Open Source Joomla CMS Hits 30m Downloads

In another sign of the growing adoption of open source technologies, the community supporting the popular Joomla open-source content management system has revealed it has been downloaded more than 30 million times.

The community attributes the continued growth in the number of individuals, companies and organizations using the CMS to an aggressive development road map that included the release of Joomla 1.7 in July 2011.

Government Adoption

The CMS also began adhering to a six-month release cycle meaning more product enhancements being introduced more often. New features in the latest version included multi-database support, one-click version updating, predefined search options and language-specific font settings.

Another key factor in the growth in use of Joomla is that a significant number of government agencies have adopted Jooml, which powers about 3,100 government agencies’ Websites, blogs and intranets.

Some features that have driven government adoption include one-click version updates, access control oversight, multilingual capabilities and the Joomla Platform that enables developers to build multipurpose, multi-device applications like mobile and cloud computing apps and enterprise business systems that can run independent from the core CMS. However, organisations using Joomla are not just isolated to government agencies. Recently, an industry research firm reported that Joomla powers at least 1.6 million Websites.

Moreover there has been an explosion in the number of Joomla extensions. More than 2,000 Joomla extensions have been introduced since March 2011. These extensions developed by Joomla’s community of thousands of developers provide added features not found in the core Joomla CMS. By providing compelling new features, these extensions drive Joomla’s widespread adoption in every imaginable industry, from nonprofits to some of the world’s largest financial institutions.

40 Percent Growth

“It is an exciting time for Joomla given its strong position powering 2.7 percent of the Web, combined with its unique opportunity to influence the next wave of mobile and cloud Web development,” Paul Orwig, the new president and former treasurer of Open Source Matters, a non-profit created to provide organisation, legal and financial support to the Joomla project, said in a statement. “The platform split that enables Joomla to be used for developing mobile and cloud computing apps is a welcomed new wave of innovation for the Joomla community.”

As of the end of March 2011, Joomla was downloaded about 22 million times, meaning its adoption rate has grown about 40 percent over the last year. Joomla began keeping track of the number of CMS downloads in 2007. However, the Joomla CMS was first made available in 2005, which means the real number of downloads is presumably much higher.

With 2.7 percent of the Web running on Joomla, it is used for everything from small personal Websites and blogs to some of the largest enterprise, highest trafficked Websites and Intranets, including those operated by Citibank, eBay, General Electric, Harvard University, Ikea, McDonald’s, Sony, many large nations and more. Due to its power and elegance, the most inexperienced user to the most seasoned Web developer can use it.

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