I started with Joomla in 2006, back when it was still Joomla 1.0. Twenty one years later, it is the platform I build my work and my business on. That feels like a good reason to stop and look back, so let me tell you how a CMS became such a big part of my story.

Falling for Joomla in 2006

After I left my nine to five job, I decided to work as a freelancer for personal reasons and started looking for opportunities. I love web development, so I explored the main content systems of that time: WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. I fell in love with how balanced Joomla was. It was strong on the technical side and still friendly for the person using it every day.

Learning by breaking it

Back then it was very hard to find documentation or learning material. So I did the only thing that made sense: I read the code, and I broke it on purpose to see how the pieces fit together. That is how I learned the ropes. In the end I could build and customize any Joomla site, either by hacking the core files (not recommended at all) or by doing it the right way, with layout overrides and custom extensions.

My first portfolio piece

Freelancing with no portfolio and no work history is not easy. To fix that, I built egyptianreviewer.com, an advanced rate and review directory where people could review service providers across Egypt on several criteria. It has been retired for years now, but it was ahead of its time, and it was my first real portfolio piece. I monetized it first with AdBrite and later with Google AdSense. It gave me a strong start, and I became one of the top 10 developers on joomlancers, before oDesk and the other freelance sites became popular.

joomlareem.com, named after Reem

My passion pushed me to build custom extensions and publish them on the JED. Users kept asking for more features, so I opened my first Joomla extensions store, joomlareem.com. I named it after my first daughter, Reem, who was born a few months before the launch. The store grew my reputation and my client relationships, until 2008, when I lost the domain. I had trusted a hosting company that offered a free domain. When I wanted to move to another registrar, they asked for far too much money to transfer it, and the bad surprise was that they had registered the domain under their own name, not mine.

Rebuilding as joomreem.com

I had to start from scratch, so I built joomreem.com, and it inherited the reputation of the old site. Things went smoothly until 2011. You may know what happened in Egypt in January that year. I stepped back and stayed only lightly involved with Joomla for two to three years, but I kept joomreem.com alive. Those were tough years, with ups and downs in everything.

The 2018 comeback

I managed to focus again in 2018, and a few months later I started my Upwork profile. That opened the door to fantastic clients and to projects I truly enjoyed. Good work brings more good work, and step by step the momentum came back.

From client work to products

A few years later I began to revamp joomreem.com and look more closely at the Joomla extensions market. The client projects I had worked on gave me the ideas, so I turned that experience into two products of my own: JR Image Optimizer and JR Prism. And it is still going.

Celebrating Joomla 21

Twenty one years is a long time to stay in love with one platform. Joomla kept evolving, I kept building, and joomreem.com is still here because of it. To say thank you to this community, I want to celebrate the birthday with you.

Joomla just turned 21, so let us celebrate with 21% off

Here is what my two extensions do, in one line each:

  • JR Image Optimizer: it compresses and converts your Joomla images automatically, so your pages load faster without losing quality. It supports Joomla 4, 5, and 6.
  • JR Prism: it turns your articles, categories, or hand picked items into clean, responsive showcases (card grids, carousels, mosaics, tabs, accordions, scrollers, and zigzag rows), all styled by your own template and with no page builder needed. It is the maintained, security reviewed replacement for the old RokSprocket.

The deal is simple: 21% off JR Image Optimizer, JR Prism, and the bundle of both. Use the coupon code JOOMLA21 at checkout. The offer is valid through 20 September, so you have about a month to grab it.

Get JR Image Optimizer Get JR Prism Get the Bundle and save more

Thank you for being part of this. Here is to Joomla, and to the next years ahead.