人物自述

1. Your Name,  birth date.

Hazzaa Kassis
May 23, 1962

2. Country, State, City.

Sioux City, Iowa
United States

Born in Lebanon
Raised in Canada and have been living in the US for 10 years

3. Your company website, or link to your blog, your project site, or any other link related to your Joomla works.

http://www.joomlame.com

4. your photo.

5. What did you do for Joomla community ?

I began using Joomla a little more than 2 years ago. I studied it for a lilt more than 6 months before building my first website. It wasn't that Joomla was difficult but I am the type of person who like perfection. There are many components, plugins etc... for the Joomla CMS but many are lacking in real high quality. I became a member of many communities that developed open source components and began my trip is giving my share of support. There was no need for me to develop anything but there was a need to help others with what they wanted to do. My real trip into the Joomla world was in working with a forum component that was ... needing some support. I began supporting the other members, fixing bugs, and supplying hacks that would make the component a little more stable.

After trying to communicate with developers for quite some time and to no avail, I decided (as I do with any other business) I needed to do something on my own. From there Agora forum was created and quickly becoming a very well recognized component in the Joomla world. Our goal for the future of Agora is to make it the most stable and reliable fully native component for Joomla. Even though Agora is not a standalone forum, we want to supply Joomla communities all over the world the ability to run an integrated forum with the power, stability and performance of any standalone forum there is.

You have to LOVE Open Source

6. How do you think about Joomla and its future? ( details prefered )

Joomla has a great future but I think the core team needs to back up a little and reconsider some of their ideas. The progress of Joomla is needed but the core code can't change at every new development. We developed Agora for Joomla 1.0.x. From there we have since upgraded our component to a full J!1.5 native. There are still many thing required of Agora to be a truly native component. It resides in Joomla and runs on Joomla tables but in a someone cheated manner. We are now redeveloping (rewriting the entire code) to make it a full true integration. With Joomla 1.6 now on the building block and developers have no idea as to what to look forward to. Hence we are left in the dark until further notice. What will happen to the work we do today and what will we need to do to meet the new ever changing structure of Joomla.


7.What do you want to say to Chinese Joomla users ?

If every Joomla web developer in China downloads and Uses Agora... WOW :-)

8. If you have a team, or a company, you can introduce it too.

I have spoken a great deal about Agora and how great it is. But what really make Agora the powerful, and great component that it is and is becoming is the great team of developers behind it. Yep I am not alone and can't take all the credit.

My lead developer is a Russian Gentleman. Evgeny Marchenko. One of the best coders I have ever had the pleasure of calling a friend and a partner. Evgeny has a very diverse ability of programming languages. Not less than ten but I am almost certain it is less than 100 :). Without Evgeny, though we may still be developing Agora, I think production would slow down substantially.

Next on the list is another great asset to the team and also from the great country of Russia Dmitriy Kindeev. Dmitriy speaks no English but thanks to Google we have been able to communicate all our needs. Dmitriy's Strong points are his intellect and intelligence. He is a Surgeon by trade (which makes him smarter than me) but has a knack for coding. His ability to research, learn and implement what he has learned has mad Dmitriy one our best assets. Dmitriy does not code for the love of coding but his love for Agora to truly become the best it can be has pushed him to true lengths to help it get there.

This does not include our many testers who spent many hours playing with Agora as it was being developed. Giving their input as how to make better what functions were lacking and what features were broken.

So when you are enjoying the use and power and the beauty of Agora, remember this great people helped put it all together.

9. Any information else you want us to forward to Chinese Joomla Community.

Hazzaa Kassis, is a highly innovative individual. If you dare to dream, he will make an unprecedented effort to help you achieve your goal. No task is too small and no task is so undaunting that he will not attempt with all probable reasoning to achieve that task. His strong suits are so invariably diverse that it is difficult to name them all. He is exceptional at salesmanship, customer service, technical support and innovation and not necessarily in that order. Additionally, his ability to complete tasks for his customers comes from a striking resourcefulness to build the team that is necessary to round out any shortcomings there may be in his vast expertise.

中文译文

1. 姓名及生日:

Hazzaa Kassis，出生于 1962年5月23日。 2. 来自哪里

现居住于美国衣阿华州 Sioux 市。

我在黎巴嫩出生，在加拿大长大，来美国已经10年了。


3. 个人网站或博客：

http://www.joomlame.com


4. 照片：

5. 您为 Joomla! 做了哪些工作?

