not n1ed.com, but just to show different ideas which came up) the current editing and Gutenberg or no block editor at all. We also hat a GSoC project for a template builder, which could be the solution...let's discuss. My main message is: we hear you and we discuss about many opinions but (there is always a "but", right?) we also need to change when we want to tackle the bigger issues like painful migrations. The best approach is to have this standardized updates in my opinion and documentation, documentation, documentation. We all working on that (and as we're trying to make contribution easier you are welcome to help, too). (Although the whole post from me was very personal) for the end some personal words from me: I'm now Production DC for a bit more than 4 month and I hope that it's for you all noticeable that the "goals" in my manifesto where not just words, but I (and I think also the whole production team) really want to stand for them. I hope you see the (probably currently still small) improvements we are making, over the whole volunteer base, in operations, marketing, teams start to work together, stuff is happening. The much smoother and more structured releases (also being in time), now in less than two weeks with 4.2 the next minor release in row which sticked to the plan. We want to be open and transparent bringing Joomla forward, but sometimes we have to take hard decisions like the new release cycle, which looks at the first glimse very threatening. I think we learnt from the past (although we're human and still make many errors), but if I looking at all this active Joomlers my impression is, that Joomla is changing in a positive way. Will it be enough? I don't know, we will see in a few years, but I'm very convinced that we're slowly on the right track. So again, thanks for this active discussion. |
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I will review this comment in more depth later (I'm putting my daughter to bed right now) but wanted to answer your comment about how the release cycle "looks threatening at first glance". It is threatening to site integrators. It is in fact so threatening that I am for the first time considering whether I need to evaluate an alternative cms of choice for future projects. (I really don't want to but may have to.) A two year major feature release cycle is not sustainable for integrators or extension developers, without which the Joomla community wouldn't really exist. I understand your heart is in the right place and I appreciate your intentions. Please, please listen to those of us who are not back end developers too. We often feel ignored and discarded and unheard. Our livelihoods are equally on the line but we have little means to influence it unless you listen. Thank you. |
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You are forgetting that you were one of the people that was involved in a process of discussing features/functions/wishes for j5 and evaluating their merits and achievability in January/February this year. I understand that this list of features/functions/wishes was reduced down to a specific set of ffw - that is what is missing from the public communications. Not a guarantee that j5 will have A or B but that it is hoped it will have A or B subject to contributors. That last part is the important part - subject to contributors - we all know that we need more and that people work on what scratches their itch. But we don't know what the ffw are so can't even think about if we want to be active contributors on that. I had thought that the RFC process that Niels started and the PD adopted would at a minimum have these ffw documented. Marketing puff pieces without anything concrete are perhaps fine for users but they are not for contributors and prospective contributors. |
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How did you come to that conclusion - I guess you didnt understand what I wrote and I would be happy to explain it further at any time. |
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@bembelimen I guess you're not interested in understanding what I wrote. |
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Hello @brianteeman I'm aware (and understood) that your model is slightly different to the planned timed release (you suggested to have unlimited minors till something breaks, then do a major). Didn't say that your text is the way it's planned, just that the arguments are similar/the same. |
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For me team need to choose if major version break something
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Hi @micker ,
=> (FYI: in 4.3 there is a pagination planned), anything else you're missing?
=> What are you missing here?
=> I used it with my own extension a few time already, looks like it works for me, could you explain more?
=> Can you give me more details about that please?
=> https://manual.joomla.org plan is to fill it till 4.3. Thanks for your answers. |
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There are multiple open issues for all of those |
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Yes planned cool !
Interesting where are documentation or exemple ?
For now when WE add plugin shortcode or module inside content its only render in front difficult for user to understand and check they content ... Many CMS Can render it in content editor
Great |
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@dgrammatiko as you asked what is wrong with child templates. This is the issue that is completely making it useless for me #36229 Like so many "features" it is not complete and like most of these features the contributor just washes their hands of it |
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@brianteeman what I wanted to commit for the template manager was #32896 but due to B/C constrains that was rejected so I had to compromise and hack things to the existing 16 years old codebase. Also some clarification: Joomla supported Child Templates since 4.0 what 4.1 introduced was a GUI for creating and displaying child templates and changes to the file manager so it can handle the moved static assets, nothing more nothing less. |
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Please take a step back and look at the 2 different views on this here. For you, a major release sounds like a lot of work and you want to have that as rarely as possible. However why is it perceived as so much work? Because previous major releases broke so much and required so much work. Those releases were Joomla 1.5, 1.6, partially 3.0 and now 4.0. (I kinda refuse to count 3.0, since for most it was a seemless update) That is 3 breaking updates in 17 years. I consider that okay. But the question is why people fear these updates so much. The answer is simple: we developers feared the public outcry about a new major version and thus made these major releases as rarely as possible. That meant that we had to push as much as possible into these and that leads to more complex upgrades. If you can only fix old issues every 8 years, you rather postpone that release and cram even more into that. That said, more frequent major releases will lead to less issues. It will lead to releases which hardly require more work than a minor release and it will mean that extension developers have to do less to get up to date. And for our endusers it will mean a better experience, since we won't be stuck on an outdated bootstrap for 8+ years for example. |
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I didn't assume:
That's reductive and ignores the bulk of my post.
But it still requires effort, investment, and training. Also we were told that J3 to J4 "should" be an easy migration. But it is not. Any breaking changes still requires significant effort. And no, Joomla does not have a great track record with the effort required to update between major versions. Perhaps it would help to build that trust up with users before trying to push an aggressive release cycle.
