It must be stated at the outset that Joomla! is a wonderful platform for building websites.  I also believe that J! 4.x is a good foundation for building websites.  If you want to build a new website using J! I would recommend that you use the latest version of J! 4.x.

I have a reputation for criticising the way that the J! 4 project has been managed over time—I’ve also been critical about the organisational structure of Open Source Matters, Inc.—but my criticisms of such matters should not be taken as a sign that my admiration for the volunteers who have built a CMS platform is diminished in any way or that one should lack confidence in them.

I want to write a little (?) about how I have observed people’s experiences—including their frustrations—“coming to terms” with J! 4.x.  While I say that I recommend building new websites with J! 4.x I would also add that migrating from older versions of J! is not always easy.  It is this combination of factors—difficulties people have with installing or migrating to J! 4.x—that have lowered people’s expectations about Joomla as a website-building platform.

A long time ago I wrote in this forum about sharing usage of J! with the community.  It may be relevant to revisit this again five years later.  Here is a snapshothttps://developer.joomla.org/about/stats.html of what J! versions are being used today:

In the time since usage statistics were first kept (since J! 3.5.0), the distribution of Joomla usageI’ve highlighted the most popularly used versions in green and the least popularly used ones in orange and my apologies to people who have visual acuity disabilities with the colour spectrum can be looked at in the following ways:

Joomla version:  J! 3.5 (12%), J! 3.6 (23%), J! 3.7 (8%), J! 3.8 (18%), J! 3.9 (27.5%), J! 3.10 (6%), J! 4.0 (3%), J! 4.1 (1.5%)
PHP version:  5.3 (6%), 5.4 (7%), 5.5 (9%), 5.6 (26.5%), 7.0 (11.5%), 7.1 (8%), 7.2 (10%), 7.3 (9%), 7.4 (10%), 8.0 (2%), 8.1 (<0.5%)
Database type:  MySQLi (87.5%), MySQL (9%), MySQL (PDO) (3%)

The more “recent” usage statisticsI’m unclear as to what this period relates to but it probably refers to websites created or updated in the past 12 months or so perhaps gives us a better picture:

Joomla version:  J! 3.5 (0.5%), J! 3.6 (2%), J! 3.7 (8%), J! 3.8 (0.5%), J! 3.9 (15.5%), J! 3.10 (54%), J! 4.0 (7.5%), J! 4.1 (18%)
PHP version:  5.3 (<0.5%), 5.4 (0.5%), 5.5 (<0.5%), 5.6 (3.5%), 7.0 (11.5%), 7.1 (2%), 7.2 (5%), 7.3 (11%), 7.4 (59%), 8.0 (11%), 8.1 (<0.5%)
Database type:  MySQLi (95%), MySQL (<1%), MySQL (PDO) (3.5%)

It’s interesting to see that, even in the past year or so, people are still reporting their reliance on superseded and unsupported versions of J! and PHP.

Perhaps that is a reflection of the confidence that people have with the J! project today and with the J! CMS platform?  I cannot say but, if confidence can be associated with the interest that people have in searching the web for J!, then the latest Google Trends analysishttps://trends.google.com.au/trends/explore?date=all&q=joomla indicates that confidence level is disappointingly low.  What we should probably conclude, though, is that the J! project may be in a poor health, or declining health, but the project hasn't died. We may also conclude that there's still a little resistance to overwhelmingly embrace J! 4 (and, perhaps, usage statistics gathered over a shorter time-frame—say, the past two or three months—may indicate how well J! 4.x is being used).

I like J! as a website development platform.