I had always dreamt of a job in web design and development as it was a hobby of mine in which I had taught myself some very basic HTML and CSS and was keen to progress (and still am) to PHP, MySQL and beyond.

So I received a call one day from a friend saying that she knew of a web design company who were looking for new team members. A week after going for an interview with the company director, I began working with the “Not Web Design” team in Salobreña on the southern coast of Spain. I quickly found out that every project they work on is powered by the Joomla! content management system and they had even developed software designed to help other developers use Joomla! I’d heard a few things previously about Joomla! and I couldn´t really understand why a team of professional developers would want to use something which I thought would be so restricting.

After half of my first day at work, I was completely converted. I find that Joomla! not only speeds up a lot of those usually very time consuming tasks, it also simplifies the way the development process works and most importantly, leaves all the power in the developers hands.

We have recently been working on an online dating web site for some clients and have (of course) been working with Joomla! The way we have been able to integrate all the Joomla! functions which we have chosen to use but create custom components and modules when needed has been great.

I am still very much a beginner in this business but the team I work with are unbelievably advanced. Joomla! does everything they need a CMS to do, without stepping on their toes.

I would recommend Joomla! to anybody wanting to learn to build websites!

It has been too long since we wrote a blog post. So here is one with information about what has been going on lately.

Matyas from Hungary has joined us as a PHP programmer about 4 months ago and he has slotted right and and is working on our new Real Estate component for Joomla as well as other client projects. Yes yes - I know a new real estate is really exiting, but you will have to wait for at least another 30-60 days. Matyas also developed the Joomla Component Creator which has been very popular. Welcome Matyas!

We have launched Automatic Backlinks which has been a huge success with almost 5000 members in 10 months. We expect to possibly reach 10,000 by the end of the year. The proof is in the pudding as they say and we have really created a fantastic system for getting your site ranked in search engines. Check it our if you have not already.

We have moved offices to a much bigger premise in the centre of town. For some reason people did not enjoy sitting on each others laps, so I guess the move was inevitable.

We have launched some new cool web sites:

http://www.meinweekend.ch (Swish travel agent - not our design)
http://www.passion4customers.com (Exiting new complaints portal in several languages - not our design)
http://www.grancanarialuxuryvillas.com (Holiday rental site - our design)
http://www.nerjaholidayrentals.com (Holiday rental site - our design)
http://www.learnpdrsecrets.com (Dent removal training site - our design)

And finally… we are working on a new version of this site - it is going to look super cool, but due to paid work taking priority it looks like it will be some time away.

Stay tuned!

Welcome dear reader.

I thought I might give this blogging a try as I often discover some obscure technical detail when I am coding and would like to share it with the world.

It will also hopefully give me a better understanding of blogging so that I may better advise my clients.

I am also trying to convince Chris (who works with me) to give it a go as he is a good writer, but we shall see how persuasive I have been.

Anyway - stay tuned - I will try my best to write a little bit once in a while.

For now, take a look at another new blog started by an unidentified person (I think I know who it is though) who lives in my local town of Salobreña. She has some interesting photos and video of the flooding in Almuñecar.