I suggest delaying the release of Joomla 6 for a year or two.

[universewrld]

The structure of Joomla has started to change too quickly, which is why many extension developers do not have time to release a compatible version of their extension with the current version of Joomla.

There are still developers who have not ported their extensions from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5, and in October of this year, Joomla 6 is already planned to be released, which will not be compatible with Joomla 5 and for which there will be a separate plugin for compatibility with Joomla 5.
In addition, only a couple of months ago, extended support for Joomla 3 officially ended and still not all webmasters have migrated their websites from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5 (due to the difficulty of breaking the compatibility of extensions for Joomla 5).

For this reason, I propose to postpone the next change to the Joomla structure, which will lead to the breakdown of backward compatibility of many extensions and postpone the release of Joomla 6 for a year or two.
I think we need some stabilization of the current major version and refinement of the current major version of Joomla 5 without moving to the new structure so quickly (which would cause another compatibility break for extensions).

I propose the following release schedule:

• October 2025 - Joomla 5.4 & Joomla 6 alpha 1, alpha 2
• April 2026 - Joomla 5.5 & Joomla 6 alpha 3, alpha 4
• October 2026 - Joomla 5.6 & Joomla 6 beta 1, beta 2, beta 3
• April 2027 - Joomla 5.7 & Joomla 6 RC1, RC2, RC3, RC4
• October 2027 - Joomla 6.0 (with a backwards compatibility plugin for Joomla 5) and Joomla 5.8 (the final version of Joomla 5.x)

[universewrld]

I also want to add that Bootstrap 6 is not coming out anytime soon #41078 , so I see the point in further developing Joomla 5 along with the development of Bootstrap 5 in the near future.

[universewrld]

Joomla had 8000 extensions in JED in December 2017, when Joomla 3 was at its peak.

Currently, Joomla has only 5000 extensions in JED, when Joomla 3 extended support officially ended and the current version is Joomla 5.3.

The number of extensions in JED has decreased by -37% due to the transition from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5.
According to statistics, one of the three extensions that was available for Joomla 3 is not available for Joomla 5.

People who want Joomla 6 to come out this year, please justify your desire to quickly break compatibility for many extensions that are not even ready for Joomla 6 yet and will only work with the backwards compatibility plugin, and at this very time, not even all extensions for Joomla 5 can work without the backwards compatibility plugin and not all extensions have been ported from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5 yet.

[LadySolveig]

With the 8000 extensions, how many have served exactly the same purpose and are already obsolete as a result?
How many are obsolete because the feature is now in the core?
Just numbers without facts are pure dramatization and don't help anyone here.

[universewrld]

Just numbers without facts are pure dramatization and don't help anyone here.

you don't even understand the meaning of everything I wrote here!

I used 6 extensions on my website during Joomla 3, 2 extensions still haven't been ported to Joomla 4 (SEO plugin that eliminates duplicate pages and redirects to canonical links and I haven't found a replacement for it, and a gallery), another extension still doesn't work without a backwards compatibility plugin in Joomla 5 and only 3 extensions out of 6 work properly in Joomla 5 from the extensions I used during Joomla 3.

I didn't use extensions that were used by a few people, I used extensions that had hundreds of reviews on JED during Joomla 3, but the developers of 2 extensions got tired of Joomla and didn't update their extensions to Joomla 4 because everyone was waiting for Joomla 4 back in 2016, and Joomla 4 was released only in 2021.

Here's a real example of how a -37% reduction in the number of extensions in JED dramatically affected the updating of websites from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5, and there are many website owners like me who have experienced many problems with the update.

[LadySolveig]

I totally understand how it must be so frustrating when the extensions you use haven't been upgraded to work with Joomla 4|5, whether because they haven't been able to afford to make the switch or simply have become obsolete.

It's so important to keep in mind that there are real people behind every extension, and they're just trying to make a living like the rest of us.

I totally get it, there are so many extensions out there that sadly fell by the wayside because they just weren't fitting anymore into the developer's portfolio, or because the developer moved in a different direction.