Again, no one is saying we want extreme stretches between major versions. In fact one of my suggestions was still breaking changes every 2 years, but to have every other release be stability changes instead of additional major features etc. I don't understand why you (plural, not personal you) are so against considering the perspectives also of the people using Joomla on a day-to-day basis. It is not a CMS only for back end developers. |
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@Hackwar Do you really think that it's economically sustainable selling an upgrade to the site you built for a client every two years? You forget that Joomla is not a framework like Laravel or Symfony where the entire third party community moves pretty much synchronously with the framework. 3PD software in a CMS always lags behind as it makes no economic sense for 3PDs to alienate the bulk of their user base still on an older version to add support for a new version nobody uses and nobody is ready to migrate to yet. With the 2 year release cadence Joomla converts every site project into a Sisyphean task of perpetual upgrades. This is the major downside of a framework like Laravel or Symfony and the reason sites built with these frameworks are more expensive to maintain. Unlike Laravel and Symfony, you neither “own” all the code nor do you have a guarantee third party code will be available for the new version close to the underlying framework's new major version's release date. This is the downside of using a CMS. So, Joomla now has all the downsides of BOTH a CMS AND a framework with none of the benefits! You are saying that it makes more economic sense to sell a more expensive product that requires a perpetual amount of high maintenance which clients cannot budget for rather than a cheaper product where you only do major maintenance once every 3–5 years for less money and which clients can and do budget for? Are you SERIOUSLY saying that it makes more ECONOMIC sense to have a HIGHER TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP product? Who taught you economics? Donald J. Trump? |
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I earn my living as a site integrator and developer. I have exactly your point of view and I do use Joomla daily. |
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@crystalenka Even backend developers hate having to do a complete rewrite all the time. And yes, it's a complete rewrite. We are basically told that we have to work not on features or improvements but redoing all of our code just because. When @laoneo is pursuing removing the global Factory from Joomla we will have to do massive contortionist manoeuvres to perform simple tasks like accessing the Joomla database, getting a user object or getting the site's name. Instead of going to a view template and doing Joomla is dead. Joomla killed itself. |
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We may both be integrators but it doesn't mean we share the same point of view.
We are nitpicking semantics here. I'm begging for a broader discussion that includes the perspectives of the Joomla ecosystem as a whole. I am sure we can find common ground and an agreeable way forward that works for everyone. Even if you don't experience the same difficulties that I have pointed out above, you can listen, believe those of us who are concerned, and work towards a solution. All together, as a whole? |
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Hannes, major versions remove deprecated code and break b/c. That’s why they are major versions — this is tautological.
You cannot tell an end use “yeah just upgrade to the next major, nothing bad will happen to your site” because that would be a lie. Something WILL break. In Joomla 5, for example, you people are basically talking about a different way to produce output and organize templates. Moreover, extensions not yet using the J4 MVC will stop working. Same for plugins not using SubscriberInterface.
While Joomla 4 to 5 is not a massive migration it is STIIL A MIGRATION. The site integrator needs to think, test and migrate stuff. The client needs to budget for that, barely a year and a half after she was handed her brand new site using the latest and greatest J4 version. From the end user’s perspective, they were conned. The price of the site wasn’t, say, $3000 — it’s $3000 every year and a half or two which is two to three times what they could afford. Had they known they’d have gone with the much cheaper offer to build the site on WordPress. Now they know what to avoid. This is not a hypothetical, this is what has happened to sites built just before Joomla announced a new major version as transferred to me by real world clients.
From the 3PD’s end, we have a conundrum. Most of our clients are on $current - 1 version. Less than a third are on $current. Now you release $current + 1. If we need to do ANY amount of work to support $current + 1 we have every disincentive in the world from doing that! We’d have to drop our clients of $current - 1 or our clients of $current. In both cases we go out of business. We can’t support three versions so how about we don’t support $current + 1 unless there’s a market for it which by definition will be never? This is already happening with Joomla 4. The release of J5 next year will only exacerbate this.
You people need to talk to those who ACTUALLY RUN JOOMLA BUSINESSES instead of declaring that we are all doing it wrong and you know best. The product strategy follows the way the product is used in the real world, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND! Jesus, didn’t you take any basic management classes in college?!
