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My Joomla Journey

My Joomla Journey

I recently had the joy and privilege to keynote at both PHP World and the Joomla World Conference in November 2015, and both were amazing experiences. Thanks to the keynotes and my involvement with the Joomla community, I wanted to share with you how I got to where I am now, and how your life and career could take similar paths.

How I Discovered Joomla

While I was in college, one of my courses I took we had to write an essay about content management system comparisons. This is how I knew Joomla existed. I was hired as a web application developer for a company while I was still in school and needed a quick platform to begin working with. After a lot of research finding the best solution for the company, I realized Joomla was the best option. The day I chose to use the Joomla platform, my company sent me on a 2 day training session with OSTraining which was a live class. A month later, they sent me to New York City for a Joomla Day Conference. I was able to pick up quickly and learn how to build a website.

After going to a Joomla! conference for the first time and making new connections, I found a new love for networking and have been going to Joomla conferences since 2011.

Why Do I Choose Joomla Over Other Platforms

It’s really hard to imagine ever using another platform at this point of my life. Even if I decided on a better option later for particular projects, I could never stop using Joomla. Every CMS has it’s own perks, so there really isn’t a “better CMS option”. It honestly depends on the type of website you are building.

In reality, the best option is the one you can figure out first (lol). As for me, it would be hypocritical for me to have a WordPress blog when I’m heavily involved with Joomla, as much as I wanted to build my blog site with WordPress. *smiles*

After my first Joomla conference and having the opportunity to meet the people behind the software, I knew I belonged with the community. It amazes me with how committed the Joomla community is to making our software better.

Something Cool I’m Working On

I’ve been a college instructor for the past 3 years and I’ve been working on more curriculum development lately. The college will soon have a bootcamp program that focuses on Angular.js. I’ve had the opportunity to learn a lot of cool things along the way and it’s very exciting and motivating to teach myself new technology and be able to share the knowledge with students. I also spent some time talking with other industry experts about advice on how I’m outlining certain course areas. To me, this is cool stuff!

How I’m Contributing to Joomla

Currently I am on the Joomla Production Leadership Team (PLT), which is responsible for leading the core Joomla CMS development. I’m working to build a developer relations team (DRT) so we can have a community representative in most regions in the world, rather than only one person representing Joomla.

The greatest thing about the soon-to-launch Developer Relations Team is that we will have a great group of developers, representing different areas of the world, working together. With them, we will be able to integrate the PHP and greater developer community into the Joomla community. We can help provide opportunity for newer members to grow within the team while receiving mentorship by senior developers. This is a great way to market Joomla within the developer community and help ease new developers into working with the codebase.

Aside from the PLT, I have been on the Joomla Extensions Directory (JED) Team since 2012. I assist with managing all the sub team managers and making sure we are on top of our tasks. Currently, I’m helping with managing the volunteer developers on our Jira Issue Tracker for all the issues and feature requests made. To be able to be part of making the JED better is a very satisfying feeling. My primary focus is how I can improve the JED to make it a better experience for the extension developers, who make a living off having their extensions listed. The JED team manager’s focus is on the user experience, which is why we make a great team.

How Do I See The Future Of Joomla

I see things improving and becoming better. It is a real pleasure being on the Production Leadership Team and being part of the decision-making process for future Joomla releases. The Joomla 4 Architecture team and the Production Leadership Team are hard at work making sure we create new releases that people are happy with. Our end users are a top priority to us.

You can get involved too

Want to get involved in the core code of Joomla? You can get involved without the knowledge of coding, by testing code patches. Whether it’s the core code or any other area of the project, I’d love to help you get involved!

Would you like to join this journey with me? It’s never too late to start!

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