About this Blog

This is the second in a series of blog posts about major Joomla websites and the developers who built them. First up was Jack Bremer and the U.K. arts website theArtsDesk.com.

This week we're talking with Fotis Evangelou about the major Greek sports website Gazzetta.gr.

1) Hi Fotis. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I'm the co-founder & managing director at Komrade Ltd. I'm a Geology student dropout (!) and I've been building websites professionally for almost 10 years. I'm also the founder of JoomlaWorks, established in 2006. In late 2007, Komrade was formed and since then we're pretty fortunate to have built some of the world's top Joomla! based websites (in terms of visitor traffic) like Gazzetta.gr and TNAWrestling.com

2) What or who is Gazzetta.gr?

Gazzetta.gr is a sports news website and currently one of the top websites in Greece. It was launched early 2008 and now it averages more than 5 million visitors per month. It was actually our second project as Komrade, the first being TNAWrestling.com (2m+ visitors/month). So you can also say that we got a pretty good start as Komrade! Gazzetta.gr is run by 25+ sports journalists with many years of experience in both print and online publications. It's backed financially by a major IT related company in Greece.

3) How did the project with Gazzetta.gr come about?

The people behind Gazzetta.gr preferred to invest in an "open source" solution, having suffered from "closed source-itis" in the past, which cost them both time and money. Joomla! caught their eye as the best possible open source solution for Gazzetta.gr - especially because it had such a huge community. We were approached by them as we were already acknowledged professionals in the Joomla! community through JoomlaWorks. We sat down, discussed their needs and in 2 months the site was ready to launch.

4) Do you know why they made the decision to use Joomla?

Strong community presence was obviously key to this decision. They would not be tied to one company only for whatever reason. Another big reason was the friendliness of the Joomla! administrator interface, which was (and still is) light years ahead compared to most open source and even commercial/closed source CMSs.

5) Question from Paulo Williams: What extensions did you use in building the site?

Gazzetta.gr is now in its second version, based entirely on Joomla! 1.5 and K2. K2 is used as the main application for articles, tags, comments and more in Gazzetta.gr. It handles around 95% of all publishing/editorial related tasks.

Aside K2, we use the following publicly available extensions: Frontpage Slideshow, AllVideos, Simple Image Gallery Pro, Google Ad Manager from Joomlaworks plus JCE and Update Manager from third parties.

We also developed the following custom extensions:

• A component to administer the "news stand" area of the website
• A multi-use module for K2 that fetches content in various ways and filters as seen on the frontpage of the website...

About this Blog

This is the first in a series of blog posts about major Joomla websites and the developers who built them. First up is Jack Bremer and the major U.K. arts website theArtsDesk.com.

Last Novemberr the Joomla! Community in Italy put on an incredible Joomla! Day. Over 500 people attended and another 7000 watched on the live stream. I watched some of it live, and (even though I don't speak Italian) it was amazing.  Not only that, they ran it as a free event and still made enough money to contribute 750 Euros to the Joomla! Project.

The 2010 edition of the Google Summer of Code has been announced, and we are setting the groundwork to submit our application to participate again this year. Joomla! has participated 5 times in the Google Summer of Code and has benefited greatly by the continued support that Google offers to the FOSS world through this program. One of the best benefits for Joomla! has been the retention of students as contributors to the project long after the program ends. A lot of great work has been accomplished that has not only been of benefit for the core code base, but also extensions that have been produced and the innovation the Google Summer of Code work has inspired, every single year we have participated. Joomla! at this time is one of the most successful open source projects in its class with downloads now exceeding 15 million, and the Google Summer of Code has been integral to that success. An in-depth look at all of our past participation shows how important this program is for both Joomla! and the students that participate:

It’s likely that you’ve paid a visit to the Joomla! shop around holidays and birthdays – to gift a Joomla! book to the cousin who’s trying to expand her business, or an advanced guide to your tech-savvy co-worker – or just when you wanted to share your open-source enthusiasm by sporting a Joomla!-logo fleece.

The Joomla! shop serves not only to supply friends of Joomla! with additional resources and fashionable Joomla! accessories, but perhaps more importantly, to bring in revenue for the project. The shop is about three years old and is a relatively solid enterprise – but currently isn’t getting the love and attention that it requires to be a truly effective business.

Joomla's most popular community extension, Community Builder, has passed the 300k mark for registered members—nearly as many as the Joomla Discussion Forum itself. Starting at the birth of Joomla, Joomlapolis has been steadily growing ever since.

To celebrate this remarkable achievement, a series of festivities have been planned for the "Community of Community Builders" on Joomlapolis. Additionally, the CB team has decided to sponsor $1000 worth of Andrew Eddie’s professional time to work on getting Joomla 1.6 ready.

The authors of Community Builder, Nick and Beat, spoke proudly, "Our 300K members, our 2 million plus downloads, our 120K forum posts and our 51 million website visitor marks would not have been reached without riding on Joomla wings. We are thankful of Joomla and are showing it."

Congratulations to the Community Builder team!