For nearly two decades, the interGen team has embraced Joomla! as our preferred content management system. Last week, we celebrated this powerful platform and its vibrant community at JoomlaDay USA in Nashville, an annual event attracting developers and Joomla enthusiasts from across North America and Europe.
After spending the week in Nashville, our whole band would agree that the Joomla platform really sings! Attendees from interGen included:
- Brian Mitchell, interGen President (attended on site)
- Kristin Bird, our support team lead (attended on site)
- Aaron Morrison, front-end dev (attended virtually)
- Manu Beladevan, back-end developer (attended on site as the event's first ever participant from India)
We were also proud to be supporting the event as a Gold Level Sponsor.
Event Highlights that Will Benefit our Clients
Achievements and Community Impact
Crystal Dionysopoulos, Open Source Matters (Joomla) President, kicked off the event by highlighting Joomla's recent achievements and growth. She emphasized the project's success stems solely from the efforts of its global volunteer community, with no external investors. This community-driven model ensures Joomla remains a top-tier tool for developers, built by developers.
- Millions of websites built in Joomla and hundreds of millions of downloads of the Joomla platform
- A global community of volunteers means there are no outside investors to satisfy.
- Joomla is made with love by the community of web developers that use it so that they can have the best in class tools to serve their clients.
interGen team member Aaron had this to say about why he prefers Joomla after the challenges of building a recent project outside of interGen in another platform:
“What I found is that everything is way more expensive than Joomla and not as easy to achieve custom results - because of the "it just works" thing they want to show on the surface… And I know GoDaddy isn't going to support her site because it is so custom. She will have to come to me to fix her problems, that is great for me but bad for her. So I'm going to rebuild it for no extra cost, and I have to convince her of why.”
Our drive to deliver optimal solutions without additional costs is one of the many reasons Joomla remains our platform of choice.
Innovative Development & Customization
One of the best values this experience will bring to our clients were the sessions that delved into the development of custom functionality for Joomla.
- Nashville local Adam Melcher showcased methods for creating drop-dead, gorgeous custom templates that consistently deliver Pagespeed ratings of 95-100
- Shirat Goldstein from the Israel Joomla User Group discussed building custom modules.
- Carlos Cámara, the man who literally wrote the book on developing extensions for Joomla 5, walked us through developing custom extensions.
When asked why Joomla adheres to such a clearly defined and standardized structure of Joomla code development, Carlos responded,
“Because we are not savages.”
Future Outlook and Innovations
One of the reasons the interGen team is so excited for Joomla 5 is that it continues to provide an experience for site builders, site managers, extension developers, and business owners that is intuitive, consistent, and unencumbered with constant outside marketing. Joomla continues to provide the power to deliver everything you want in website and flexibility that makes it a pleasure to use.
Other Key Insights
- Leveraging generative AI for search marketing and site management.
- Creating portable custom email templating for both marketing and transactional purposes and how to best use new and long standing tools within the Joomla ecosystem.
- Continued improvements in Joomla's Core features like the Task Scheduler, Web Services integration, and Schema updates.
JoomlaDay USA not only underscores our commitment to Joomla but also celebrates the community spirit inherent to the platform. This gathering reinforces a shared vision for an internet that excels in security, performance, functionality, and accessibility. Best of all, it is powered by a global community of passionate developers that deeply appreciate and value software that is open source… because the best things in life are free.
