Beginning with Joomla 1.6, the Joomla! Project decided to separate the CMS, which is what most end users of Joomla have come to know, from the platform it's built on. Developers can now use this platform to build their own web applications. This should be an exciting development for the community; however, many Joomla! users and followers remain confused on a couple of issues.

First, the numbering sequence of the Joomla! Platform tends to confuse many people. Since it is now completely separate from the CMS, the numbering system is also on its very own track. Simply explained, it's just the year followed by a sequence number. So, the second release of 2011 is 11.2, and the first release of 2012 would be 12.1. These updates are released every three months, providing a new sequence number for each release until the new year starts the cycle over.

The Joomla! Platform was separated from the CMS itself since they do very different things. According to the Joomla! Project, "a content management system is software that keeps track of every piece of content on your Web site, much like your local public library keeps track of books and stores them." Content can be nearly anything from media, such as photos, videos and music to written articles and other files. A good CMS is helpful for end users because it requires almost no technical knowledge to use.

The Joomla! Platform on the other hand is simply a foundation for building things. The platform, along with some good programming knowledge, will enable developers to build almost any application and run it on the web. This provides the freedom to build robust stand alone applications that don't have to rely on the CMS in any way if that's what is needed.

As always, there is a lot of debate and discussion surrounding this aspect of Joomla! development. It will be very interesting to monitor and see what interesting applications are built on this platform as it matures.