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I’m not a developer at all so my knowledge is limited. However, I do set up Joomla sites for business clients so that is my perspective. And what @crystalenka says seems very sensible to me. |
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I have some large projects running mostly on Joomla core. Migrating to 4 is giving me a headache as I have to rewrite in one project over 120 Overrides and actually I have no single clue how, if not creating from scratch. Using an external extension like I have on other projects like YTP made the upgrade process way easier. To say it more clear, it made the update process a simple click. My question is now: in the site where I made overrides, the praised and only way to do things good - why is this breaking now my neck and nearly impossible to move forward and the external extension made it effortless? What can Joomla do to make a smooth transition between versions? Teaching Joomla to kids gives me good feedback about the bad UX Joomla has (inconsistent interface, naming of buttons, usage of Cassiopeia, not understandable error messages, and more) why not focusing on improvements and UX in one of the next releases and making Joomla as easy as possible instead of adding feature by feature. I was shocked this week that for example custom fields still don't have versioning and can't be searched 😳 |
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Now Joomla is going to be faster qua releases. Many of us have even upgraded from J3 to J4. The devs from extensions and templates have there hands Full. And then J5 next year??? No way. Sec support on J3 should at last 1-2 years longer. I know this is not ideal. But Maybe if this continues. Devs are choosing WP instead of Joomla. And that’s not What we want I think.🤔🤔🤔And I’m a Joomla lover. But the way the goes the current way it’s to fast and this will go wrong at Some Point. |
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Just my 5ct so I also have said something: I see the issue with a release cycle where a new major always falls in the same time of the year, and just for tradition (Joomla‘s) birthday I to a period of the year when most contributors are in holiday. Just look here on the activity, e.g. new issues, new PRs, pr testing, and you will see that August ist not really a good time. @crystalenka ‘s 1st proposal for a changed time schedule (the Microsoft way) could be a way to solve that. Or we could move a fixed month to spring or autumn so it is not in Summer or Winter (which are opposite in the northern and the southern hemisphere) or around Xmas or Chanukah or other important holiday periods which do not move around through the year due to a lunar calendar and which are the same in north and south. To say “we do it always in August because we decided so and because it is the Joomla birthday” seems indeed ignorant and silly to me. |
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The summer date doesn't bother me on the front end but from comments it is no birthday gift to our devs either releasing or extension devs. |
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Glad to see other front end creators speaking up on this topic. We are the market share you claim to care about. Thankfully we also care enough about the project to take time to speak up. The alternative is to shut up and when it gets too much to walk away. |
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I'd like to make a quick addendum.This was never intended to be criticism of the hard work and progress Joomla has made with Joomla 4, nor is it criticism of the hard work going into the plans for Joomla 5. I see the efforts! Joomla has come a long way. Like I said in the original post, I really care about Joomla both as a CMS and as a community. And everyone who is commenting here has also made a difference in Joomla. I appreciate you, and so do the millions of others who are building on Joomla even if they don't have any clue who you are. I don't think that discussing a strategy that may need slight adjustment is a criticism. Rather, it's an effort to help make Joomla even better. I am excited about the possibilities for the future. If we can approach it with an open mind and discuss the problems and concerns raised, users affected, and possible solutions, I think everyone in the Joomla community will benefit. Can we do that? |
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All this! I am grateful daily for the work everyone does and the progress we as a whole have made. This is never an "us against them". More of a bringing the perspective and the impacts affecting us on the front end to the table so we can all figure out the best way forward. |
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I have been building Joomla websites since mambo! My conquests with Joomla 4 A large hosting company sends people to a forum/google or to me to help them with joomla. Because they don't have anyone to help. Yes, they have FROM WP ;) THIS shows that Joomla is marginalization outside of the environment. How to tell the client that he has to buy a template again or that it needs to be rewritten. The extensions may not be. You complain about Gutenberg .. i use Gutenberg on a private site and what you get used to. I know people who build websites on WP and use 90 plugins for that. Is it wrong? So bad! That is the difference. That's how it works and we just lack developers who will come and write something for Joomla! And why are they not there because they are not sure whether they will make money on it. Why should I worry about maintenance and safety when a team of professionals do this. For customers, this is a very convenient approach. I know Joomla is based on volunteering. There are fewer and fewer volunteers. Because nothing is done that attracts new developers. Who is to learn how to program in joomla if you can not make money on it. Once again, there is no clear development path. Where is automatic update? core / extensions. Joomla is easy to use only for people who deal with it on a daily basis and use a lot of time. If Joomla 4 is so great, where are the clients? 2.0 to 1.6 one year after realize 4.0 ;) Respects everyone who contributes and programs for Joomla. I think that some people should pay for it simply. Joomla has a budget and an annual reward for even a symbolic contribution would make programmers happy. But forgive me, developers shouldn't be paving the way for development. They are not for it and it is not their role. Next B / c people will walk away there will be no devs, no money, no clients.... Maybe this post is too emotional. But this is what it looks like. Regards. |
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Sad, but it's the reality 😞 |
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Please, note that the Production team affirms that Joomla is going well. |
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@crystalenka opened a concrete and constructive discussion concerning the release cylce of Joomla. I think we should focus on this question it is not a "whining and complaining" discussion. Everyone can open a discussion or open issues on other subjects. |
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@crystalenka already noted the "reductive, demeaning, and dismissive" arguments. It can't be a discussion if we don't agree on "the problem". |
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in older time we have an idea.joomla.org to manage share and vote for feature ... i think community need to be implicaded in descision (a little more) |
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@nikosdion is quite right that the leadership suffers from a cognitive bias, which is only human. This sometimes leads to hasty decisions where more thought would have been good. That's why I had designed the RFC process that @brianteeman mentioned: It is supposed to ensure that things are looked at from all sides, that everyone can put forward their arguments, that this is documented accordingly and that we make an informed decision on the basis of this, which is also only then implemented. Unfortunately, there have only been a few attempts to use the RFC process so far, which probably has two reasons: On the one hand, I have not succeeded in establishing the process as mandatory because some of the decision-makers do not want to be deprived of the opportunity to make snap decisions; on the other hand, it is probably too high a hurdle for many members of the community to open pull requests on GitHub. Something can be done about the latter - I'm thinking of reviving the Ideas Portal as an interface to the GitHub-based RFC process. However, I won't be able to implement something like that in the foreseeable future. I am more than busy with Joomla 5 and the framework. If anyone would like to take on the idea portal, please feel free to contact me! |
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Thanks, @nibra, for your efforts to implement the RFC process. In short, the decision-makers want to do whatever they want. They think that what they do is better for the rest of us, and we are all wrong. It doesn't matter what the rest of the community needs. In a year, we'll have Joomla 5, and it doesn't matter the Joomla 4 adoption. We can only expect a new fall in CMS usage when J3 reaches the end of support. |
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Yes, like with the extension directory where someone designed a stunning example in 2016 of what it good and the decision makers decided against it. Now still no new jed available. |
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There were many opportunities along the road to change the direction. E.g., Like, the template that Kawshar offered for Joomla 4. He even offered the company's resources to support it. Instead of relying on a community decision, it is always decided by a few. |
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The opportunity was embraced if you did not follow it, but they could not fix the issues so we needed to move on. They had absolutely the chance to deliver. |
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The only thing I can add to this discussion as an end user for 12+yrs. Trying to update my Joomla 3 site and its custom components to J4 has been nothing but frustrating. Steve |
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You are preaching to the choir.
