For six years I have been struggling to make a living out of Joomla in Japan. Not many web site developers are using Joomla but Word Press. There are many reasons for this.
Joomla is a very powerful information publishing tool and I believe Joomla is the next generation home page system for those who are unfamiliar with HTML tags and Dreamweaver, and I am one of them.
Joomla has been helping me achieving what I want to do with its operation, because I am capable of the followings:
- I understand English and it is not an obstacle to learn Joomla at Joomla.org.
- I have some computer science background and am not new in this field.
- I am in love with Joomla.
However, for newbies in Japan they are not like me. They are uncomfortable in understanding English. They do not have computer engineering backgrounds. They do not have much chances to get to know Joomla in Japanese.
Japanese web designers are learning Word Press through Japanese books and web sites on Word Press. The Japanese Word Press informations are easy to get access. Word Press is not much powerful as Joomla is but for them it is similar to Movable Type and its learning curve is not steep and long.
To expand Joomla user base in Japan I think we need to increase the presence of Japanese Joomla web sites and spread the words of how Joomla can meet Japanese user's needs.
The claims I have encountered from Japanese clients are:
1. Search feature enhancement
Three characters limitation!! Without hacking its core file I can not fix it.
It would be better if it is customizable in search module. In Japanese one Kanji is one character. There are many two Kanji representing one word. Japanese Word Press is handling this issue well.
2. Member registration enhancement
Registration fields are fixed and they can not be added according to site owner's needs. In Joomla 1.7 some improvements are made but they are fixed and not customizable in adding fields.
3. Templates for Newcomers
I think we need easy customizable templates for newcomers who are not capable of editing HTML, Java Script, and CSS. Word Press is handling this well providing selectable templates in its package.
After installing Joomla what they look for first is the templates. It may be better for Joomla to provide newcomers with the selections of free customizable templates or a list of where they can download templates in Joomla.org site.
Even if one of them are improved, I think Japanese clients and users would be very pleased. There may be other international users sharing my points.