It's official — Joomla! has the largest Open Source CMS focused forum on the planet. In fact, by reaching 100,000 users signed up (validated), Joomla! contends with some of the biggest forums on the Internet. We reckon forum.joomla.org is in the top 10 of all comers.

Reaching this 100k watershed is significant as the heart of this reveals true Open Source source spirit with many of these members sharing their knowledge and experience. And this strength — the backbone of the project in many ways — manifests in a mature 'eco-system' that's self-supporting. Thousands of helping hands and minds.

"Joomla's success rides on the support available to end users through (among other places) our community forum," said Core Team member Brad Baker. "Time and time again, we hear users thanking us for the software, yet, without the active community Joomla! would not be where it is today ... one of the world's most popular Open Source projects. You are all a part of this and deserve a hearty thanks."

What's particularly heartening is that despite Joomla's phenomenal growth, the forum continues to engender friendly, helpful advice. When we started Joomla! back in September 2005 there were naysayers, and plenty of them. In fact one so-called industry expert said Joomla! would "be a niche CMS". There's something rather gratifying in proving people wrong. Everyone who's taken the time to answer a question, solve a problem or submit a bug report is part of this success.

We could start quoting the ever-increasing statistics in this story however a quote from a pragmatic new user sort of sums up how things are working:

"To make my decision, I finally decided to look at the community that surrounded and supported each product. As a test, I made an inquiry into the general support message boards of each product. My Joomla post received a number of helpful responses in a relatively short time frame. My ****** (another Open Source software) post languished for days, and even after asking a second time for feedback, was still unanswered. As I'm going to be learning each system, and relying on others to help me, this experience ultimately swung the pendulum to Joomla."

Okay, we couldn't resist, here's some numbers:

• An average of 172 new user sign-up each day
• 765,000 posts
• More than 1200 posts daily

Again, congratulations particularly to those of you who've taken the time to extend a helping hand. We are made stronger by those helpful souls around us.

Free A3 Poster

To celebrate this special occasion, download this high-resolution A3-size PDF poster (for personal, non-commercial use only).