Joomla in Faces. Michael Russell (volunteer)

Thank you, Eugene, for this opportunity to talk about me and Joomla. My name is Michael Russell. I live in Canberra, the capital of Australia—a city with over half a million people. I began my IT career in 1971 while I was still at university. I worked in a number of public service jobs, firstly as a computer programmer, then as a systems analyst and finally as a manager of people who worked in the ICT field.

I retired from the workforce in 2007. I had developed a keen interest in website construction during the last ten years of my working life and, when I retired, I decided to maintain that interest (more as a hobby than anything else) and help other people learn how to design, build and maintain their websites.

I encountered Joomla quite by accident in 2008. From 1995 I had built all my websites using nothing more than a text editor and a web browser. In those early years, there were two main web browsers that people used: Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. As you probably remember, all these different web browsers worked differently—they employed different Dynamic Object Models [DOMs]—and I struggled to write the client-side scripting that would easily adapt to IE, Netscape, Safari, Chrome, and Opera, etc. My first websites only worked with IE.

Anyway, my younger brother mentioned Joomla to me one day and told me that Joomla handled all of those DOM issues. I had never heard of Joomla before so I bought a book written by Dan Rahmel called: Beginning Joomla! From Novice to Professional. The book showed me how to install something called XAMPP and how to install Joomla! on it. I was impressed!

Something I had always wanted to do was to stay in contact with a small community of people around Australia and the book showed me a product called Fireboard. I created about 20 websites on XAMPP (I threw most of them away) before I purchased a domain name and service to host my websites on the internet.

Fireboard was taken over by a group of people who forked it into Kunena. That’s when the real fun began. I was soon asking questions on the Kunena forum, learning from other people’s experiences, and helping people with my new-found knowledge of Joomla.

No, Eugene. As I mentioned before, all my previous work had been done using a basic text editor, writing back-end SQL and using a web browser to test the result. It wasn’t until I started using Joomla that I understood the need for the “AMP stack”—Apache web server, MySQL database engine and PHP scripting language. As well as that, the scripting language I used before Joomla was Microsoft’s vbScript; for Joomla I had to learn Javascript. So I spent a few more hundred dollars to buy more books about PHP and SQL and Joomla.

I read many stories on the internet saying that Joomla was not as good as WordPress, that Joomla was harder to learn and that Joomla did not have a flexible ACL implementation; much of this was true in 2008 and it was not until 2010 (when Joomla 1.6 was being developed) before Joomla emerged as a strong contender in the CMS stakes.

Some of the early criticism about Joomla was probably warranted. The access control methods—remember Author, Editor, Publisher?—were limited and Joomla 1.5 was not very secure. I had half a dozen J! 1.5 websites hacked! But I decided to stay with Joomla because the community had some really first-class people—nice people—who were always ready to help ordinary people like me.

I must have spent tens of thousands of hours reading all of the problems that other people had with their Joomla websites. I spent tens of thousands of hours researching the internet to find information that might help people. I have certainly written millions of words about Joomla!

Between 2008 and 2015 I was active on the Kunena forum. I helped moderate the forum, write documentation for the Kunena [mediaWiki] site, talked on Skype at all hours of the day with people like Oliver Ratzesberger, Matias Griese and Ron Severdia. I even paid my own way to attend the J and Beyond conference in Nordwijkerhout in the Netherlands in 2013! That’s where I met a couple of hundred wonderful people who were true Joomla evangelists.

I’ve written a couple of dozen Joomla extensions—plugins and modules—some of them are still available on the Joomla Extension Directory today … and they still work! I hosted a local Joomla User Group here in Canberra; it was not a big group: about ten people. I also got in contact with several people around Australia and helped to look after the Joomla! Australia website for a couple of years. Sadly, though, the JUG in Canberra dissolved. These days I spend most of my time using videoconference to help people all around the world with their Joomla problems: everything from HTTP 500 Internal Server Errors to “How to turn a piece of text into a clickable button?”

