This week I chat with Enes and Mine, the husband and wife couple from Turkey who started building Joomla sites for friends and customers and now run a template club in the Joomla! industry.
Joomla! News
Want to hear more about the J & Beyond Conference 2014 which was held in Germany a few weeks ago? If you are interested in finding out more, check out Russell English in his Google Hangout, He interviews a number of people in regards to the conference and covers a number of other things as well. You will get a great overview of the conference, also check out the J & Beyond website where you can find some great session videos that have been posted.
A quick thanks to Teddy Billewicz, who conducted a presentation about how he got into the Joomla! space, during his presentation he mentioned the Joomla Beat Podcast as one of the reasons he go into the Joomla! industry. Thank you so much for sharing that, and thank you Tim for pointing it out to us.
You can check out a quick blog post on some highlights from one of the days at J & Beyond that I attended. See some sessions I highlighted there.
Events
JoomlaDay Russia - June 26
For the first time, Russia is holding a JoomlaDay event. Good luck to those involved in JoomlaDay Russia and I wish you all the best for the day. Check out JoomlaDay.ru.
JoomlaDay Minnasota - July 19
Mike Denopolous brought it to my attention that this is coming up. If anyone is in the area and interested in attending, check out JoomlaDay.mn. It is a great opportunity to network and learn more about Joomla! and the people within the industry.
You should go ahead and search for a Joomla! User group in your area. Hopefully something will come up in your area, where you can connect with and meet some new people. It is good to connect, share stories and learn about other peoples experiences within the Joomla! space. If you don't find one, maybe consider starting your own.
Learning Resource
If you are interested in starting in Joomla! extension or application development, David Hurley has been working on a developer's 101 crash course into Joomla! Development. He is the community development manager for Joomla! and also production leadership team member. Check out the videos and learn from the best.
Email Question
Chris' from craymond.me Question... “Peter, Love your show - keep up the great work! Wanted to get your thoughts on this post on the Joomla Magazine. If you look at the comments, you'll see some very valid opinions about the state of Joomla. Do you think Joomla is lagging behind the other CMS's, should we all drop Joomla now and adopt Wordpress/Drupal? Thanks in advance.”
This is in reference to Helvecio da Silva article about the Joomla! trends vs Wordpress. I wrote a blog post on this specific topic, which also sparked a big debate.
You have to take these trends into context, what is literally trending at the moment in regards to news stories and posts, and wording around what you are comparing it to. The Joomla! space isn't necessarily trending too much in regards to search terms for Joomla!. But the stats and the usage and the downloads are still increasing. There is still a huge amount of usage of Joomla! in general. Jessica Dunbar covered this at J & Beyond where she does a massive brain dump of data. See the trends interpreted in the correct way.
I believe Joomla! is on the right path, I can see a lot of change and I can see a lot of improvement on the roadmap. I am really excited about the future of Joomla!, and I believe you will see a lot of change and improvements by the end of the year.
Sponsorship
I've decided not to take on any more sponsorship (aside from SiteGround who provide the hosting), you won't find any paid interviews or banner ads here. If I find something noteworthy within the community I'll pull you in for an interview. I feel that would be the best way of going about it. If you have something cool to share with me, let me know and I can do an interview that way. I love connecting with the community and doing this podcast.
I have cut back on advertising on the joomlabe.at website over the past few months. Please let me know in the comments below how you feel about this.
Any questions or comments about the podcast, please email me, I will respond to all emails. Send me a voice message if you feel like.
Interview with Enes & Mine
How they got into Joomla!
For Enes - he started with no programming background but during university developed a passion and love of web design and websites in general. He googled the options and encountered WordPress, Joomla! and Drupal. Funnily enough, he liked the name of Joomla!. Started searching for it in Turkish (which is his local language). There was no resources on Joomla! in Turkish. But he continued to research Joomla! in English and began to learn.
At the end of university, he and Mina started to make websites for friends etc. They loved the designs and suggested them to others. From this they realised they should start a company.
For Mine - Enes started teaching her Joomla! and from there they started building websites as a hobby. They were feeding cockatiel birds, so they created a website to give information about them. That is when they started getting into Joomla!.
What role do you play?
Enes - At first he started in administration on Joomla!. Learned about the extensions on the JED and gained a lot of knowledge. Started to integrate the extensions into the websites that he and Mina were creating. He would search for an extension that would suit his purpose, then integrate into the site. Enes does more of the technical side of sites.
Mine - Works on the visual aspects, including photoshop and image manipulation and optimisation. She has learned CSS now but is not as much in the technical side of things as Enes.
Recent News
Last year Enes and Mine started up OptimumTheme template club for Joomla!. They love the template clubs and follow them and it has been a dream of Enes for so long to have his own. When they started out, they were using templates from other template clubs. After a long time of doing this they wanted to have templates they could call their own. They would be building custom designs for customers so it only made sense to switch it over to a template club aspect. They had 5 when they started, now have reached 16. They release templates monthly.
Juggling both Web Design and Template Club
Still keeping the web designing side of the business while doing the templates has kept them very busy. They set up different tasks in the company, where Enes is leading the team of the template club. Mine is looking after the sites of older customers. These customers have websites that need updating, so Mine keeps on top of this while maintaining content and statistic reports for clients.
It is very important to teach customers on how to maintain their websites. How can they update their website? It is easy to use if you teach the customers how to do it. Which allows Mine to manage her time between clients.
What have you gained from J & Beyond
Enes tells me he loves attending these conferences, he loves the community surrounding Joomla!. You can see it as a way of thanks to the community. Supporting the community and the CMS and giving back to Joomla!. That is why he attends and will continue to attend.
It was Mine 's first Joomla! event out of Turkey. She didn't expect it to be this amazing. So many people from around the world all speaking the same language - Joomla!. The shared values and excitement about the same things. The world isn't so big. It makes her happy, and she definitely wants to come again.
Make things happen session at J & Beyond
This was an open session on the second day, where people could get together and do things at the conference. Mine and Enes were on the translation team for Joomla! documentation. It is very important for Joomla! to be globalised, which helps find more users and more support for Joomla!. They translated the documentation into Turkish and they tell us that they will continue to keep going on this task.
There is not enough resources in Turkish but the community in Turkey has grown and is continuing to grow. They can get more people involved by getting more Turkish speaking people who can speak English to help translate it.
Check out optimumtheme.com.
Let me know in the comments below your thoughts on the themes and any feedback you have.
To Mine and Enes, thank you for joining us on the Joomla Beat Podcast!
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