{"id":11477,"date":"2023-11-02T07:52:49","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T07:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/?p=11477"},"modified":"2026-02-19T15:51:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T15:51:35","slug":"interview-with-crystal-dionysopoulos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.20i.com\/blog\/interview-with-crystal-dionysopoulos\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Crystal Dionysopoulos, Joomla! Board President"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Crystal Dionysopoulos currently serves as the President of the Board of Directors of Open Source Matters (the organisation that powers Joomla<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An experienced UX designer and front-end developer, Crystal also runs her own agency ‘Lucid Fox<\/a>‘, focusing on non-profits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crystal was kind enough to answer our questions about how she got started in the business, how her involvement with the Joomla community<\/a> grew, what makes Joomla stand out and plans for future releases – plus advice for any one looking to get started themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2139\ufe0f Joomla! was voted the #1 FOSS CMS in the 20i FOSS Awards<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Can you provide a bit of background information yourself e.g. how you got into the industry, why you decided to develop websites, the agency you run\u2026<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It takes people by surprise, but I\u2019ve been building websites since I was 11 years old. My dad was in the tech industry at the time, and was learning about PHP and MySQL. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He left a book out on the desk by the family computer at some point with sample files open that he was working on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was going to do some homework, but this seemed more interesting\u2026 so I fixed the error that he had in his form, and (being 11) revised the form entirely to make it all about Pokemon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thankfully, he wasn\u2019t mad at me for messing with his work, and instead bought me books of my own! I dove in and started making websites for friends (and even a couple of local businesses).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve gone in and out of the web world since then, but in 2015 decided to work for myself full time and started my studio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, I decided to focus only on websites for nonprofit organizations. It\u2019s been incredibly fulfilling and interesting\u2014no two projects are quite alike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Lucid<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Why did Joomla! become your CMS of choice and how did you become so involved in the community?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Before I started my own studio, I was working for a marketing agency that built websites using Joomla 3 when it was first released. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew my way around design, front end development, and some PHP, but it was my first real experience with a CMS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t long before I understood just how flexible and powerful Joomla could be, and it just made sense<\/em>. I didn\u2019t (and still don\u2019t) prefer WYSIWYG experiences because I found them limiting and error-prone for content updates, but Joomla allows me to approach it from a structured perspective. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The content is managed separately from the design and template, so clients can update their data and it populates beautifully across the site without anyone being worried about breaking the layout or functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that time, though, Joomla was just a product to me; I didn\u2019t understand the importance of open source software nor the community aspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later that year, I attended a couple of Joomla events\u2014the Joomla Developers Conference in Chicago, and the World Conference in Cancun. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was attending to learn more about Joomla the product, and I did, but I also learned a whole lot about the community. (Spoiler: the community was extremely warm and welcoming, even though I didn\u2019t know anyone.) It was a wonderful experience all around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joomla conferences usually include a time for attendees to contribute by testing bug fixes and similar things, and I was able to help fix some templating issues on one of the Joomla websites. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"person<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t long before I joined a team officially and made lifelong friends in the community. I was hooked, and I couldn\u2019t be happier about it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a lot of open source CMS for developers to choose from, what makes Joomla! stand out?<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u2019s wonderful there are a lot of open source CMS options! Not every CMS is going to be a good fit for every project, and we don\u2019t want it to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s one of things; just because you can<\/em> <\/em><\/strong>build any website with any CMS, doesn\u2019t mean you should<\/em>. It depends on who the site is for, who will be maintaining it, whether it\u2019s going to grow over time\u2026etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my opinion, Joomla stands out as a great option because it was designed from the start to be a website<\/strong> content management system, so it comes with all the basics (and then some) for building a good website:<\/p>\n\n\n\n