And yet, if we really want to remain solution-oriented here, almost all extensions in the Joomla! ecosystem are GPL licensed. So if there is an extension that you think is absolutely useful and that unfortunately has not been further developed, there are still possibilities (even without having to be a developer yourself):
Ask the original developer or find another developer to do the migration for the extension and make a crowdfunding for this or pay the bill yourself and
(a) make it available to the community for future development and maintenance e. g. on Github
(b) keep it to yourself and your customers
(c) market the extension yourself afterwards

[universewrld]

they're just trying to make a living like the rest of us.

As far as I understand, after more than 15 years of owning Joomla websites, the ability to port an extension to a new major version does not depend on whether it was a paid extension or not, because some free extensions were ported to Joomla 5, and some paid extensions that I paid for and other website owners paid for were not ported to Joomla 5.

I invested money over the years in extensions that were not even ported to Joomla 5, one of the sections of my website is no longer available because a paid extension that I used for years is no longer available, it was available for Joomla 1.5, 2.5, 3.x, but not for Joomla 4.

It's not even a question of money, it's a question of responsibility or even greed of some developers.
You pay for using the extension, but then the developer increases the price 2 or 3 times and you can no longer pay for the extension every year, the number of paid users of the extension decreases and what becomes a consequence of the extension not being ported to Joomla 5.

[joeforjoomla]

I know that this is the main reason why people and agencies migrate from Joomla to Wordpress. They find every kind of extension for Wordpress, while there is less and less extensions for Joomla

[chmst]

Joomla has so many features in core - no need for extensions. The number of extensions says only that the system can nothing.

[universewrld]

Joomla has so many features in core - no need for extensions. The number of extensions says only that the system can nothing.

The problem is that developers of some popular extensions whose extensions were available for Joomla 1.5, 2.5 and 3.x did not port their extensions to Joomla 4 and the features of these extensions were not added to the Joomla core, so even those extensions that extended Joomla are no longer available for Joomla 4/5.

[LadySolveig]

Very nice comparison to the frequently used myths in the comparison between Wordpress and Joomla! from an experienced developer who is very familiar with both and continuously develops his extensions for both.

https://www.dionysopoulos.me/the-grass-isn-t-greener-on-the-other-side.html

[universewrld]

The biggest mistake in the history of Joomla development was that Joomla 4 did not have a backward compatibility plugin that would allow using Joomla 3 extensions in Joomla 4.
Many developers stopped making their extensions without waiting for the official release of Joomla 4, even if their extensions were popular and had thousands of downloads.

Almost 10 years passed between the release of Joomla 3.0 and Joomla 4.0, so we could have waited another 1 or 2 years for Joomla 6, while developers port their extensions to Joomla 5 and are ready to further port their extensions to Joomla 6, while Joomla 6 is tested for 2 years before release.

[universewrld]

When you talk about a big mistake, I honestly don't know what you're talking about.

The backward compatibility plugin is not something new that was first made available in Joomla 5, I remember a similar plugin existed in Joomla 1.5 and I was very upset that the backward compatibility plugin was not there during the migration to Joomla 4.
At least the extensions used on my website that were available for Joomla 3 could have been available for the entire life of Joomla 4, but after the migration to Joomla 4/5 my site had less features, more 404 errors and my site lost some search traffic because of all these issues.

Joomla 4 should have come with a backward compatibility plugin so that all the extensions that worked on Joomla 3.10 could continue to work on Joomla 4.x as well.
It was a mistake when they did not make a backward compatibility plugin for Joomla 4.

[LadySolveig]

"They" is we all - including you.
I'm giving up at this point, just complaining about things that lie in the past and not wanting to take personal responsibility has rarely really helped.

[Hackwar]

Please stop, because you are embarrassing yourself. Joomla 4 is pretty heavily backwards compatible to Joomla 3 and an extension written for Joomla 3.10 will run easily in Joomla 4. What will not run in Joomla 4 are extensions written for Joomla 1.5 and which have never been properly migrated to newer Joomla versions. That is also why a backwards compatibility plugin does not help. That plugin is no magic thing which makes everything compatible with everything. It is just a tool for developers to better see what they have to change in their code, nothing more.

You are complaining that third party developers did not do the work to update their extensions to the latest Joomla version. Yes, that is not good. But Joomla has a very long track record of NOT breaking the system and providing long, LONG backwards compatibility. Basically all cases where the extensions were difficult to migrate to Joomla 4, the developers did NOT follow the development of Joomla in the last 10 years, but stayed with their knowledge from Joomla 1.5 and that's it. Blame the extension developers that they stopped learning and improving their extensions, not the project that after 10 years it did one clean-up release.