That's basically what I told the leadership.
That's one part. The other part is that every time there was a major version there was a migration.
As I said before, Joomla 4 has been at a state where developers could start working on migrating their extensions since March 2020. Some waited until August 2021 for the 4.0.0 stable release. Well, it's been 2 years since the earliest point someone could have started work on migrating extensions to Joomla 4 and one year since the latest point. If there are extensions which are not migrated yet and there is no clear, public and communicated plan for their conversion to Joomla 4 these extensions had already been dead. I already said that many of these extensions were dead for years but they were still being sold because there was not a lot of work required to keep them running on the legacy code of Joomla 3 which last changed in any significant way in Joomla 3.7, five years ago.
Very few template developers were realistically still in the Joomla market and all of them published templates for Joomla 4 as soon as Joomla 4 came out. Imagine that! Everyone else was into Joomla 3 for a cash grab and had long stopped caring. They had already decided to exit the market, they are using Joomla 4 as an excuse.
Yeah, crap happens. I was using a JooStrap template on my site. He went out of business, I had to redo everything from scratch in 2017, still using Bootstrap 3. Migrating it to Joomla 4 was easy, even through Bootstrap 3 to 5 is supposedly a big gap. Nah. It was not that hard and I am definitely NOT a frontend developer.
Okay, I was worried for a second 😄
It's not a matter of intelligence. A lot of people are misinformed because they do buy into what their hosting company tells them. There were people around 2016 when I removed PHP 5.3 who were VERY vocal about it, despite the fact I was removing support for a version of PHP which was EOL for 2 years and the last Linux long term support distribution which still included had in itself just become end of life! What can I say...
I do the same on my own sites! I am currently using 8.0. Come December I will switch to 8.1.
To be absolutely fair, PHP 8.0 and 8.1 had a bazillion backwards incompatible changes. Even worse, they were the kind of changes that are nearly impossible to detect with static code analysis (we tried). I had fixed 80% of the big issues before 8.1 was released and the other 20% of big issues in the first month. Still, there were a dozen or so minor issues (notices, warnings, stuff like that which you don't normally see) which we've been fixing even as late as July 2022 — 8 months after PHP 8.1 was released. And that's with us proactively reading the PHP RFCs and trying to identify the issues and solve them before PHP even released the first release candidate of PHP 8.1 in October 2021. We are doing the same for PHP 8.2. At least it looks like this time around there are no major backwards incompatible changes and those which do exist are easier to detect with static code analysis. That's good. The past two years were absolute hell for us. We were trying to fix the impossible to detect PHP 8.1 compatibility issues while at the same time we were rewriting our extensions for Joomla 4 all the while providing new features, bug fixes and support for our Joomla 3 extensions. It's impossible to work at this relentless rate for so long. I got on the verge of burning out. I can only imagine what other developers who have a narrower grasp of the language have gone through. Cut them some slack. PHP decided to go on a war path against legacy crap which are holding the language back in PHP 7 and 8. It had to be done (and is why PHP 6 never came to be, instead releasing PHP 5.3, 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6). It was just very unpleasant for us developers, especially since it overlapped the transition to Joomla 4 💀 |
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Thank you for the link to your work Nicholas, I will definitely check it out. Steve |
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A template based on K2, no upgrade anymore :-( Result, much work coming year |
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@svermassen I know joomler whose is porting K2 on J4 because he has the similar client. You can write to him if you want https://sitogon.ru/ |
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I read the ebook last night Nicholas, I hope you continue the work it is well done. ευχαριστώ |
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Joomla has evolved, grown, become more professional, but also more complex. If you need a simple page, it is better to use other tools or one of the many construction kits. (Wix etc.) That Joomla loses the audience of small users is not so bad, because we win - if we communicate properly - others. Let's fix the Joomla4 bugs, work on the documentation and communication and bring some peace into the development. The fewest is clear that Joomla is more than a CMS and here I see clear communication deficits. How cool Joomla is know the fewest. The times where we could say everything is easy are over. I think the joomla mission statement should be updated. Joomla simplifies technically things, but that does not mean that everything is necessarily easy to understand. |
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I think we just need to increase the life cycle of old versions, this will give developers time to calmly transfer their extensions to the new engine. As a developer, I understand that the release of Joomla 5 in 2023 is not bypassed, but I also understand that I need more time to port extensions to the new architecture. At the same time, I also need to take into account the capabilities of third-party extension developers. It would also be pleasant if the kernel had the ability to easily specify compatibility with components, and if I, as a component developer, break compatibility, then I can indicate this. I would also like to see a block editor in Joomla. |
