Coming 2017, this would be my first decade working on projects that involves an open source community driven PHP content management system that goes by the name of Joomla! To those of you who aren’t aware of what Joomla is yet, it is an open source content management system. It empowers 10% of the CMS marketshare

I have a love and hate relationship with the project but it has helped me in my own personal growth for the past decade. Although I am not actively involved in the development of Joomla per-se, I am extremely thankful and grateful to every volunteers that is involved in the project.

Amazing community

As it is an open source project, it is driven by an awesome community. There are ups and downs in the community as nothing is perfect but what amazes me is the way the community moves forward. The contributors for the project are not getting any salary, yet the project evolves faster than any commercial or enterprise projects that I have seen till date.

The people within the community are extremely friendly and helpful. Throughout these years, I have met with many great, light minded developers that gives me a lot of inspiration.

Ecosystem

Joomla! alone, isn’t entirely as powerful as one would envision but with the massive list of templates and extensions on it’s directory, it is what empowers the core. In a way, it is a pretty healthy ecosystem I would say as commercial developers may also contribute back to the project (be it sponsorship, man-hours in hunting for bugs or even helping out with the leadership team)

What have I learned

There is no technology or device that could last forever. One fine day, these great tools, services or devices will be a legacy but what certainly remains are the friends that we made throughout these years and for the years to come!

Reignite the vision

Everything has its peak and its downfall. It’s the same for Joomla back in the days, I believe many ones that I have personally worked with know this as well, the fact that we will definitely face our uphill battles sooner or later whichever platform you may choose.

It is a constant battle to seek for the impossible, unveiling opportunities that is before and not shutting the door for improvement and innovation. Therefore, I truly believe “No man is an island”, with a supporting community such as Joomla will definitely go the extra mile. Together and united, we could bring Joomla back to its glorious days or even greater.

Not an exclusive club

Joomla! is not an exclusive club reserved for people with a specific sets of expertise or talent. You could even contribute in some translation works even without any coding knowledge, get involved with various testings to identify a bug or two, if you’re a developer yourself, you could add a line of codes at Github projects and list goes on and on. It’s just that simple, hop on board and we will fill you in.

Do not stop learning!

Every journey has its humble beginning, therefore never despite your beginnings. My involvement in an open source working environment were never a smooth sailing one, in fact most of my past experiences were eye opening to me and it still is. Mistakes are our proof that we are still trying, and success are results of our hard work.

To end this, I truly hope that this post will inspire you to embark on new journeys and giving back to your community that you believed in. 😃

Merry Christmas!