[universewrld]

Please stop, because you are embarrassing yourself.

I'm not a developer and I do not make extensions and I DO NOT SELL EXTENSIONS, so keep your words to yourself.

I'm an author, I write articles, I make content and I see that all you care about are features that most editors do not need, but the features that you have been asking for since Joomla 1.5 you still have not implemented in Joomla and when someone asks you about it, you most often answer "NOBODY NEEDS THIS, ONLY YOU NEED IT, WE ARE CLOSE THE FEATURE REQUEST".

You can't even conduct a survey not among developers, but among authors and editors who use Joomla every day, but not to create extensions, but to write articles!

Who are you making Joomla for??? For extension developers or for authors and editors?
You can write on the main page of Joomla.org that your CMS is only for developers and if you are not a developer, then don’t even dare to use this CMS (CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM).

[universewrld]

"They" is we all - including you. I'm giving up at this point, just complaining about things that lie in the past and not wanting to take personal responsibility has rarely really helped.

I don't make extensions and I came here to those who make extensions, but none of you are even ready to hear even 1% of criticism for YOUR BAD JOB!

Would you trust a doctor or surgeon who does a bad job? YOU ARE DOING YOUR JOB BADLY! IT'S YOUR FAULT!
I don't make extensions and I'm not a developer, so keep all your complaints about me to yourself!
People can complain about me if they don't like my articles, because I am an author and I write articles, but I don't make extensions, so I criticize you, those who make extensions!

[Hackwar]

You are asking to extend the life of Joomla 5 from 4 to 6 years and to delay the release of Joomla 6 by 2 years. This will help exactly one group: Those who wont invest into their websites. It means we are supporting those, who will not invest into this community (in one form or another). Joomla 5 currently is NOT PHP 8.4 compatible, at least not officially. That is among other things because our dependencies don't claim to be PHP 8.4 compatible. To be compatible, we would have to either fork all dependencies which don't claim to be compatible and invest all the development time necessary to make that code compatible or we would have to update to the new major versions these libraries do provide for compatibility. The former is something which we don't have the man power for (and I also don't know anybody who hates himself so much to waste their time with that) and the later requires us to release a new major version according to our policies.

Why do we need to support PHP 8.4? Because in 2 years, PHP 8.4 will be the only current PHP version which at least will still get security support. If we delay the release of Joomla 6 by 2 years, we will force our users to stay with an outdated technology stack. That is something that especially bigger companies will not accept. It is also something which will not attract new people to the community/product. I for one don't want to live of of the legacy systems we have out there. I want Joomla to grow and to be successfull especially in the markets where bigger companies want to invest into.

We have the current strategy for quite some time already and it is something people can rely on. We promise them 4 years of support for a major version and that a site working without backwards compatibility plugin will still work in the next major version with the plugin enabled. That means you can get up to 6 years of support for a site before you have to do major updates again. As we see in world politics right now, reliability and stability are actually even more important than short term favourable decisions. Which is also why I wouldn't support changing this policy now. Especially since in 2 years the next person is going to come along and say "The support isn't long enough! We need 2 more years!" and then everything starts over again.

Releasing Joomla 6 in half a year is a good plan and will not negatively impact existing good websites or extensions. It will negatively impact those extensions and websites which were not made properly.

[universewrld]

You are asking to extend the life of Joomla 5 from 4 to 6 years and to delay the release of Joomla 6 by 2 years. This will help exactly one group: Those who wont invest into their websites. It means we are supporting those, who will not invest into this community (in one form or another).

I wasted my money on third party extensions, half of which are no longer supported, so I and many other website owners need more time to prepare for the transition to Joomla 6, because even Joomla 5 still does not have all the necessary extensions, which were available for Joomla 3!
It's a fact! Joomla 3 had 8000 extensions available, and Joomla 5 has only 5000 extensions (some of which do not work with Joomla 5 without a backwards compatibility plugin!).

Developers still have not ported their extensions from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5, and some are still porting extensions from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5. Joomla 6 is too early this year, Joomla 6 should be delayed at least until next year.