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THIRD PARTY EXTENSION DEVELOPERS ALREADY HAD TWO (2) YEARS TO UPGRADE THEIR EXTENSIONS. The clock started ticking with Joomla 4.0.0-beta1 released at the beginning of 2020. So, yeah, I lied, they already had 2 years and 9 months. THIRD PARTY EXTENSION DEVELOPERS ALREADY HAVE AT LEAST ANOTHER THREE (3) YEARS AND POSSIBLY FIVE (5) YEARS TO UPGRADE THEIR EXTENSIONS. Joomla 4 will be supported until at least August 17th, 2025 — 35 and a half months from now (just under three years). If Joomla 5 does not drop support for Joomla 3 MVC, as it is likely to happen, 3PDs will have until at least August 17th, 2027 to upgrade their extensions. There is no need to give them more time. I converted TWENTY extensions in under a year and a half. Two of them were massive rewrites, making for half of that time. At the same time I kept adding features to my Joomla 3 software and doing support. Most of the 3PDs who have not adapted their extensions have a fraction of this many extensions and three to four times the amount of time it took me. Even if they are 10 times slower — even a really stupid junior developer wouldn't be that slow — they still already have enough time to migrate their extensions. What is the point of giving them more time? So they can collect payments from their gullible clients for NOT doing any work? So that the next major Joomla version will again be a massive migration, losing us even more users? How abjectly stupid does someone have to be to think that this is an even remotely passable idea? |
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Ok. This has clearly no point at all this discussion. The only thing I need to know if next major versions not breaking anything. I think for most builders from sites it’s time to move away from Joomla! And off course, I get your point. But I can’t risk it to build every 2 years new sites for my clients. |
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@nikosdion, you are acting stupid, trying to brag about something and being rude to others, acting like a "really stupid junior". First, Joomla 5 drop support for Joomla 3 MVC. Otherwise, there is no point in the major version, and in continuing to use Joomla too. Secondly, if you've been doing nothing but updating your extensions for a whole year, then I'm happy for you. Others do not have so much time to prepare an update that no one but the developers will appreciate, including no one will pay. For example, for a whole year I was busy creating a canonical store for Joomla, which is capable of supporting a million products in one category without caching and somehow there was no time to update, and well, I wrote about 10 more components in parallel for client tasks. Thirdly. Many extensions were written for Joomla 3 when Joomla 4.1 was already out. Why? Yes, that's why many components have not yet been updated for Joomla 4. And once again I repeat to you. No need to delay the release of Joomla 5. If you want sharply, it will be sharply. You are a blockhead who does not see beyond his nose and lives in his own world. And then even your extensions that you update so quickly for a whole year will no longer be needed by anyone. |
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@svermassen Well, maybe you'll be lucky and a fork will appear. |
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Can please everyone calm down, first and last warning, otherwise i will close the discussion. |
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I would also like to have as few components as possible in the kernel. |
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If we are talking about releases, compatibility, and the future. So I think it is worth highlighting the problem associated with this. Unwillingness to make new and reconsider old decisions. This has a very negative effect on development. And this discussion shows it. I have come to terms with this for a long time and am just adjusting, it is easier for me to write a plugin than to prove that the decision made 5-10 years ago is not relevant now. But I've seen more than once people who offer something are faced with an answer along the lines of "We already discussed this in 2005" and then leave. |
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I am NOT the one rehashing the same conversation from ten years ago. Yes, things HAVE changed and these things only ADD to the impracticality of distributions. Back then we were only talking about Weblinks and Contacts, mind you. Now we have a smorgasbord of features such as history, tags, associations, workflows, MFA and so on and so forth. These cannot be ripped out from Joomla without breaking core and third party extensions, nor is it practical to ask every single developer to offer a different experience for their software based on what the site integrator decided to add to their distribution. It all becomes too convoluted. You are asking thousands of people to waste hundreds of thousands of hours to save 5 minutes. Tell me you're entitled without telling me you're entitled...
Are you kidding me?! I am the person who kickstarted the Joomla 4 effort and pushed for features like namespaces and containers. YOU are the one who's resisting to that change. YOU are the one who complains that change makes it “harder”. And you have the nerve to tell ME that I don't embrace change in development?! The gall of this person!!!
