With the release of Joomla! 1.6 and the decision by the Joomla! Leadership teams to move to a 6 month release cycle to help users upgrade easier, there has been a lot of speculation regarding the release of Joomla! 1.7 and how it will affect everyone.  Much of it is just that, speculation, but behind a lot of it is some reasonable concerns.  I mean, seriously, 1.6 did take almost 3 years to release, so why should 1.7 be any different?

Yesterday I was in a conversation with several other Joomla!-ers regarding this very topic.  And I noticed several things that might explain the shift in strategy for Joomla!, and also might help those wondering what is happening with Joomla! 1.7 and how they can help.

I’m not a designer.  Far from it, graphics is probably the last thing you want me doing.  But recently I had the opportunity to assist with developing a couple components and designing the user interface layouts and component workflows.  Needless to say, this was an eye opener for me.  I mean, I’ve worked in developing several components, but have never had a hand in the design of them.  Here, I was able to take all the things that I didn’t like about comparable solutions out there, and get rid of them!  Replacing them with elements and layouts that I thought flowed better and worked together well.  So here’s a couple of the things that I don’t like, and a little bit of how I approached fixing them!

If you haven't noticed by now, my site is built on Joomla!  Now, where I come from, with a background in internet marketing, Joomla! is virtually unheard of, and Wordpress is king.  Wordpress rules there for many good reasons including ease of use and the fact that it is SEO friendly.  But let me tell you why I switched to Joomla! and why I will continue to develop almost exclusively in Joomla! in the future.  Now don't get me wrong, this isn't one of those "I Hate Wordpress" rants, to the contrary, I still use Wordpress on a regular basis, and value many of its features, but there are still several reasons why I will continue to build 99% of all my sites in Joomla!