Joomla 5 currently is NOT PHP 8.4 compatible, at least not officially.
My post says that Joomla 5 will be developed over the next 2 years and new versions of Joomla 5 will be released with new features, including updating the PHP version for future Joomla 5 releases (you previously updated the PHP version requirements for Joomla 3 and Joomla 4, what's wrong with continuing to do so for Joomla 5?).

Most of the features planned for Joomla 6 can be added to future versions of Joomla 5, so CMS will retain compatibility with third-party extensions for a longer period of time and this will help website owners prepare for the transition to Joomla 6.

[universewrld]

I am not a developer, but you could give more information to those developers who posted their extensions to JED, maybe it would be an email newsletter about the need for them to update their extensions to Joomla 5 and articles about how they could migrate their extensions from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5, because I asked some developers when their extensions for Joomla 5 would be ready and they answered me "it is still in the works, we are still porting our extensions to Joomla 5...", so I got the opinion that more time is needed until the next major release of Joomla 6, until developers port their extensions that would be compatible with Joomla 5!

If you want to talk about how easy it is to port extensions from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5, then write to the JED developers whose extensions still don't work for Joomla 5 without a backwards compatibility plugin (or are still in the process of being ported from Joomla 3), maybe then you'll realize that you're rushing Joomla 6 too much!

[universewrld]

I propose to release Joomla 6 alpha 1 in October this year and the final version of Joomla 6 in a year or two.

All this time, every six months there will be new versions of Joomla 5.4, 5.5, 5.6 with new features, with an increase in the minimum PHP version (as it was previously for Joomla 3 and Joomla 4).

I'm not proposing anything that has not been in the history of Joomla development before.
Joomla 5 can get most of the new features that you are planning for Joomla 6.
The potential of Joomla 5 is not exhausted yet.

I'm not a developer, but I started this topic after talking for the last 2 years with the developers of the extensions I use on my websites and some developers are still porting their extensions from Joomla 3 or Joomla 4 to Joomla 5.

[universewrld]

Could you specify which extension you're talking from?

261 reviews.
Thousands of websites use this extension since Joomla 1.5, but this extension still doesn't work without the backwards compatibility plugin in Joomla 5, so because of this extension I still keep the backwards compatibility plugin enabled in Joomla 5.
The developers said that they are still making a version for Joomla 5.

Also there is another extension that also had about 100 reviews, but which is still being ported from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5, which was also in the Top of JED.
The developers said that they are still making a version for Joomla 5.

[universewrld]

Could you specify which extension you're talking from?

"JL No Doubles" extension helped me completely solve the problem with duplicates in Joomla, but it will not be ported to Joomla 5, so now my website has many pages with 404 errors. The last years before switching to Joomla 5 I used this very good free extension.

Before "JL No Doubles" I also used the paid versions of extensions "JoomSEF" and "sh404SEF", which have hundreds of reviews and thousands of users, but which will also not be ported to Joomla 5, so the problem with the router is now very serious for me, compared to the times before the migration to Joomla 4/5.

[micker]

About sh404 it just a migration to 4sef
About other the new router correcte all needed
You just need to remove this plugins and do a little works to check it.. if you dev extension need more then 2 year's to convert a module to j5 you need to change it asap. And after select your plugin with more précise step. I have 100 sites and all sites with good extension Can be update to j5. If i use template frameworks or strange plugin.... I am blocked. Its not a joomla problem but a site conception.

[universewrld]

Could you specify which extension you're talking from?

If you go to the JED Galleries section, you will find that most of the galleries are not compatible with Joomla 5, and at least half of the galleries were not ported from Joomla 3, and if you leave only those galleries that are fully compatible with Joomla 5, then from a large list there will be only a few galleries left, and similar in most sections of JED.
The gallery that was very popular and which I used since Joomla 1.5 is no longer in JED, but on the developer's website there is information that the component is still being ported from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5.

if Joomla 6 is released this year, then instead of 5000 extensions, we will be able to see only a list of 1000 extensions at best, which will continue to exist for Joomla CMS.

Joomla has lost too many third-party extension developers, that's a fact.

[universewrld]

Could you specify which extension you're talking from?

another extension with all templates will most likely not be ported to Joomla 6 due to development being closed. @gantry

Most of the extensions I used from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 3 will not be ported to Joomla 6.