There is a chasm of difference between “we DISCUSSED this in 2005” and “we DECIDED this in 2005”. You are conflating the two. Having discussed something means that we came up with a set of conditions which inform a decision. I am neither a moron nor a preschooler. I can very much recall the conditions we concluded are necessary for distributions and can OF COURSE reframe them in the current context of 2022. That's why I told you that today, August 25th, 2022, having Joomla distributions is an even MORE complicated affair than it was 10 years ago, therefore even less practical. Having decided something means that a decision was made according to the then-current information. I am willing to revisit decisions. In 2005 the Joomla Project decided that the MVC we see in Joomla 3 was the best thing since sliced bread. It indeed was at the time, given that Joomla 1.0 had zero developer comforts for writing even the simplest of components. It was good at the time. It was not good in 2012 and it definitely sucks hairy balls in 2022, especially given that PHP development has progressed in leaps and bounds. The decision to write a new MVC for Joomla 4 was a revisitation of that decision. The old decision was found very lacking in the current context, hence the NEW decision for a NEW MVC in Joomla 4. Also note that I am not the one who says “this was decided in 2005, I am walking out”. YOU ARE THE ONE DOING THAT with your insistence that the already unsuitable Joomla 3 architecture should be maintained for many more years. I am the one who says “no, man, that is based on a very old decision which no longer holds true, we HAVE to change it”. You are the one who says “we discussed distributions ten years ago, I am going to ignore that discussions and insist it's a good idea”. I am the one telling you ”no, man, we discussed that ten years ago and when you take this discussion to 2022 it is even LESS practical to have distributions today”. You need to get a reality check. YOU are the one resisting and openly opposing change. I am all for change. If nothing changes I lose interest and move on. I did not become a software developer to do the same thing over and over again. If that was what pleases me I'd be an assembly line worker at a factory. Don't get me wrong; being a factory worked is an honest job but it's too repetitive for my taste. I prefer change. I thrive on change. I want to help bring change to Joomla but not at the expense of everyone using it to make a living. Got it? |
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@nikosdion I'm not against the new architecture, more than that I support that the engine should be sorted out completely breaking any compatibility. I'm only talking about the need to increase the support time. To give developers time to prepare for migration. And yes, your boasting of past merits only proves even more that you are not willing to accept a new one. Do not cling to history or who did what. Only then is progress possible. Every opinion is important, every idea is important, no matter who did what and when. |
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In past lots of people complained that the installation forms were too complicated, with too many options, and so it was simplified. Now you want to make it again more complicated. |
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No, I just propose to do it the same way as it is done in Andoid, when after the installation they offer me useful applications. |
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Isn't open source community developed software an amazing thing. Can you imagine having this discussion with wix, squarespace, ExpressionEngine or Kentico. Sure those closed source, corporate developed CMS might have forums like this where you can comment just like here but there is one massive difference. With them your influence and ability to shape and change the product end with the typed word. With Joomla you can roll up your sleeves and actually work with others to make the changes that you desire. |
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Unfortunately, it is quite difficult to roll up your sleeves, because in the Joomla community there is a caste system tied to how he should remain in the project or who he knows personally. And to be honest, not only with me, but also with many of my friends, after a couple of PRs, for the adoption of which you have to spend much more effort than for writing them, all desire disappears. Especially when he sees that a PR from "deserved users" that causes bugs and much less developed is accepted very quickly. I'm not calling for anything specific, but I just sincerely hope that someday there will be a person in the "leadership" who will think about it and only then, maybe something will change. |
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I didn't see you running for one of the positions to be THE person for the change... |
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Unfortunately, this is not possible, and I am not a leader, I am a simple developer. I personally can’t get money from clients and I do a lot for free, where should I lead |
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I think this discussion has opened up a lot of problems for the existing joomla audience and fears. In marketing, there is a technique of "working with objections". From this discussion, you need to collect all the objections and answer them: for both simple webmasters and developers. people have a habit of relying on their experience. if their favorite module has stopped working on the new version of the cms, and they themselves do not know how to create extensions, then what should they do? we need a balance between the problems of end customers (who will pay for all the work on the upgrade) and the benefits for them. There was an influx of people into our community when one of the developers wrote an article about what a joomla news site had done, which supported 1 million unique visitors per day. and attached screenshots of attendance statistics. This is a simple, understandable and spectacular figure for the imagination. It said: "Look how joomla can!" And people thought: "Wow, I want the same! " We need to respond to the objections of third-party developers and give them an incentive to update their extensions. If possible, describe the reasons and arguments for making serious decisions in JCM, describe in detail the advantages that this or that implementation gives. In concrete and understandable figures for ordinary people. Where, on what really massively visited sites did I find information that tests of the old and new plug-in systems were conducted and that the new system, even with partial implementation, gives a twofold increase in the speed of page generation? Where did I see this? Nowhere. In some discussion on github and then by accident. It is necessary to tell about it. And we also need to both preserve the old database of developers and site builders, and attract a new one. joomla should not be associated with a headache. A lot of SEO specialists and Internet marketers, for example, still have an aversion to joomla because of the old router that created duplicates of pages. as a result, they have not returned to joomla since 2011-2013. and they are very surprised when they find out that the problems have been solved. we can build a BMW under the hood and in the cabin as long as it is paid for by the end customers. and you have to work with them. |
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Hello all, Thank you to all the contributors helping getting this article done! |
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Thank you for listening and making changes based on the feedback here!! It is a huge deal and I'm happy that this discussion didn't just evaporate into the ether. |
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You have been constructive throughout and your comments on "buddies" were an eye opener and a suprise but really helpful. And we have 4 signed up already to help developers so it's really yielding results. I will be posting details in the week. Thank you |
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Feature buddies were @coolcat-creations idea :) I'm excited to see where it goes |
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Translated to Russian |
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Feature buddies were @coolcat-creations idea :) |
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There is a misconception here:
the entire code base seems to be vastly restructured by @nikosdion own admission
Restructured is one thing. Not backwards compatible is a completely DIFFERENT thing.
As I said, Joomla has to stop short in some of its refactoring efforts exactly so that it retains backwards compatibility! Far from saying fuck it, screw developers, there was a very deliberate decision to provide as much backwards compatibility as possible.
Also on the subject of b/c, things do change over time even within the same major version. For example, in my head Joomla 3.7 is a MAJOR version because everything I built that could send an email (a dozen components and several plugins) had to be partially rewritten as JMail would throw exceptions on invalid email addresses or when sending an email failed instead of returning false. If it was done b/c it’d add a parameter $throwException with default value false. Just saying…
There are several of these micro b/c breaks to the point that if Joomla was really following semantic versioning since 1.0 we’d be talking about Joomla 30-something, not a Joomla 5 release. That’s exactly why I commented elsewhere that the PHP release model is more fitting to Joomla.
