In our CMS predictions for 2014, we made this forecast:

"When people use Joomla 3, they seem to love it. The interface and features are far more user-friendly than previous versions. So there's really no rush to move on to version 4. The community is still absorbing Joomla 3 and there's a lot of sites that still need to upgrade. Most people just aren't ready for version 4 yet.

We predict the Joomla team will keep developing and improving version 3."

That prediction came true this week.

The Joomla team announced that the next releases will be Joomla 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 and so on. Joomla 3 is the future of Joomla.

Essentially, Joomla has moved much closer to the WordPress release cycle.

When will the new releases arrive?

• April 22: Joomla 3.3
• Mid-July: Joomla 3.4
• October?: Joomla 3.5
• January?: Joomla 3.6

What happened to the LTS version?

The LTS, or long-term support, version was meant to arrive with Joomla 3.5. That LTS plan has been left behind and that's a good thing.

Software projects are increasingly moving towards fast, iterative development. WordPress is moving towards a situaton where updates may be almost constant.

An LTS release is a major obstacle to those modern development processes. It freezes the platform in time at a semi-arbitrary date.

In addition, the LTS concept is confusing to end-users.

Good riddance.

Removing features, not just adding them

One important other change is that Joomla will now remove features, not just add them.

Last year, WordPress removed the "Links" feature from the core, because it was no longer used by many people. Joomla is going to start the same process.

The first feature to be removed is the Weblinks component. As with WordPress, removed features will be made available as a separate install.

How does this impact users of different versions?

• Joomla 1 users: No impact. The same advice still applies.
• Joomla 2 users: No impact. Support will continue until at least the end of 2014.
• Joomla 3 users: Undoubtedly this is good news. Joomla 3 will probably have a much longer shelf-life.

What's new in Joomla 3.3?

Here's an infographic prepared by Joomlart: