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Announcing the Houston JUG Monthly Virtual Meetup — Starting June 2026

Houston Joomla is back — and going monthly

We're launching the Houston JUG Monthly Virtual Meetup, a free online gathering for anyone curious about Joomla — wherever you are. Whether you're a long-time user, evaluating a new CMS for your business, or a developer comparing options for your next project, you're welcome to join.

  • When: First Thursday of every month, 12:00 PM Central (UTC−6 / UTC−5 during DST)
  • Where: Online via Google Meet (link sent to subscribers) — attend from anywhere
  • Cost: Free
  • Format: 35-min Joomla walkthrough + 10-min real-world CMS pain points + 15-min open Q&A
  • First session: Thursday, June 4, 2026

Dates, times, and topics may shift as we hear from the community. Subscribe at jughouston.com to stay up to date and get the meeting link before each session.

Why this group, why now

Choosing a CMS in 2026 is a tradeoff exercise. Hosted builders are easy until you outgrow them and find you can't take your site with you. Developer-first platforms are powerful, but you need a developer on call for every menu change. Plugin-driven platforms are friendly, but a real site ends up running 15+ third-party plugins you have to keep alive. Headless platforms are flexible, but you're hand-building a frontend before publishing a single page.

Joomla sits in the professional middle ground — site-owner friendly without being dumbed down, batteries-included without plugin sprawl, fully self-hosted and yours forever. Granular permissions, multilingual content, custom fields, content versioning, a native REST API, and a strong security record — all in core.

Each month we'll take one of those built-in features, walk through it live, and connect it to a real CMS pain point you've probably hit before. By month 12, you'll have a working mental model of the whole platform.

The 2026–2027 calendar

#DateTopicWhat we'll cover
1 Thu Jun 4, 2026 Why Joomla? Finding the Right CMS Sweet Spot What Joomla is, who it's for, the open-source story, group charter
2 Thu Jul 2, 2026 Joomla Architecture 101 Components, modules, plugins, templates — the four building blocks
3 Thu Aug 6, 2026 Content That Scales Articles, categories, and native custom fields
4 Thu Sep 3, 2026 Menu Mastery Menu types, items, item-types, parameter inheritance
5 Thu Oct 1, 2026 Templates & Frontend Overrides Cassiopeia, child templates, layout overrides, Atum admin
6 Thu Nov 5, 2026 Multilingual Out of the Box Native language switching, associations, content per language
7 Thu Dec 3, 2026 ACL Deep Dive: Permissions Done Right View levels, user groups, asset-level rules
8 Thu Jan 7, 2027 Security & Updates One-click updater, 2FA in core, patch cadence
9 Thu Feb 4, 2027 Web Services API & Headless Integrations Native REST API, MCP servers, AI-driven content workflows
10 Thu Mar 4, 2027 Workflow, Versioning & Editorial Article versioning, custom workflows, scheduled publishing
11 Thu Apr 1, 2027 Performance Caching, Web Assets, image pipeline, minification
12 Thu May 6, 2027 Year in Review + Member Showcase + 2027 Roadmap Recap, member sites lightning talks, plan year 2

Dates, times, and topics may shift based on community feedback — subscribers will be the first to know.

Who should come

  • Site owners tired of plugin-stack maintenance
  • Freelancers and agencies evaluating CMS options for clients
  • Joomla users who want to go deeper
  • Developers curious about headless CMS, REST APIs, and AI integrations
  • Anyone shopping for a CMS that won't trap them in a vendor's box

Subscribe to stay up to date

Subscribe at jughouston.com to make sure you don't miss anything. Subscribers receive:

  • The Google Meet link the day before each session
  • Notifications when dates, times, or topics change
  • Follow-up notes, links, and resources after each meetup
  • A heads-up on featured topics and member showcases

First session: Thursday, June 4, 2026, at noon Central. We'll see you there.