Again, the problem we’re talking about here is NOT whether Joomla should evolve or not. If you want the same old shit you had 17 years ago go to WordPress or Elxis (the latter is also a Mambo fork); both are dead slow, will forever be dead slow and a pain to work with as a developer if you want to do anything more complex than stitching together StackOverflow code in a Frankenstein’s monster of site.
We’re not even debating whether maintaining b/c for at least one major release is necessary. We have decided it is. Period. Case closed.
The problem we’re discussing is how often and to which extent Joomla should break b/c so that site integrators, end users and third party developers can have a viable business model. Both “every year” and “never” are the WRONG answers as we’ve seen. Two years sounds a bit too soon. Eight years sounds way too far in between. We have to identify the sweet spot. THIS IS THE PROBLEM WE ARE TRYING TO SOLVE. Okay? Are we all on the same page?
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Moving forward is indeed not a problem.
But to fast is even not good.
Therefore it should be beter to extend at least the support on Joomla! 3 at least 3 years of security support, so everyone has a fallback and can convert when every developer is ready.
And then release Joomla! 5.
And in the meanwhile continue on Joomla! 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, .... and fix all issues.
On this way there are 2 version that are supported, but WP even does beter, security-fixes for version 3.7.
Original release in october 2013, but still receives fixes.
But no new features of course.
…________________________________
Van: Jan ***@***.***>
Verzonden: woensdag 17 augustus 2022 14:28
Aan: joomla/joomla-cms ***@***.***>
CC: svermassen ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***>
Onderwerp: Re: [joomla/joomla-cms] Should Joomla adopt a gentler and more practical release cycle? (Discussion #38407)
A service for extension developers, designers, template creators and customers. All these groups have various needs and different approaches.
I don't think these groups have different needs. When such a horror article comes out about Joomla 5, everyone is all for one. All, extension developers, web designers and their clients are like, "Slow down, we're not keeping up." We're moving fast forward with the code, but no one is looking at modern user needs (UX/UI). Something to bring web designers to Joomla back.
If I'm saying it's a good time for a custom CSS system, I'm also saying it's better to have Bootstrap than our unfinished CSS system. We'd rather focus on other things when it comes to UX/UI. Yes, someone will say that BS6 will change again. But let's not be under any illusion, our own CSS system would change too, moreover, from historical knowledge, I dare say it would never be as polished as Bootstrap.
When it comes to page builders. Leave it to the template developers. They are so far along with their systems that a core system would never be able to offer anything better.
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Feel free to do the work and to provide the security fixes. I refuse to provide my manpower for an outdated software. It was communicated years ago, that J3 will get 2 years of security support and that will end in August next year. |
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A simple example of make it easier..
I already have mentioned a issue with custom fields on the standard contact-form.
Adding a captcha always showing between the standard fields and the custom fields.
This morning I replied on the "Joomla! 4.2" on Facebook if this is fixes already.
Because a captcha is logical the last field in a contact-form.
Nope not fix, but I should tweak it.
There was a bugg/RFC, this was already closed an they don't reopen it.
Why are custom fields even possible.
Even the subtitle before the extra fields I can't disabled whitout overrides.
Simple and usefull things we need ...
…________________________________
Van: Jan ***@***.***>
Verzonden: woensdag 17 augustus 2022 12:51
Aan: joomla/joomla-cms ***@***.***>
CC: svermassen ***@***.***>; Mention ***@***.***>
Onderwerp: Re: [joomla/joomla-cms] Should Joomla adopt a gentler and more practical release cycle? (Discussion #38407)
OctoberCMS (all but dead)
This is exactly the kind of project we can learn from. Modern CMS. But one of the biggest problems with this CMS was that it didn't have ready-made solutions. It didn't have the base of extensions that WP or Joomla has. And people are looking for ready-made solutions. Ready-made solutions = extensions. I witnessed the downfall of many services that offered build-your-own templates. When I told them that people don't want to waste time building, but finding the best solution, downloading and installing it, no one listened. And it turned out badly. People are just looking for ready-made solutions.
Who is our client, for whom do we create CMS?
These questions often come up in discussions, but I think this is a meaningless question. Even if we knew that one group used Joomla more than the other, we still wouldn't change the strategy of creating a CMS. We are making a CMS to help build a website. That's all.
Moreover, anyone who has been in this environment for more than 10 years knows the answer to this question. And it is very simple. Previously, end users used the CMS. For example, templates dedicated to pets were a hit because people were writing blogs about dogs, cats and the like. This kind of CMS usage is minimal today. Joomla CMS is mainly used by web designers to create a website for a client, and most of the time it is a corporate client.
And here it didn't pay to listen to the web designers and they just ran away from Joomla. And if a web designer does 50 sites a year, and doesn't use Joomla, then there are 50 less sites built on Joomla.
I mean, we write horror stories in blogs about how quickly we're going to release the next major release that significantly breaks backwards compatibility, and we wonder why web designers are running away from us.
And we're not even listening to what they need.
They basically don't care about modern code.
They want things that make their jobs easier.
AJAX SAVE - just imagine how annoying it is that you are setting up a web page and every time you change the settings, the page reloads and you lose the position of the parameter you are setting.