I also maintain a blog where I write my own thoughts about Joomla, some handy tips to keep your website safe and some technical solutions to common problems people encounter.

But, for all the thousands of hours I’ve poured into Joomla and the millions of words I’ve written and spoken, I have made less than one hundred dollars. I do what I do because I like to do what I do; I do what I do for free.

Thank you for another good question, Eugene. I don’t regret the time I’ve spent helping people in the way I’ve gone about it. I am not preoccupied with making a living from what I do; I have a secure income from other sources. However, I understand that many of your readers would be concerned if they spent as much time as I have and were unable to earn enough money to live on.

My focus has not been on monetising my contribution. Volunteering is both its own reward and its own punishment. It is to be regretted that there are a few people in the Joomla community who do not give due credit to those of us who volunteer, quietly and in the background, and do not seek praise or adulation.

The JUGs exist because a couple of people who use Joomla in a town know one another and, for no other reason than their desire to help other people who do not know about Joomla, they organise get-togethers. I remember my early JUG meetings were held, once a month, on a Thursday night in a coffee shop; I think there were about four people there. These JUGs are held together by people, not because there is money to be made from them, because people want to share their ideas. Some of the presentations we had were uninteresting (to me) and some of the stories I heard were inspiring. You get the good and the bad.

I don’t know about the JUG experience in other places but I can say, with my hand on my heart, that these monthly get-togethers are not there for training; they’re mainly for people to see what other people are doing, have been doing and what are their ideas. I would say that money—paying for a professional trainer—is the last thing on people’s minds at JUGs. My advice is, whether you are a newcomer to Joomla or someone who has been around for twenty years, we’re always learning.

Let’s also agree that most people who attend JUGs are sole-traders; some of them may use Joomla in a “business” sense and some of them may only have one website as a hobby. I am unaware of where people can obtain formal training in Joomla or even whether there’s a demand for it or if it’s affordable.

When people think they know more than other people, that’s where we have our biggest problems. I don’t know how to develop the Joomla CMS; I know a tiny bit about its inner working; I’m just a person who uses it. However, my observations have led me to conclude that there’s a displacement between Joomla developers and ordinary end users. I doubt that the Joomla developers know as much about everyday usage issues.

I know how to avoid making common mistakes and how to extricate myself from awkward situations. My advice is simple: Joomla is a work in progress, it’s disposable and it will not be around forever … just like you and me.

Yes, I was involved with the Kunena project for about eight years. After Oliver, Matias and Ron left I decided that it was also my time to curtail my involvement and I spent most of my time at The Joomla Forum™. I couldn’t tell you how many forum posts I wrote on the Kunena forum or on The Joomla Forum™ (or for that matter on StackExchange or GitHub or even on my own websites). But, yes, I’ve written some thirty thousand posts on these forums. Text-based discussion forums can be useful to help solve problems with the proviso that people should ask questions and not give solutions. I believe that people solve their own problems when other people ask them questions instead of other people lecturing them about all the things they did wrong. That’s the problem with the world, I think; people don’t listen. Everyone seems to be shouting!

I don’t have much time for social media. Although I have a couple of social media accounts (e.g. Facebook and X/Twitter) I don’t use them much. Even my own family doesn’t use social media. We talk with each other by phone or by email or we actually get out there and meet in person.

Getting back to your question, text-based forums have tended to become desolate or they’re dominated by AI-pulp or spam (or, worse, trolling). A good forum is a forum where people feel welcome and where people are treated with respect for their intelligence and not treated like babies. That’s the biggest problem that I see with The Joomla Forum™. If forum moderators could understand that everyone is different and that we don’t all speak the same language, if they could be more understanding of people’s differences and less occupied with using their big stick to punish minor infractions of rules, then there would probably be more engagement in forum activities.

I don’t think social media is the solution. Social media platforms tend to attract like-minded people—people who agree with every opinion that’s written—and exclude people who have different views.

There’s a kind of elitism here, Eugene: people value their prestige in being the loudest voice in the room drowning out everyone else.

