Joomla in Faces. Tim Davis (Joomla evangelist)

My name is Tim Davis, and I recently turned 60. I’m married to my wife, Susan, and together we have three married children and six grandchildren.

This year marks 30 years since we moved to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. It’s a place we’ve been thrilled to live for the last three decades.

In the late 1990s, I was building websites using Microsoft FrontPage and later Dreamweaver. At that time, all of my sites were very boxy and rigid because they were built entirely with tables. When I came across more visually appealing websites online, I couldn’t understand how they were created.

Eventually, I signed up for a web hosting account with a company in Florida because I had a large and growing email newsletter. They were one of the few hosts willing to allow the volume of email I needed to send, as most providers assumed I was a spammer. That hosting account included Fantastico, a one-click installer for various types of software.

I didn’t know much about open source at the time, but I was intrigued by the fact that these applications were free, so I began installing and experimenting with them. I tried an early version of WordPress, but it didn’t really resonate with me. Then I noticed an application called Mambo. When I installed it, it immediately made sense. Adding articles and titles felt intuitive, and as I explored further, I discovered the template system.

Realizing that I could purchase a professionally designed template, install it, and instantly have a great-looking site was incredibly exciting. I was primarily interested in adding content regularly, not in spending endless hours on design, and Mambo allowed me to do exactly that. My websites suddenly looked far beyond my own design abilities.

Not long after I started using Mambo, news broke that it was being forked into a new project called Joomla. At first, I wasn’t sure whether to stay with Mambo or move to Joomla. I didn’t know anyone in the community and was still unfamiliar with the broader open-source ecosystem.

As I followed the discussions around the fork, it became clear to me that the people with the passion, energy, and vision for the future were the ones moving forward with Joomla. I decided to follow them — and the rest, as they say, is history.

I have worked with a few other content management systems over the years, mostly when helping someone who was already committed to a particular platform and needed assistance. For a time, I also explored working more seriously with WordPress.

However, despite my efforts, WordPress has continued to feel foreign and frustrating for me to work with. As a result, I eventually decided to focus exclusively on Joomla. Thanks to the steady flow of leads coming through my YouTube channel, I’ve been able to make that decision confidently.

That said, I’m not opposed to helping someone with another platform if the situation is straightforward. Recently, for example, a client contacted me needing a quick rebranding on their WordPress site, primarily replacing images. I was able to help them complete that work on schedule. Through further conversations, it became clear that they would benefit from a more structured and supported digital setup, and we are now planning to move them to Joomla so they can take advantage of both the platform and the depth of support my company provides.

For a number of years, I’ll admit that I wasn’t actively contributing to Joomla. I was using it extensively and earning some income on the side while serving as a pastor of a small church.

As I began anticipating my retirement from pastoring and spending more time working with Joomla, I realized it was important for me to also become part of the community and give back. While I don’t hold any official role within Joomla, I do contribute by helping people when I’m able — whether that’s responding to questions in forums or offering guidance where I have experience.

Of course, a significant part of my contribution has been through my YouTube channel, where I’ve now published over 800 videos focused on Joomla. The feedback I receive is that these videos have been genuinely helpful, and that’s very meaningful to me.

What do I gain from being involved? Beyond Joomla being my full-time income, I deeply value the community itself. I’ve built friendships and relationships with people around the world who share a passion for Joomla. That sense of connection, belonging, and shared purpose has been incredibly rewarding and grounding. At this point, it’s difficult to separate my professional work from the emotional and relational fulfillment that comes from being part of the Joomla community.

I do feel a great deal of satisfaction from my YouTube channel, especially when I look at how much content it now contains and the small community that has formed around my weekly live streams. I never get tired of hearing from someone who tells me that a particular video helped them solve a problem or get unstuck.

That said, lately I’ve also felt some frustration. With so much content on the channel, when someone asks a question and I know I’ve covered the topic before, it can be difficult to quickly find and share the right video.

As a result, I’m currently developing a continuous learning extension designed to make it much easier for people to discover relevant help through my videos, and for me to guide them to the right resources efficiently.

Over the past couple of months, my business has been especially busy, which has limited the amount of time I’ve been able to dedicate to creating new videos. I have a significant backlog of ideas and topics I want to cover, and I’m confident that once I finish this reorganization and make the content more accessible, I’ll be able to return to producing videos more consistently.

As with most events, there is a wide range of quality, and that usually reflects the amount of time, resources, and people available to organize them, as well as the budget required to make them happen. That variation is natural and to be expected.

However, when it comes to value, I believe these events are consistently strong. Whether it’s a smaller JUG meeting or a larger JoomlaDay event, the opportunity to build connections is invaluable, especially when the event is attended in person. Those experiences significantly deepen relationships — not only through sessions, but also through shared meals, informal conversations, and time spent together outside of scheduled talks.

These interactions strengthen personal bonds and add depth to professional networking. Because Joomla professionals work across different time zones and schedules, having met someone in person makes later interactions — whether by video call or online collaboration — far more meaningful. It transforms problem-solving from a purely technical exchange into a shared human experience, rooted in mutual passion and understanding.

This is a tough one for me to answer.

I’m not worried about Joomla disappearing — it’s not going anywhere. But at the same time, as I look at the incredible strengths of Joomla 5 and Joomla 6, I also see internal struggles that seem to reappear cyclically. Ironically, those same cycles can create the feeling that Joomla is “not going anywhere” in another sense — not declining, but not fully breaking through either.