EDIT IN PLACE - Imagine how easy it is to change items in the list when you don't have to go to edit mode for every change. phpMyAdmin has had this for a very long time.
https://youtu.be/pha8uWSdYUE<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Fpha8uWSdYUE&data=05%7C01%7Csascha%40hswsolutions.eu%7C985e822b8fb948e50a9908da803e84a7%7C87f9581ec55c4f7face4537d7f6365a8%7C0%7C0%7C637963303250890791%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=SnRbPIJ3YI%2FaOc6LiPRXu4CV4pFetMUeGYYkYEaT5yI%3D&reserved=0>
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https://youtu.be/jiHqsBs-fsE<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FjiHqsBs-fsE&data=05%7C01%7Csascha%40hswsolutions.eu%7C985e822b8fb948e50a9908da803e84a7%7C87f9581ec55c4f7face4537d7f6365a8%7C0%7C0%7C637963303250890791%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GLfaCp49fPPzuwDrA2gjxdixCOx%2F%2FiaQTzU4Np%2F4MrY%3D&reserved=0>
etc.
It's great that we're working on the code, but I don't see that anyone cares about the needs of our users.
UX/UI team
It makes me very sad to read here that there were a few people who made a team and wanted to create something professional and were totally ignored. UX/UI is something our users are really interested in.
Custom CSS system
There has never been a better time to create our own CSS system. We have GRID and FLEXBOX, and anyone who worked with CSS before these options knows how easy it is to use CSS now. On the other hand, if we look at Bootstrap and see what all such a system has to deal with, let's be glad we implemented Bootstrap because it's very hard to create a custom CSS system and really encompass all the problematic parts.
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The captcha has been fixed and will be included in a future release: #38607 |
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I wonder why I bother to fix things |
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Hi, I have found this post whilst googling for some answers to my Joomla frustrations... I did not find my answers, but more doubts and questions. The problem is that an average joomla website maintainer (you tell me if it is an amateur, a freelance, an agency or a developer), for one reason or the other, ends up having to create a new website from scratch every 2 years. And, if you don't make any money out of it, believe me that spending weeks (let's say at least a couple of weeks for a website), inserting the content, troubleshooting the template, the responsiveness on various displays, and that damn EU cookie directive) onto putting everything together, can make anyone lose motivation. I believe that, as much as this can be just a personal experience, my personal experience, which does not have to necessarily reflect anyone else's, I would be much more motivated, and I would not be so frustrated by each Joomla's major update, if I could avoid having to pay third party developers just to keep their sofware secure, and I were able to access, and study, a comprehensive Joomla documentation. It almost seems like it is being made on purpose, so that it's currently impossible to create a joomla website, unless one pays a developer to do it for them. Is there a design, to prevent normal people from running joomla sites on their own, so that a source of income is being assured? One of the problems that is - understandably - not being addressed here, is that the subscription model, which is slowly taking stage in this world about everything, is slowly killing everything. Joomla is free, and the community is doing a great job. But without documentation, normal people are not able to learn, and they have to rely on developers who charge on a permanent basis. So, for the common man, considering that the majority of the data is currently managed on smartphones, using Joomla or Wix does not make a difference. If one has to pay, they prefer to pay Wix and have all the issues sorted by their customer service. And my business is going to close down, one day... So, if you want Joomla to gain users, please make sure a real, comprehensive documentation (a "bible") is being created, because right now, only people with high level of expertise are able to do something decent, and all the others are being driven away to other commercial platforms (Wordpress, Wix etc.), despite some of them might be worse than Joomla, under every aspect. |
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@FX2LTD Let me first compare your experiences to mine: I've been with Joomla since 2007 (or V1.0). And I'm not a PHP and MySQL programmer (though with some knowledge on HTML, CSS, and IT in general). But my major site has survived since then. Yes, there has been one disruptive change: I had to redo my site when switching to Joomla 2.5. But from then on, I have only updated it. What we have to take into consideration is the rapid change of environments: When the two of us started building Joomla sites, mobile devices were a non-issue. Today they are. As a consequence, I had to use responsive templates, which i.e. forced me to change the way of inserting images. Or which modules to show only in the desktop view as opposed to not showing them in the mobile view. But we can't blame Joomla for that. In other respects, I'm not with you:
I agree with you that updating from J3 to J4 was painful. It needed careful project planning and management. The migration guide was very helpful. In spite of that, it took me a year or so from starting the project to running J4 sites, caused mainly by some essential extensions not being ready earlier. After that, the update to J5 was a non-issue. There is one point in your post I totally agree: Documentation is a big issue. This is a well-known problem that the board of OSM is well aware of. But Joomla is a community project, run by volunteers. And as long there are not enough people willing to spend some time in writing better documentation, we will have to live with the available sources. |
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Hi, Last night, after posting this comment, I have found something which seems to be a bit more focused on what is under the hood of Joomla: https://manual.joomla.org/docs/ I will have a look, maybe it is what I have been looking for... |
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Of course, Joomla Docs should be the first address to look for in the search for documentation. But much of the documentation there is still based on J3 and needs some volunteering to be lifted to J4/5.
Kind regard P.S.: Welcome back to the Joomla community! |
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and others
Hello all,
here is the official statement from production for the plans of Joomla 5.0: https://www.joomla.org/announcements/release-news/5868-joomla-5-panta-rhei-the-follow-up.html
Thank you to all the contributors helping getting this article done!