So, no, I think that text-based discussion forums have tended to isolate people instead of bringing them together. I am involved in a text-based discussion forum here Australia; we talk about our hobbies and we all get along nicely.

Australians are not unique to the declining interest in Joomla. It only takes a few seconds to see how Joomla has declined all over the world in the past ten years. Also, in 2013 (when I attended the J and Beyond conference in The Netherlands), Joomla was the second-most used open source CMS product; now it is the sixth-most used CMS. But it is not just Joomla that has suffered. People are not using Wordpress or other CMS products. There’s been a shift away from feature-rich do-it-yourself [DIY] websites towards turn-key or “packaged” solutions.

It’s a matter of opinion whether Joomla has “better features than ever before”. Joomla has a lot of features, that’s for sure. But do people need them? Your average website owner probably wants a website with a couple of pages that is indexed on Google, Bing or Yandex, that’s all. A couple of web pages with some text, images, a menu system and that’s about it … for most people.

These days, DIY websites are a niche market; they are for hobbyists and experimenters. I used to know about forty people who were active with Joomla in Australia. I doubt I could tell you the names of five people today. I strongly doubt that Australia has any potential for evangelising Joomla because there’s little interest in it. I don’t want to sound harsh but, when I talk about my Webcraft hobby, I don’t mention the word Joomla because no-one would understand what I’m talking about.

I suppose one could say that there are people who build websites themselves and there are people who want someone else to build a website for them. People who build websites for themselves may do it to save the cost of someone building a website for them; the typical cost of a basic business website is about $AU1,500. Or maybe they build their own website to prove that they can do it? Other people who want someone to build a website aren’t lazy; they’re interested in their business and having a website on the internet is simply a means to an end.

I could build a Joomla website for someone. It’s a lengthy process. There may be money to be made by Joomlers offering website development to end users but, on the other hand, many businesses have nothing more than a Facebook page, a business card, a shop, a sign planted on their driveway or a mobile phone number painted on their truck. Is it time for Joomlers to start offering their website development services to end clients? Perhaps but it all depends on whether there are end clients who want those services, doesn’t it?

Yes, JoomlaDays are events for the faithful to meet and talk and eat pizza. I don’t know what happens at these JoomlaDays. I’m sorry but I really can’t give you my thoughts on your question.

It’s been a long time since I attended school, university or undertook a technical training course. IT literacy is mandatory in the Australian education system; it starts in primary school before children are 10 years old. There are vocational tertiary courses where people study various aspects of ICT, that’s for sure. The Australian education system helps to prepare people for life in the workforce.

Where I live in Canberra is a major investment centre for ICT-skilled people, especially given the Australian Government’s dependence on outsourcing its IT needs. There are also large firms here who provide people to be deployed wherever specialised ICT services are needed.

Do “influencers” really influence certain products? Many celebrity influencers use WhatsApp, Tiktok and Youtube and simple peddle the wares of whomever is paying them the most money.

Australians are generally the early adopters of new technology. That’s why you’ll find that global businesses often use Australia to field test new products.

Also, Australians on the whole have a reasonably high standard of education, a high living standard, good wages, low inflation and a stable economy. I agree, though, that Australia is dependent on the global economy and the global availability of educational resources. We are early adopters, yes, but we are independent thinkers and we don’t blindly follow whatever trend happens to be the flavour of the moment.

Thank you, Eugene. I like to express myself clearly and unambiguously. English is probably the most complicated language in the world to learn if it is your second language. I follow the simple rule when I write:

Every language has its own idiom. Australian English has its own idiomatic usage and we’re quite fond of being very expressive! When I write I try to avoid technical jargon or acronyms. If it means I have to write a longer sentence then it simply means I have to write a longer sentence. My main purpose in writing is to get the reader to think for themselves. The payoff in writing clearly and expressively is to engage the reader so that they’ll read the story to the end and think about what they’ve read for some time afterwards.

Every language has its own idiom. Australian English has its own idiomatic usage and we’re quite fond of being very expressive! When I write I try to avoid technical jargon or acronyms. If it means I have to write a longer sentence then it simply means I have to write a longer sentence.

