Featured User: Erik van Doorne

This week we had a fascinating interview with Erik, owner of Masters of Media. Originally Masters of Media was a music Mastering and Recording Studio, but Erik launched himself into the world of programming in a self-taught way and changed his business to a web development company. Erik is a user we are in touch with on a regular base and gave us several insights on how we can further improve Component Creator. Erik even uses Component Creator to teach groups of students the basics of programming and learn them about database structure and gives lectures about Component Creator on Joomla conferences.

 

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Erik van Doorne and I’m the owner of Masters of Media, a digital agency specializing in Joomla! Web development. I am in my fifties and before my company turned into a web development company, Masters of Media was a music Mastering and Recording studio.

I am an electronics and audio engineer through professional training and my web development and programming skills are completely self-taught.

What does your company do?

We mainly offer web development and Webdesign. We specialize in Joomla! applications which make up about two-thirds of all the websites and webshops we launch and maintain. Apart from designing and building new websites and webshops, there is an increasing amount of extensions we develop. This ranges from very simple ones (sometimes only a module or a plugin) to larger and more complicated extensions such as a CMS system or a complete student registration system for schools.

We also build and maintain WordPress sites and I maintain a handful of Drupal sites. With a colleague, I run a sister company that specializes in Magento shops and we run our cluster of hosting servers which also takes up a fair amount of time :)    

Where is your company located?

It is located in Zwolle, a city in the Eastern part of The Netherlands.

What is your role within the company?

I am the company owner. I do some web development work myself but my main role is sales and customer relations.

How long have you been using Component Creator?

I started using Component Creator after I attended a presentation by Søren Jensen during J! And Beyond 2013. I’ve been using it for the last 7 years.

Roughly how many components have you built using Component Creator?

I haven’t tracked it but for smaller projects, probably around 20 components. For larger components, there’s around 10 I used it for. We’ve used the free version of Component Creator as well as the subscription version

How much time do you estimate Component Creator has saved you?

It’s hard to say exactly but it must be hundreds of hours. With each component, you save a large amount of time. Component Creator takes away the tedious work of creating tables, creating all the necessary XML files and all necessary files and folders. Using a boilerplate extension and editing all the files is far more time consuming, not only when it comes to editing but also in debugging the end-result.

Can you give an example of a component that was built using Component Creator?

The one component I use on a daily base is my time-tracking and invoicing tool. I built it with Component Creator and still adjust it now and then. Not only helped Component Creator save me a lot of time in the making of the component itself, but I also save valuable time every day by using the tool that helps me do my work more efficiently. 

Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve Component Creator?

I would love to see Component Creator incorporate more options that allow for customization of components. And I would suggest having options included for actions to be performed before or after posting forms.

What do you like best about Component Creator?

The user interface is very straightforward and the way views are created is very clear, even for novice users. Also, making small adjustments and recompiling the end-result is very easy and fast.

Is there anything else you would like to share with the Component Creator community?

Component Creator is one of my go-to services. Not only will it help you save valuable time, but it will also help you better understand how Joomla! components work.