Joomla 3.0 officially released!

After months of anticipation, Joomla 3 was officially launched only a few days ago! Joomla 3 is a radically different change of pace in comparison to Joomla 1.5 or 2.5 and holds huge possibilities for developers, designers and website owners. But what is different about it and where can I download Joomla 3.0? Find these answers and more within this blog.

To set the stage, Joomla 3 was created specifically for developers and high end Joomla users. Joomla 2.5 is still the preferred platform for the vast majority of the users because it is stable and has thousands of supporting extensions.

The next major stable update for users is Joomla 3.5 which won't be available until April 2013 and Joomla 2.5 support will last until August 2013. So rest easy Joomla 2.5 users, you won't have to upgrade anytime soon.

You developers who do want to upgrade to Joomla 3.0, "Get R3ady" for a totally new experience. With all the changes there will be a small learning curve, unless you're already using tools like Twitter Bootstrap and LESS, however, once learned it will make Joomla design and development much quicker.

Here are some of the new things you can expect from Joomla 3:

Both front and backend Joomla 3 is mobile friendly out of the box:
Fully Responsive Site Template
Fully Responsive Admin UI
Fully Responsive Core Output

Joomla 3 is much more user friendly and offers an amazing experience:
New User Friendly Interface
Streamlined 30 Second Install
Refined Admin User Experience

Joomla 3 is a developer's paradise and make development a snap:
Modern, Consistent UI Standards
LESS CSS Means Less Code
Icomoon Font Icon Library
jQuery & Mootools Ready

And SO much more! You can see ALL the changes of Joomla 3 here.

If you haven't already played with any of the beta's, I would suggest downloading Joomla 3 now and setting up a development site that you can play around and get use to its new features. For any of you extension developers don't wait any longer to get your extensions compatible with Joomla 3. The faster you get your extensions updated, the more likely people will want to use them on their new Joomla 3 sites.