In September 2012, Barack Obama had just accepted the second Democratic nomination for US President and his second campaign and election was still to come. In sport, tennis had a new name: Andy Murray, who won his first Grand slam event that month. The world was gripped by the Olympics that summer, the London Olympics.

I was still to become a Grandad. And on the 27th of September 2012, Joomla 3 was released.

At the last meeting of the magazine team, we came up with the proposal to have an article in the August issue celebrating Joomla's 16th birthday. The main idea was to ask several Joomlers how Joomla has affected/changed their lives in these 16 years. Because at the JCM we love to hear Joomla stories. Each of the participants in this meeting started to tell, very briefly, how Joomla changed their life. At that point we said, how about this time we, the JCM team, tell our experience with Joomla?

When you're new to Joomla (or just new to Joomla 4), your first impression of the Joomla administrator can be a little overwhelming. So many possibilities, and what do all these things even mean? Don’t worry. We’ve all been there. In this series, experienced Joomla users help you find your way. In this month’s issue, Vivana Menzel gives you a guided tour through the heart of the backend: the dashboard. Enjoy!

Robert Deutz has been involved in the community for a long time, mostly in Production roles. He decided to run for president after a failed election, thinking it was a good idea to have someone relatively ‘fresh’ on the OSM board. In this interview done just a few days after he took up the role, we try to know a bit more about him and his ideas for Joomla.

Localisation is at Joomla's heart. Currently supporting over 75 world languages for Joomla 3, Joomla! speaks more languages than any other content management system. Joomla 4 is launching today with over 20 language packs available. Many more will follow quickly with the community's help.

Joomla 4's now available, but if you're thinking about upgrading from Joomla 3.9, here's some important things to keep in mind before you click the Update button.

With the release of Joomla 4.0, Joomlers - Joomla's hard-working volunteers - are as important as ever. Whether you're completing an occasional task to support the project, a regular contributor to a team's activities, a member of a team or working group, right through to the various levels of leadership in the organisation, I thank you on behalf of Joomla and look forward to many years of contributions to come.

Peter Martin’s very first website was a one-pager. And no, not last year: in 1996! You could say he was way ahead of his time. Peter loves open source (he’s also an active member of the Linux community) and he likes working with Joomla because of its stability, flexibility, extensibility… and us, the community. He learned Joomla by getting his hands dirty and examining what goes on under the hood.

As documented in the announcement of Joomla 3.10 as well in a recent magazine article, Joomla 3.10 is a bridge between the Joomla 3.x series and 4.x. It will be initially released together with 4.0.0 and starting from there gets two years of official support.

She's exactly the same age as Joomla. She had an Instagram account, and a shop on Etsy, but 16 year old Lena wanted more: her own website, with her own design and her own content, where she could show all the creative things she does. With a little help from her mother, she managed to get it up and running in just two weeks. They had a lot of fun creating it, and Lena was surprised about how easy it was to build a Joomla website: “I thought making a website was way more difficult.”

As you may have discovered by now, Joomla 4 Stable is out! This is the time you might start to worry about your extensions. Are they compatible? And if they’re not, will they ever be? And if they’ll be compatible, when?

You might have heard about Joomla 3.10 being the bridge to a smooth transition from version 3.x to 4, but maybe you need a little more reassurance. We get that, and that is why your very own JCM asks the developers where they are right now when it comes to compatibility.

This month we interviewed Chetan Madaan from Joomdev, the people behind numerous templates and extensions, including the popular Astroid Framework.

After 5 Episodes in the Joomla Community Magazine about Custom Fields in Joomla core, obviously you know how powerful they are. But as a human being, you always dream of more...

On becoming Media and Communications Director I worked through the jobs that were on the to-do lists. One looked so simple - Joomla 4 landing page.