[universewrld]

Currently, only 2206 extensions in JED are fully compatible with Joomla 5, in December 2017 when Joomla 3 was available, 8000 extensions in JED were compatible with it.

The number of extensions that are fully compatible with Joomla 5 is 4 times less than the number of extensions that were compatible with Joomla 3.

What more proof do you need that Joomla 6 is coming too fast and that there is still potential for Joomla 5 development and more testing of Joomla 6 before release.

[Hackwar]

You are saying yourself that you are not a developer. As a developer I can tell you, that converting an extension from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 to Joomla 6 is done in a few hours, maybe one or two days for a big extension like Hikashop - if you took the time to update it to proper Joomla 4 style when going from Joomla 3 to Joomla 4. But quite a few developers took the lazy route and have not updated, but just did the absolute bare minimum to make it run in Joomla 4.

Yes, we don't have 8000 extensions in the JED anymore. I think that is a good development, since there is no benefit in having 50 extensions with the same features. We still have several different solutions for every problem and that is fine. Besides the point that we have VERY good solutions in the core itself already for a lot of issues. Lots of extensions are simply not needed anymore.

You wrote, that we could simply raise the PHP version in 5.5, but that is something which we precisely CAN'T do. We are following semantic versioning, which means that all updates in a major version ( 5.0 -> 5.1 -> 5.2 -> 5.3 -> 5.4) will never break an existing site, but suddenly requiring a different PHP version would do exactly that. Likewise with all the dependencies we are using. I think you are missing the situation here: The change from 4.4 to 5.0 was mainly raising the minimum requirements and using newer versions of the libraries we depend on, but not much more. With 5.4 to 6.0 it is pretty much the same. The big change between 3.10 and 4.0 was BECAUSE we took so long to release a new major version. The necessary changes don't go away because we delay them by 2 years, similar to maintenance for your car. We ran with Joomla 3 for ~10 years and that meant 10 years of delayed maintenance. Had we made a major release every 2 years instead, the change from 3 to 4 would have been split into 5 major releases. If you delay Joomla 6, you only create yet another migration issue like from 3 to 4.

[universewrld]

Besides the point that we have VERY good solutions in the core itself already for a lot of issues. Lots of extensions are simply not needed anymore.

the problem is that SEO is still not the strong point of Joomla core and SEO solutions were better in Joomla 3 times.
I didn't have big SEO issues when I used paid or free SEO plugins for Joomla 1.5, 2.5 and 3.x, these plugins solved all my SEO issues completely, these plugins allowed to redirect 404 error pages to working canonical links, which Joomla 5 still can't do.

Some popular Galleries that were used on thousands of websites are also not available for Joomla 5 anymore, but were available for Joomla 1.5, 2.5 and 3.x. There is no solution to create Gallery on Joomla 5 out of the box, but it's not the most needed feature, I just want to say that some extensions that were used by thousands of websites were not ported to Joomla 5 yet and the functionality of these extensions was not included in Joomla 5 core, so that Joomla 5 still can't solve the problems that were solved for thousands of website owners during the time of Joomla 1.5, 2.5 and 3.x.

As a developer I can tell you, that converting an extension from Joomla 4 to Joomla 5 to Joomla 6 is done in a few hours, maybe one or two days for a big extension like Hikashop

i don't know why some extensions developers can't port to Joomla 5 for more than a year, but they promised more than a year ago that there will be a version for Joomla 5 and we still haven't got a Joomla 5 compatible version of some important and popular extensions.
many developers told me that it's very difficult to port an extension from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5, i think more manual would help them if it was available.

[universewrld]

Yes, we don't have 8000 extensions in the JED anymore.

The problem is that thousands of Joomla 3 website owners still can't upgrade to Joomla 4/5 because some old and very popular extensions are no longer supported.
I upgraded my website from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5 and I don't have Gallery section on my website anymore, Gallery on my website had hundreds of categories and thousands of images, it wasn't the most important section of my website but it complemented my website content very well and it's a big tragedy for me that my website has less features after upgrading to Joomla 5.

Nobody even tries to create Joomla extensions that would allow porting content from one extension (that is no longer supported) to another extension (that is well supported), it's not only a migration problem from one major version of Joomla to another, it's also a migration problem from one extension to another.

