By Nicholas Dionysopoulos

I first found Joomla! (actually, Mambo :p) by accident in the Mandrake Linux repositories sometime in 2004. At that time I was looking for a good FOSS CMS because I really didn't want to leep writing my own sort-of-a-CMS-but-not-really. I was impressed by it and very soon all the sites me and my mate were building were Mambo-based. When the fork happened I had no doubt that the then-unnamed fork would be the future and I stuck with it. Did not regret this decision once.

Fast forward ten years (man, does that make me feel old). Most of my friends I met thanks to Joomla!. I make my living thanks to Joomla!. I am having fun thanks to Joomla!. And I am even helping with the architecture of the next major Joomla! version. Joomla! is my life. Long live Joomla! and here's to the next 10 great years and more to come!

By Briand IDOSSOU

Salut à tous. 

Je suis un passionné du développement web. Je code plutôt bien en PHP, HTML5/CSS3, jQuery et je suis aussi un bon designer. Cependant toutes ses compétences ne faisaient pas de moi un développeur très productif parce que je devais à chaque fois développer l'ensemble du code à partir de zéro. Je connais Joomla! depuis de nombreuses années. Toutefois, c'est en 2014 que je me suis vraiment mis à l'utiliser, parce que c'était le CMS qui était imposé pour le projet dont j'avais la charge. Au début, je prenais Joomla! pour un outil de débutant. Mais au fil des jours, je me suis rendu compte que Joomla! était l'outil dont j'avais toujours rêvé. L'ajout des fonctionnalités de connexion, breadcrumbs, acl, tags, seo se faisaient très facilement. J'ai aussi beaucoup apprécié le fait que la plateforme soit extensible avec d'autres extensions (composants, modules, plugins et templates). L'architecture MVC quant-à elle est facile à comprendre, de même que les requêtes vers la base de données. Disons tout simplement que Joomla! m'a séduit et grâce à lui, je suis aujourd'hui un développeur productif d'applications web. Autre chose, la communauté Joomla! est très dynamique et on trouve très vite des solutions à nos problèmes. Je consacre aujourd'hui mes journées à améliorer ma connaissance de ce CMS que j'aime énormément. 

Par anticipation joyeux anniversaire Joomla! et longue vie à toi. 

 

By Sandra Thevenet

2008 was a special year for us. We moved to the Caribbean, changed job and... discovered Joomla. Only good decisions! 
Of course, Joomla is about the software (a really great CMS) but it's also about its unique community. Thanks to Joomla, I learn something every day, and I have also learned what sharing and helping really mean. Merci Joomla! et bon anniversaire !

By Renato Bastos

Congratulations Joomla!
You are like wine, the older, much better ;)

By Viktor Vogel

My Joomla! story: I started in 2003 with a small private website. I didn’t know much about PHP, HTML, JavaScript etc.. In my office package I’ve found the program “Microsoft Frontpage”, so I started to build a small private website with it, on which I posted funny pictures and stories of my friends and me after long party nights. When I started to study Mechanical Engineering at the University Karlsruhe (now KIT), I also used the website to share some ideas and solutions for homework. With the time I got tired to update the website because I always had to do the work offline on my own PC and afterwards put the changes online. It was a big limitation because I couldn’t update the website from another computer. In 2005 a friend of mine showed me “Mambo” and how easy it was to update the content directly from a browser on any computer. I was really excited! By the time when I started, Joomla! 1.0 was released and this is also the moment when my own Joomla! story began!

I was always interested in how things work and started to look into the code of the extensions to understand them. I became active in the German community and support forums. I liked the requests where users wanted to modify small things in existing extensions and tried to do these modifications. I used my website to release the modified files. I also started to release own small extensions under my project name “Kubik-Rubik Joomla! Extensions”. With the time they got very popular, so I’ve created an own project website (https://joomla-extensions.kubik-rubik.de/) in around 2009. I received more and more requests for paid modifications, so I also started to do many jobs as a freelancer at that time (and still do). Joomla! is probably also the reason why I’ve changed the field of study. I switched to Computer Science and finished the studies successfully. After the studies I got a great well-paid job offer by 1&1 Internet SE to be their Joomla! Specialist.

My first Joomla! conference was the JoomlaDay Germany in Berlin in 2012. This was the first time when I felt the spirit and power of the community and also met great people who I knew before many years only from writing in the internet. I think that was the decisive point for me where I got really in love with Joomla! and its community. Today, I’ve been on so many conferences all around the world and every time I’m still surprised how great the people in the community are. I love to meet people in person and spend time with them, especially if they are also so addicted to Joomla! like I am! :-)

As Joomla! gave me so much (personally as well financially), I wanted to give more back and started to contribute more time and knowledge to the project. I ‘ve started with fixing bugs at JoomlaCode / GitHub and got into the Bug Squash Team. I always tried to put as many time as I could afford into the Joomla! project. The highlight for me was, of course, the call to the Production Leadership Team. I’m looking forward for at least another 10 year with Joomla!.

As you see, Joomla! is an important part of my life! It makes me possible to meet great people, make a lot of people happy and lead an exciting life!