Because of that, I’m hesitant to offer a simple or overly optimistic answer about how to increase Joomla’s presence. Doing so would ignore what I believe is one of Joomla’s Achilles heels. While the software itself is strong, powerful, and more capable than ever, the recurring internal tensions can make it difficult to sustain momentum and to nurture people who are new to the ecosystem.

That said, I don’t want to frame this as a pessimistic outlook. Joomla absolutely remains a viable, professional, and future-ready platform. The challenge isn’t convincing people that Joomla can do the job — it clearly can. The challenge is creating an environment where new users, contributors, and businesses feel supported, encouraged, and energized over the long term.

If Joomla’s presence is to grow meaningfully in North America, I believe it will come less from marketing promises and more from consistent, healthy community experiences that match the quality of the software itself.

The core principles of successful business apply regardless of the platform being used. If you are offering something that people genuinely want, and you provide it with quality, consistency, and good support, you can build a sustainable business.

If many people are selling the same thing and there is strong demand, competition isn’t necessarily a problem. But if demand is limited, then success depends on finding clients who truly value what you offer and are willing to pay appropriately for it. That often requires flexibility — either adapting what you sell or adding something distinctive to what you already offer.

I believe that “something distinctive” is your own unique service and approach. Trying to make more people want Joomla specifically feels like a slow and uncertain path to improving revenue. A more reliable approach is to focus on what clients actually need and then deliver those solutions using Joomla — whether or not the client ever cares what CMS is underneath.

Equally important is building ongoing relationships with clients. If your work consists only of low-cost, one-off websites, you will always be chasing the next small project. But by continuing to grow your skills and educating clients about what it truly takes to succeed online — things like accessibility, performance, reputation in an AI-driven world, and long-term maintenance — you create opportunities for ongoing collaboration and recurring revenue.

In that model, Joomla becomes the platform that enables client success, not the billboard that attracts business on its own. I’ve learned this through experience. Earlier in my career, my pricing and messaging attracted clients who valued low cost over quality, and that limited my growth.

This may sound familiar to people who have heard me say it elsewhere, but off our island there are many kinds of fish to catch. One is salmon. Another is halibut. It’s not uncommon for people who catch salmon to cut off the heads and use them as bait for halibut. There’s an important lesson in that: the larger the salmon head you fish with, the fewer small halibut you will catch, because they simply can’t get their mouths around it.

Don’t get me wrong — small fish are far better than no fish at all. There have been many times when I was grateful, even if frustrated, to be catching lots of small fish because it helped meet immediate needs. But when it comes to long-term revenue and sustainability, I’ve learned that it’s often better to have a few big fish than an endless parade of small ones. Ultimately, I’ve come to see that my approach is more often the problem than the quality of the catch.

For anyone who is considering volunteering but feels unsure, I would encourage some honest self-reflection first. Ask yourself whether this is something you want to do without expecting to feel fully fulfilled or universally appreciated in return.

If volunteering is tied to a need for affirmation, acceptance, or consistent respect from everyone involved, it may lead to disappointment. Volunteering in the Joomla open source community can be deeply rewarding, but it will also expose you to difficult personalities and challenging dynamics.

Unrealistic expectations about universal approval will surely and eventually be dismantled by people who lack self-awareness or kindness, and whose behavior ultimately tears down and nullifies the good things they are contributing. Volunteering in Joomla without clear boundaries, realistic expectations, and a sense of self-worth and value as a human being outside of Joomla is a recipe for pain.

One of the key advantages of Joomla that stands out to me was highlighted by Brian Mitchell, a former president of Open Source Matters. He spoke about how powerfully Joomla’s MVC architecture positions the platform in light of the rapid development of artificial intelligence.

I believe this opens the door to a new level of service and creativity for clients, largely because it is becoming increasingly easy to prompt AI to build solutions that are native to Joomla. For many years, people have had ideas for features, extensions, or custom functionality they wanted to bring to life, but those ideas were often limited by a lack of coding skills or development resources.

Joomla’s architecture helps level that playing field. It allows complex, well-structured solutions to be built more efficiently, which means organizations, businesses, and individuals can now create highly functional and customized websites that give them a real competitive edge.

As we move forward, I see Joomla standing above many alternative systems — whether traditional CMSs, site builders, or emerging platforms — by enabling people’s unique needs to be met more easily than ever, even by people like me.

That’s an extremely hard question for me to answer. Speaking plainly, I believe the single greatest improvement Joomla’s ecosystem could make would be the permanent removal of a very small number of individuals whose behavior consistently undermines others and damages the health of the community.

That said, while I believe this to be true, I also recognize my own limits. I don’t have the emotional reserve or willingness to crusade for that outcome, even if I believe it would benefit Joomla in the long run. So beyond answering the question directly, I’ve choosen not to pursue or campaign around that conviction.

I am incredibly grateful for how Joomla has changed my life. Realizing that this journey has now spanned 20 years not only reminds me of my age, but also fills me with excitement. When I look back at where Joomla began and compare it to where it is today, I’m amazed by how much the platform has grown and by the strength of what it offers now.

Looking back, I truly feel blessed that the largely uninformed decision I made 20 years ago — to follow Joomla after the fork — turned out to be the right one.

Beyond the software itself, I reflect on what it means to have spent two decades alongside people who have become part of my life. Joomla has brought community into my work, and that has been a profound gift. As human beings, we need community, especially in the things we invest our time and passion in. I feel both overwhelmed and fulfilled by where Joomla has brought me — not just professionally, but as part of the person I am and the life I live. I am deeply thankful to God for everyone who’s been a part of that journey.