[jqleq]

thank u so much

[Ruud68]

From an extension developer's perspective, I'd like to offer a slightly different angle to this discussion.

I’ve always kept my extensions up to date — not only to support the latest Joomla versions but also to keep pace with evolving technologies like PHP and modern database standards. My goal is to provide users with secure, high-performing extensions that leverage current best practices.

That said, staying current often means making tough choices. When Joomla 5 was released, I made the business decision to drop Joomla 3 support. This wasn't easy — it cost me over 90% of my extension customer base. But I believed in Joomla’s long-term potential and chose to invest in the future rather than maintain outdated, bloated, or potentially insecure code.

Now, I'm preparing my extensions for Joomla 6 — another investment made in the hope (even if it sometimes feels like hope against better judgment) that Joomla will regain momentum. However, I believe there's a more critical issue at play than just the release cycle or technical transitions: the gradual shrinking of the extension ecosystem due to core feature expansion.

Over time, Joomla has increasingly integrated functionality into the core that was traditionally the domain of third-party extensions. While this can be seen as a move to strengthen the platform, it also risks marginalizing the developer community that has historically helped Joomla thrive — a community that has been instrumental to its success.

What once set Joomla apart was its vibrant ecosystem — a rich variety of extensions that allowed users to customize their sites and solve specific problems. As that space narrows, the incentive for developers to innovate, contribute, and maintain high-quality solutions diminishes. Ultimately, this could limit Joomla’s growth and the diversity of its use cases, rather than strengthen it.

The challenge for Joomla isn’t just to keep up technically or retain its installed base, but to ensure that extension developers continue to see it as a viable platform worth investing in. Sustainable innovation doesn’t just come from the core — it comes from the ecosystem around it.

I hope Joomla 6 will be a turning point (and I rather see it earlier then later released) — not only in terms of a smoother upgrade path, but in re-affirming a strategic commitment to supporting and growing its extension developer community. Because in the long run, that’s what will keep Joomla competitive, flexible, and alive.

[universewrld]

When Joomla 5 was released, I made the business decision to drop Joomla 3 support. This wasn't easy — it cost me over 90% of my extension customer base.

this is the biggest problem after upgrading from Joomla 3 for everyone who used third party extensions, but the bigger problem is that the developers of most extensions that work on Joomla 5/Joomla 6 did not offer users of other extensions (that were not ported from Joomla 3) a way to migrate to their extensions.

I was using a gallery extension from Joomla 1.5 to Joomla 3 and that gallery was not ported to Joomla 4, the developers of other gallery extensions did not offer me a way to migrate my data to another gallery extension. this is the biggest problem during the upgrade from Joomla 3 to Joomla 5.

[Ruud68]

That is IMO a business decision. The math is simple: for every hour spent on an extension (upgrade / import / etc.) multiple paid subscriptions must be sold to avoid going bankrupt. It's the same as writing a blog for a living when nobody is visiting your site to read the blogs, or the blogs get copied and published on other sites.
When somebody comes to me with a 'big' opportunity (e.g. like importing old galleries so they can be displayed with my ochGlightbox gallery), I always ask them if they want to fully pay my hours and share in the profits for that extension made after that functionality was added.... never hear back from them :)

Maintaining a website IMO means putting in the work. Part of that work is also updating and making sure things keep working. If that means saying goodbye to an abandoned extension so be it: it's part of the job

[universewrld]

When somebody comes to me with a 'big' opportunity (e.g. like importing old galleries so they can be displayed with my ochGlightbox gallery), I always ask them if they want to fully pay my hours and share in the profits for that extension made after that functionality was added.... never hear back from them :)

this is why they are moving away from Joomla to WordPress and other CMS. you won't get a new subscriber, Joomla will lose another admin.
website owners choose a solution that will be guaranteed to be updated, this is why @joomla may die, because no one cares about the admins of thousands of websites that can't migrate their websites to a new major version.

the people who develop Joomla care about the modern code base, the extension developers don't care about the website admins.
the more websites on Joomla that close, the less profit the extension developers get, this is a simple fact and this is what has been happening for the last few years, since Joomla 3 stopped updating and many website owners couldn't migrate their websites to Joomla 5.

[universewrld]

Joomla 3 is repeating the fate of Windows 10 (whose share has not yet exceeded that of Windows 11), because not everyone can upgrade to the new major version.

