Is getting experience in Joomla a good career move?

Question

I am using Joomla in my internship, and I'm wondering if it's an up and coming program. Is it a growing, popular program or somewhat stagnant? Are employers looking for people who know Joomla?

Answer 1

I wouldn't say employers are looking specifically for people who know Joomla, but I can say that Joomla seems to be growing fast enough where it could be considered "an up and coming program."

The company I work for recently rebuilt their website using Joomla, and it seems to be a pretty powerful platform that I'm sure we'll be using in the future.

Answer 2

A good way to gauge what employers are looking for is to search for it on job sites such as Monster.com. A search for Joomla gives 27 results, while a search for Drupal (another common PHP CMS framework) gives 69 results.

While employers aren't looking for a ton of people who know Joomla, there are over 1500 jobs listed looking for PHP experience, and working with Joomla will give you that.

On an internship, I'd go as far to say that learning how the real-world development process works is more important than what language you use.

Answer 3

Dont think of it as a career move.. looking for jobs down the line where joomla is required.. think of this as an opportunity to learn PHP in the real world scenario where 1000s of a people are using a system successfully.. eventually u do get paid to know PHP not joomla.

Answer 4

I think learning how CMS's are built and the concepts around maintaining them is a good career move. I've been seeing a interest growth in Drupal (apparently the Whitehouse is now run on Drupal). These are great ways to learn web programming in general.

Answer 5

Joomla is a very popular software and therefore having skills with it is good. Even if you don't see opportunities on working with Joomla, you'll always see opportunities on building websites and you can use Joomla to the rescue.

However, knowing Joomla isn't something that will distinguish you as skills with Joomla can be easily acquired by any programmer with some experience.

IMO, you should use this opportunity to learn not only about Joomla but the tecnologies that support it (such as PHP, MySQL, etc.) and, while you're at it, don't narrow your focus just to Joomla but try learning as much as you can from other CMSs.

Answer 6

Is it a growing, popular program or somewhat stagnant?

Joomla has a huge following/market which is still growing and will continue to grow for who knows how long.

http://www.google.com/trends?q=joomla,+drupal http://trends.google.com/websites?q=joomla.org,+drupal.org&geo=all&date=all

Are employers looking for people who know Joomla?

Yes, there is a huge need for Joomla developers. If you're a good Joomla developer, finding work is not a problem.

You should however, think about what you like best, and work with that. You'll usually end up working with the best software in that field from experience. This also makes your understanding diverse, and makes you understand the highlights and shortcomings each software.

Joomla is a good CMS, however, it also has some shortcomings - like every CMS. You probably would not be able to see these if you hadn't also worked with Drupal, or other CMSs.

With a broad understanding you an make good decisions on which CMS to use for which task, and thus be open to an even wider market of employers, clients etc. However, keeping a focus on one CMS/software with a large market allows you to compete in that area. It is a bit of a balancing act.

As an example:

As a company, we focus solely on Joomla, since it allows us to be very proficient and competitive in that existing market. However, I like to work with other CMSs for the points I've already stated.

Answer 7

Joomla gives you valuable MVC experience that alot of job postings require. I see alot of them mention Joomla together with Zend Framework.