If you’re looking to progress your site, you can’t trust just any source online that happens to guide you.

This year we went on a search. We’ve decided to contact the most reputable specialists within the field of CMS to orientate in plans for future. Having ensured that you’re getting the most accurate, up-to-date, and useful CMS information, in this post we feature 20 top CMS expertised predictions, so you could easily navigate within the future and the field. Enjoy;-)

Shiyi Lee, Stack Ideas

“There is a paradigm shift of website owners to build mobile apps since there is all these buzz about it. However, most people would eventually need a proper web application framework and Joomla! is definitely geared up for that.”

Rhys Wynne, Director at Winwar, Lead developer at FireCask

“I think that going forward the architecture, rather than the system, will become important. We’re already seeing things like WordPress (and I think Drupal too) adopt a REST API, which will open the world to more CMS systems built off the big ones. Think of all the builds of Linux you can get, optimised to various systems. I can see CMS’s going the same way.”

Jean Galea, Founder of WP Mayor and WP RSS Aggregator

  1. REST API changing the way we think about plugins and themes.
  2. More integration with mobile applications.
  3. More growth in usage especially in the e-commerce niche.

Cloudways

“In 2016 we will probably see WordPress market share to increase above 25%. It will become an even bigger player in the CMS world.
And, with the release of PHP 7 the more complex WordPress setups like WooCommerce and social sites will perform much better than before on cloud hosting servers.”

Michael Bastos, Founder of Advanced WordPress Facebook group, Pricels.com

More people will create their own private CMS as a service companies because the code to build one is so easy and so commoditized that it’ll be less about the CMS and more about the process for setting up a website. WordPress will probably remove almost all of its Php code and become almost entirely JavaScript based as time moves on. Any commodity market either grows or dies based on the strengths of its specializations, like we’ve seen with Ghost, more companies will write software or services to focus on doing one thing really well like e-commerce or blogging etc.”

Peter Nilsson, Founder of WP Daily Themes

My strong belief is that more and more users will use some form of CMS for their websites when choosing between alternative available in the future. CMS is so much better and more manageable than the “regular” websites. We could recently read on W3Techs that WordPress increased and now powers 25 percent of the web. Which is fantastic news for all of us who really like, use and work with WordPress. Even more interesting is that 57.2% of users don’t use any kind of CMS. So many market shares are available to be converted for example to WordPress via easy-to-use tools such as companies like CMS2CMS provide.

Dénes Székely, WebGóbé

“I am sure, that the trend will continue, the CMS’es – generally – will increase their market share. Currently more, than 42% of websites are running some sort of CMS, from which the big three (WordPress, Joomla and Drupal) are giving 30%+, the rest of almost 12% being powered by another, less popular ones. Over the past year the number of sites powered by some CMS increased with 5% of the total of websites – the tend is clear, more expansion is in our future. As for Joomla –  the 10 years passed since the CMS was launched resulted in a well established, stable, versatile system. Joomla consolidated his second place in the CMS market, the Joomla ecosystem is steadily growing, is healthy and active. Everyone is hardly waiting the arrival of 3.5 version, the preview release is promising. I think, 2016 will be another great year for Joomla – and for the Joomlers too!”

Parth Lawate, Joomla! expert

“In the last 5-10 years there’s been a huge influx of new ‘consumers’ on the internet who are not Geeks. Traditional CMS’s like Joomla and Drupal are more geek friendly than consumer friendly. Though WordPress is better of the lot it’s still not best suited for end consumers. I expect that off the shelf ready to use tools like Wix, Facebook pages etc to adopted more by this new influx of consumers. However there is still a lot to do for a proper CMS where more serious websites and applications are involved. So the future is very much bright. Just that the CMSs need to decide who their customer is – the consumer or the geek and evolve to that.”

Jisse Reitsma, Author of Programming Joomla Plugins

“Magento 2 will definitely become a major player in the e-commerce market in 2016. As for Joomla, versions 3.6 and 3.7 will bring important new features to Joomla, but the discussions around Joomla 4 are more important: The CMS market is exploding with static content generators and markdown-based solutions, so it will be very interesting how Joomla but also WordPress will survive this change.”

Niels Braczek, owner of BSDS

CMSs are currently facing a lot of challenges. It is no longer sufficient to serve just the web creating HTML pages. Evolving devices and emerging technologies need to be addressed. The upcoming Joomla! 4 is designed for change and thus prepared for the future, be it Google’s new Accelerated Mobile Pages or the Internet of Things.”

Tessa Mero, Joomla! expert, open source contributor, teacher

“The new and improved Joomla 4 will rock!”

Russell Aaron, Founder of Gravity Styles and GeekStreetWP

“WordPress just released a real-time Mac Desktop app and several new features that has changed the CMS world.”

Dawn Russell, Joomla! expert

“Joomla! is a lightweight, flexible CMS solution that serves complex needs. Websites that require add-ons like E-Commerce, Registration, Blogging and InBound Marketing or fine-tuned Search Engine Optimization, Page Load Optimization, and Access Control Levels are perfectly suited for Joomla. With the increase in Website Builders that “do it all” (Squarespace, Wix, Weebly), simple business card websites can be easily assembled by the user or a student. A content management system like Joomla has evolved into a tool for professionals who deliver highly customized solutions to meet the specific needs of individuals, non-profit/government organizations and businesses.”

AJ Zane, Advanced WP Facebook group Admin, WordPress expert

I think in the next few years we’ll see CMSs morph into multi-site beasts. The interest in the WP REST API and the continued growth of WordPress’ market share means systems like Apppresser will become commonplace as businesses get more comfortable with splitting their data from their presentation. You will no longer “log into your WordPress site”, you will access your content in one place and publish it everywhere.

David Bisset, WordPress and BuddyPress Expert, WordCamps Speaker

WordPress is transitioning towards a stronger CMS solution, but more importantly an actual platform. With the REST API and products like Apppresser, the most impressive things that I see WordPress doing in the next few years are for projects in the mobile or web app space… and you won’t even know from looking at these that WordPress powers them.

Enticed to find more? Check out our ebook on this topic and choose the perfect fit of CMS for your website for a test free.

Do you already follow any of the above CMS specialists? Would you like to read more prediction-related articles on our blog? What kinds of topics are you interested in? Let us know in the comments below.