The Joomla!® Project announced that the Joomla! CMS downloads have now reached 50 million.

"Joomla, one of the world's most popular open source content management systems (CMS) used for everything from websites to blogs to custom apps to Intranets, today announced that its CMS has been downloaded more than 50 million times."

"Joomla is one of the world's most popular software packages used to build, organize, manage and publish content for websites, blogs, Intranets and mobile applications. With more than 3 percent of the Web running on Joomla and a CMS market share of more than 9 percent, the free open source software powers the web presence of hundreds of thousands of small businesses, governments, non-profits and large organizations worldwide like Citibank, eBay, General Electric, Harvard University, Ikea, McDonald's and Sony. The award-winning CMS is led by an international community of more than a half million active contributors, helping the most inexperienced user to seasoned web developer make their digital visions a reality. Joomla's power and extensibility has resulted in its software being downloaded more than 50 million times."

Full announcement on Reuters

The Joomla! Project today announced that starting with Joomla 3.3 the minimum required PHP version will be raised to PHP 5.3.10.

This article explains:

• Why change now?
• Why wasn't the requirements bar set higher from the beginning of 3.x?
• How will extensions be affected?
• Will I get any warning? What do I need to look for?
• What will happen if my host is NOT Joomla! 3.3 Ready?

Read more at Raising the bar on security

There was recently reports of a security issue with Joomla! 1.5.26

Support for the Joomla 1.5 series ended in September of 2012.

If you still have a web site that's built on Joomla! 1.5, I recommend that you read:

Setting the record straight for sites on Joomla 1.5

Please contact us for a quote on migrating your old Joomla web site to the latest version (Joomla! 3.2).

The Joomla! World Conference 2013 was held Harvard University, Boston USA.

I've just returned from the 2013 Joomla! World Conference in the USA. I was fortunate to attend this event as well as a Joomla! Leadership Summit in the week before the event. I currently serve as Joomla! volunteer on the Board of Open Source Matters, a US-registered not-for-profit organization, that's responsible for the Finances, Trademarks and assets of the Joomla! Project.

The event was very successful, with Joomla! fans and experts attending from all over the world. It was great meeting with so many familiar and new faces in the Joomla! Community, and as we have come to expect, there was lots to learn and share.

After the event I took a short break to visit a freezing cold New York City, where I met up with Peter Bui from Australia (the voice behind the popular Joomla Beat Podcast), and a group of Joomla volunteers from The Netherlands. I also made a brief stop-over in Washington DC, where former Open Source Matters president, and owner of PICnet, Ryan Ozimek was my gracious host.

Read more about the event and watch all the keynotes.