"We've got two different user preferences: A lot of users want to have access to the latest stuff as soon as it's ready. On the other hand, we have a lot of very large sites running Joomla, and that community expressed concern that they didn't want to go through an update cycle every six months," Dexter said.

With this new cycle, "If someone wants long-term releases, they will only have to upgrade every 18 months. If someone wants the latest and greatest, they can stay up with the six-month releases," Dexter said.

First developed in 2005, Joomla is one of the world's most widely used open-source content management systems, one suited for quickly developing websites. Citibank, eBay, General Electric, Ikea, McDonald's and Sony have all used the platform for their websites. Since 2007, the software has been downloaded more than 24 million times. Volunteer developers have contributed more than 8,000 extensions, or bits of software that extend Joomla's capabilities, to the project.

On the architecture side, separates its core functionality into a set of libraries that can be used for other types of Web applications. A set of PHP libraries that are the core of Joomla form the basis of what is now called the Joomla Platform.

"There is a lot of good functionality there that is not specific to a content management system. So we decided to make [that functionality] a platform so it would be easier for people to use to write some other kind of application for the Web," Dexter said, noting that some application developers have already used earlier versions of Joomla in this way, by removing the functionality they didn't need and building their application from what remained.