The developers just don't care about the compatibility of things.
A completely irresponsible approach to business.
I condemn this.

Some say you should buy a new PC, others raise the prices of extensions, others don't even worry about compatibility, and all this is happening at a time of economic crisis, when people haven't started making more money, but the prices of everything have gone up dramatically.

[Ruud68]

this is why they are moving away from Joomla to WordPress and other CMS. you won't get a new subscriber, Joomla will lose another admin. website owners choose a solution that will be guaranteed to be updated, this is why @joomla may die, because no one cares about the admins of thousands of websites that can't migrate their websites to a new major version.

Agree with the moving to greener pastures and that is everybody's good right.

the people who develop Joomla care about the modern code base, the extension developers don't care about the website admins. the more websites on Joomla that close, the less profit the extension developers get, this is a simple fact and this is what has been happening for the last few years, since Joomla 3 stopped updating and many website owners couldn't migrate their websites to Joomla 5.

Don't agree, every (extension) developer cares for 'the hand that feeds them'. but sometimes it is a good thing to move on, even if that means a (painful) goodbye.

Joomla 3 is repeating the fate of Windows 10 (whose share has not yet exceeded that of Windows 11), because not everyone can upgrade to the new major version.

That is also what I see, and that is the consequence of a deliberate decision: if you decide to go left, people on the right are not satisfied and if you go right, the people on the left are not satisfied. Worse thing you can do is not move as in the end then everybody is unsatisfied and you get passed both on the left and right: laws of nature :)

The developers just don't care about the compatibility of things. A completely irresponsible approach to business. I condemn this.

They do care and they learned (which is a seldomly seen thing in the world): going from J4 to J5 and from there to J6 will be a breeze!

Some say you should buy a new PC, others raise the prices of extensions, others don't even worry about compatibility, and all this is happening at a time of economic crisis, when people haven't started making more money, but the prices of everything have gone up dramatically.

That's economics, my bread and butter also went up in price. So did gasoline, train tickets, clothes, etc.

My advise (because I do care :)): take your loss, get over it, roll up your sleeves, and start migrating to what (was and) has become an awesome CMS. Or maybe just move to WP as it seems that they can facilitate you better / are a better fit from what I read in your replies.

[PhocaCz]

@universewrld Hello,

I want to sincerely thank you for your valuable insights and your efforts to address potential future challenges we are facing. Personally, I know hundreds, if not more, individuals who are dealing with similar issues but have preferred not to discuss them publicly, silently transitioning to WordPress instead.

As you mentioned, the issue you’ve highlighted is significant. The gap between the core development and extensions is widening, with the core evolving rapidly while extensions struggle to keep up. This not only results in extensions failing to catch up with core updates but, due to the rapid pace, it also hampers the development of new competitive features. Since the release of Joomla 4, I’ve spent the majority of my time rewriting extensions for new versions, leaving me with little time to develop new features that are modern and competitive compared to extensions on other CMS platforms. As a result, my extensions may work on Joomla 5 or 6, but this often comes at the cost of deprioritizing the development of new features.

My views are not based on utopia or ideology, but rather on the reality of the situation as it stands. From a utopian or ideological standpoint, rapid development and major changes may seem beneficial, but from a practical perspective, we can see that both end users and developers are struggling with this pace. Your situation is great in this regard, you’re actively providing feedback, but many others are quietly abandoning the project.

Looking ahead, it seems we will face a scenario this fall where four active Joomla versions will coexist:

Joomla 3: Still the most widely used, with the largest user base.

Joomla 4

Joomla 5

Joomla 6

This is a real challenge for both users and developers. Managing extensions while supporting up to four different Joomla versions will be an overwhelming task, which will likely lead to a continued exodus of both users and developers. Similarly, web designers will face difficulties managing up to four different versions for their clients.

Personally, I don’t have a clear solution to this issue and I’m unsure how best to address it. However, I want to thank you for not giving up, for not switching to another platform, and for continuing to provide valuable and constructive feedback on the real situation.

[universewrld]

@PhocaCz thank you for understanding me.

what i wrote in my post i heard from different developers whose extensions i use on my websites.
i'm not a developer but i hear almost the same thing from many @joomla extension developers.