My main purpose in writing is to get the reader to think for themselves.

The payoff in writing clearly and expressively is to engage the reader so that they’ll read the story to the end and think about what they’ve read for some time afterwards.

I like to challenge people: ask the important—at times difficult—questions. I do not mind if people agree or disagree with me. I want people to ask themselves why they agree or disagree with what I write. One of my favourite sayings is, “If you think I’m wrong then say, ‘I think you’re wrong.’ If you say, ‘You’re wrong!’, how do you know?” It is only when we ask questions that we discover new knowledge.

It takes me less than two seconds to spot AI-generated pulp. Writing English (or any other language) is not simply a matter of spelling and syntax. It’s about how the words are arranged and how certain phrases are used that do not sound “natural”.

For example, here is a piece of AI-generated nonsense:

It is complete nonsense, even to a non-English speaker. The information is sourced from folklore that originated around 2016! Key words to help you spot AI-generated pulp: “diverse”, “powering” (or empowering), “leveraging”, “flexibility” and, finally, what does “high traffic volumes” at the end of the sentence mean?

Yes, AI is effortlessly versatile but it doesn’t mean that it’s reliable or that it has any real value. AI has make large inroads in what we digest these days but I would rather digest something someone cooked than being served with just-add-water AI blancmange. Generally, it’s easy to identify something generated by AI because it’s superficial; AI-generated text barely scratches the subject matter or, when it does, the text is generalised, repetitive, out-dated and long-winded. I’m not against AI but I wouldn’t bet my life on something AI told me!

If you have a clear need to build a website then Joomla is a good product to build a website.

Out-of-the-box, Joomla has a proven, reliable way to create a website with articles and menus. You can do a lot with Joomla out-of-the box. There are also built-in features for controlling who can login to your website and features to inform the webmaster who has logged into your website.

There are several third-party add-ons (e.g. Akeeba Backup) that I would strongly endorse. Best of all, Joomla works on a range of platforms, web browsers, and (if you know what you’re doing) you can create a website in under 10 minutes.

On the downside, though, Joomla is not for complete beginners. As with everything in life, if you want to do something unique, you have to put in the effort yourself; and the learning curve can be a long one. I’m still learning something new every day.

That’s a great question, Eugene. Joomla’s biggest strength is that it has been around for 20 years. Joomla’s biggest weakness is that it has been around for 20 years.

Joomla in 2025 is not the same as it was in 2005. Then again, the internet today is not the same as it was 20 years ago, either! The Joomla community today is different to what it was 20 years ago (or even 5 years ago). We’re all getting older; some of us, like me, are getting really old!

I wish the Joomla community was like it was 5 or 10 years ago when people could express their viewpoints and their different views were treated with respect.

Unfortunately, the Joomla community today is guarded, has become something exclusive, and it has become confined to a handful of countries centred around Western Europe and in Northern America. When the Joomla community becomes more welcoming to people from different countries then, perhaps, the community will benefit from the injection of new ideas.

One of the main complaints that I read from the Joomla community is the lack of volunteers. Well, surprisingly, every six weeks (as regular as clockwork), there’s a new release of a new version of Joomla; there’s a new Joomla magazine published every month; there are people working their hearts out to write documentation, to run The Joomla Forum™, to report problems (and have them fixed) and maintain the Joomla Extensions Directory. With so “few” volunteers, why is there so much complaining?

As I say, we’re all getting older; third-party developers are retiring; the community needs to become more open, more tolerant and understanding that the world is a different place. I’m neither confident nor pessimistic about the future for Joomla. I, too, will probably be long gone from my webcraft activities in a few years. One can hope that Joomla does well in future but hope does not bring about the changes needed to confront the challenges ahead.

In conclusion, thank you, Eugene, for this opportunity to share my thoughts with you and your readers. I would like to take this moment to wish you and your readers all the best for the season and a happy, prosperous 2026 for whatever you’re involved with.