Featured User: René Kreijveld

In this edition of the Featured User Interviews we spoke with another Component Creator-user from the Netherlands! René Kreijveld who got involved in Joomla when it was still called Mambo in 2003 and as you can imagine, has a ton of experience. René has developed over 72 components and saved hundreds and hundreds of hours using Component Creator!

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is René Kreijveld, I’m 54 years and married with Monique. We have two kids, Bob our son and Maud our daughter. And we have a dog, Mila, which is a beautiful Bracco Italiano hunting dog. 

I have been building websites since 1999, using HTML and CSS initially. In 2003 I discovered Mambo and I loved it immediately. In 2004 I launched Mamboportal.nl, the first Dutch Mambo community website. In 2005 after the fork I immediately followed Joomla. In my Joomla history I have built 250+ Joomla websites.

What does your company do?

I work for Destiny, a Belgium-France-Netherlands based company offering cloud services like Cloud Communication, Cloud Infrastructure, Cloud Security, Fixed and mobile internet, fixed and mobile telephony, Private networks, and Web Development services.  

Where is your company located?

Our company has four offices in Belgium and two offices in The Netherlands. The head office is in Zaventem Belgium. I work for the Web development Team and we reside at the office in St. Oedenrode, a small town in the south of The Netherlands.

What is your role within the company?

I work as a web developer, specialized in Joomla. Destiny provides a product called ‘Publicanda’. Publicanda is a Joomla based website including hosting, support, and maintenance. We have included a set of default extensions like JCE, Akeeba Backup, Akeeba Admin Tools, Regular Labs, and a few others. My responsibilities within the team include web development, template development, VPS maintenance, support, training, and product development. I work together with a colleague who does web design, content, support, and also template development.

I build all kinds of tailored solutions for Joomla like modules, components, plugins and templates. Besides that I’m specialized in creating complex multi-page forms and in website optimizations. I’m not satisfied when a site we built doesn’t score a double A in GTMetrix :-)

How long have you been using Component Creator?

I have been using Component Creator since April 2013. When I was comfortable using it, I did a presentation about Component Creator at the Dutch Joomladays 2014.

Roughly how many components have you built using Component Creator?

In my current list I have 72 components.

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

That must be hundreds and hundreds of hours!

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

I have built so many :-) A relatively simple one is the QRIH publications at the QRIH website (https://www.qrih.nl/en/tools/lists/publicaties). This features a filterable and searchable list of journals and publishers selected by the research school domain panels. I nice feature in the list is the option to export the selection as an Excel document. For the backup I built a CSV import option.

I have built all kinds of components like job application administrations, a component to import pictures into articles and present these in a J2Store webshop, restaurant listings, multi-site administration tools etcetera.

The biggest component so far is a subsidy request application for the Dutch Jewish community. It features the complete administration of subsidy requests, the subsidy request form, including repeatable subforms and PDF and Excel exports.

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

I use Component Creator in a way that (I guess) the most of us do: I set up the database structure for a component and create all the backend and frontend list-, detail- and edit views. Then I install that in my development environment and enhance and expand the component further locally. I usually modify just about every view, model, and controller. It helped me so much learning the Joomla Framework.

Because Joomla 3 uses Bootstrap 2 so much, all backend end frontend views are Bootstrap 2 based obviously. But the fronted templates I build aren’t Boostrap 2 based anymore for a long time. So I need to modify the output most of the time. Also the tight integration of the Chosen library for select lists isn’t convenient for me. I always change these integrations. It would be nice if I had to possibility to optionally use other frontend frameworks are optionally prevent integrations like Chosen. In the current component, I am working on I removed Chosen and integrated jQuery Select 2 instead, which has much better options to use Ajax based select lists for example.

What do you like best about Component Creator?

I really really like the more recent additions like repeatable subforms. The option to quickly add another database table or a table column is so great..

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

‘In the market’ Joomla lost a bit of its popularity. That is such a shame because it is a great CMS with really endless possibilities. I am also very anxious to see what the future of Component Creator will hold. I can’t wait to test it for Joomla 4 :-)

If someone wants to ask me about how we build Joomla websites or how we use Component Creator, don’t hesitate to ask me: rene.kreijveld@destiny.nl or https://www.linkedin.com/in/renekreijveld/.