On September 1st, 2005 the joomla.org sites were launched. Until that day, the Joomla! name was completely unknown to the world. This is a screenshot of Google's results before the launch:
Joomla 5 Years Later
Joomla is now one of the most popular software projects in the world.
Approximately 2.5% of the web runs on Joomla. It is used by organizations as large as Apple, McDonald’s and the United Nations and by millions of people for their companies, hobbies and charities.
How did we get here from such humble beginnings? You.
Joomla is 100% community-owned and operated.
Joomla has no Venture Capital firms behind it. Joomla has no parent company, no shareholders and no investors behind it. Joomla has no C.E.O., no dictator and no owner. It has you.
You means the 19 members of the original development team that founded Joomla.
You means the 10s of millions of people who have downloaded or installed Joomla.
You means the 2334 developers who have written over 5500 extensions for Joomla.
You means the site builders who use Joomla to create wonderful websites.
You means the designers who create spectacular, cutting-edge templates.
You means the coders who write and maintain Joomla's core.
You means the 2348 people who have reported issues, submitted patches, and committed fixes to the core.
You means the dedicated volunteers that keep the joomla.org family of sites running.
You means the volunteers who contribute by answering questions in the Joomla! and regional groups and forums.
McDonald's is one of the world's largest fast food companies, serving nearly 47 million customers daily.
Their website for the Arabian Peninsula uses Joomla: www.McDonaldsArabia.com. The homepage is just a splash screen but beyond that are multiple pages of Joomla graphic design excellence. The site is an excellent example of how well Joomla works for multilingual websites and also for right-to-left languages such as Arabic.
The site was built for McDonald's by MRM Worldwide who are reponsible for some of the world's largest and most prestigious advertising campaigns.
It's also worth mentioning that McDonald's are using Drupal in Australia. These two websites are a great indicator of how the world's largest corporations now utilize Open Source projects.
OSM is entrusted with providing organizational, legal, and financial support for the Joomla! project. You can find out more about the organization at http://opensourcematters.org.
With those serious responsibilities and the recent departure of two long-serving board members, the decision has been made to expand the board once more.
We are looking for your nominations for new OSM board members.
We acknowledge that the greater worldwide Joomla! community can help us a lot in this election process, and make us aware of potential candidates we may overlook.
Nomination Information
We are looking for around seven new board members. Several will be general board members but we're also looking for three people capable of fulfilling specific positions including:
Treasurer: responsible for ensuring that all expenditures are explained., verifing that all expenses have been properly authorized and that there is adequate documentation of expenses on file. Prepare budget and maintain financial records.
Capital Chair: responsible for managing Joomla!’s fundraising. Tasks include working with OSM’s current partners, manging the Joomla sponsorship program and finding new partners capable of supporting the project.
Developer Liaision: responsible for manging OSM’s connections with the Joomla! developer community.
Nomination Criteria
We are looking to recruit the very best and the brightest members in the Joomla! community. These are some of the criteria that will be used when evaluating nominations:
Community: the nominee should have a strong track-record of successfully collaborating with, enabling others and earning the respect of the Joomla! community.
Character: the nominee should have proven themselves a person of high character, with a history of acting honestly, fairly and openly when in leadership roles.
Experience and Expertise: if the nominee is being proposed for a specific role, they should have strong experience and expertise in that area.
Success: the nominee should be able to point to a history of success and leaving previous roles in a better state than when they arrived.
Diversity: to work towards gender balance and cultural diversity, we are committed to seeking nominations from talented members of the Joomla! community who are female and / or are fluent speakers of languages or than English.
With so many recent changes to the Joomla.org family, as well as the anticipation of Joomla! 1.6, a restructuring of the websites is due.
Joomla.org is one of the largest websites in the world (something to be very proud of). As with all large sites that are run by multiple teams, one of the biggest challenges is keeping everything consistent. We see this with corporations like Microsoft, Apple and even Dell.com, to name a few, and Joomla! is no exception.
Over the past 4 years, Joomla!'s number of sub sites has grown from a handful to nearly 20, with each site pumping out a major amount of data to the users. The current structure and layout of Joomla! is not ideal for this type of rapid growth, and it has become a bit difficult to find things. To solve this, Joomla.org will be undergoing a few changes.
Let's take a look at what changes are in the works, and why.
Problem 1: Joomla! has approx. 20 sites. Fitting all of them into the top menu bar is virtually impossible.
Solution 1: An attractive, easy to follow drop down navigation system will make all the sites accessible. Users will be able to navigate to various portions of the site without digging around for the links. There is a snap shot of the new drop down design in the images below.
Problem 2: Clutter, plain and simple. Due to the rapid growth, information is scattered in places.
Solution 2: The restructured site is clean, organized, and polished. (See image below.)
Problem 3: Consistency. This is often hard to control on an everyday site, let alone one with rapid growth.
Solution 3: Each individual site will be rolled with the new template, providing consistency throughout. (Someday I will figure out that Wiki... ;-) )
Problem 4: Content Management.
Solution 4: While we are upgrading the templates for the site, we will make enhancements to the current content structure, making it easier for you to navigate and find things without using Google.
We have set out to keep the new template just as clean as the old one, while allowing for additional growth. The new design is streamlined, simple and easy to navigate.
We'd like your help as we move forward with the new design.
We will iron out all the kinks over the next few weeks, then we will roll out the updates. Joomla.org will be updated first, then we will move on to the sub sites. We honestly can't wait to launch the site! As much as we'd like to do it today, there are still some important things to consider...mainly, your input.
Keep your eyes peeled for these major updates to Joomla.org.
How did we get here from such humble beginnings? You.