 我是从两年前开始使用 Joomla 的。我花了6个多月学习它之后就建起了我的第一个网站。倒不是因为 Joomla 难学，而是因为我是一个追求完美的人。Joomla CMS 已有很多的组件、插件等等，但是大多没有很高的质量。我加入了很多开发开源组件的论坛，同时也帮助解决一些问题。并不存在需要我开发什么的要求，但是需要 我来帮助其他人。我真正深入 Joomla 世界的旅途始于对某个论坛组件的支持。我开始帮助其他会员，修复 bug, 提供代码修改，以便使该组件更加稳定。

在多次尝试与开发者沟通并失败之后，我决定(就像我做其它工作一样) 我自己来做点事情。从此，Agora 论坛组件就诞生了，并很快成为 Joomla 世界中一个受到充分认可的组件。我们对 Agora 未来的目标是将它做成最稳定、最可靠的一个 Joomla 标准组件。虽然 Agora 不是独立论坛，我们希望能给全球 Joomla 社区提供一个拥有任何独立论坛程序所具备的功能、稳定性及执行效果的整合论坛。

你会爱上开源的。

6. 您怎么看 Joomla 及其未来?

Joomla 的前途不可限量，不过我认为其核心团队需要后退一点并重新考虑他们的某些观点。Joomla 的进步当然是需要的，但不必在每个新版本中都改变核心代码。我们先是开发了针对 Joomla 1.0.x 的 Agora，然后又将它升级到完全支持 J!1.5. 要使 Agora 真正成为标准组件还需要做很多工作。它能安装到 Joomla 上并运行在 Joomla 数据库上，但那是通过某些“作弊”手段实现的。我们正在重新开发（重写全部代码）以将它变成完全融入 Joomla 的标准组件。随着 Joomla 1.6 成为官方的核心重点，没有哪个开发人员知道下一步发生什么。因此，我们被蒙在鼓里，除非得到新的通知，才能知道我们现在所做的工作将会面临什么样的变化， 我们还需要做什么样的改进才能符合新版本 Joomla 中的新变化。


7. 您想给中文 Joomla 用户说点什么吗 ?

如果中国的每一个 Joomla 建站人员都下载并使用 Agora... 哇噻 :-)

8. 如果您有团队或公司，介绍一下：

我说了很多关于 Agora 以及它有多棒的话，但真正使 Agora 成为强大、优秀的组件的，是它背后伟大的开发团队。是的，我不是一个人在战斗，我不能独揽所有的功劳。

我的开发人员中最出色的是一名俄罗斯的绅士，名叫 Evgeny Marchenko. 他是我见过的程序员中最好的一个，我很高兴我们既是朋友又是伙伴。Evgeny 了解很多程序语言。不少于10种，不过我差不多可以肯定不多于 100 :). 如果没有 Evgeny, 尽管我们还能继续开发 Agora, 但我相信工作效率将大打折扣。

名单上的下一位也是我们团队的人才，同样来自俄罗斯这个伟大的国家，他名叫 Dmitriy Kindeev. Dmitriy 不会说英文，但借助于谷歌翻译，我们能互相沟通。Dmitriy 最突出的一点就是他的聪明与才智。他的正式工作是一名外科医生（这一点使他比我聪明），但他拥有熟练的编程技巧。Dmitriy 拥有的钻研、学习及运用所学知识的能力使他成为我们最好的人才之一。Dmitriy 并非因为喜欢编程而编程，他是因为喜欢 Agora 并希望它成为最好的论坛组件，才加入这个开发队伍以帮助 Agora 达到那个目标。

这里还未包括我们广大的测试人员，他们花费了很多时间来运行 Agora，伴随它一起成长，发表他们的看法，关于如何改进它，还缺少什么功能，以及什么功能有缺陷等等。

因此，如果您喜爱 Agora 的功能及美丽之处，请记住正是这些伟大的人们帮助我们实现了这一切。

9. 您想通过我们给中文 Joomla 社区说点什么吗？

Hazzaa Kassis, 是一个非常有创新意识的人。如果您敢于想像，他将花费空前的精力来帮助您实现您的目标。事无巨细，他都能用尽各种办法来尝试完成。他强大的能力涵盖如此多 的方面以致于很难一一描述。他尤其擅长营销技巧、客户服务、技术支持和创新改革，且不一定就是这个次序。另外，他能够为客户完成任务的能力源于他能够创建 一支足智多谋的团队，以消除他个人宽广的经验技术中的任何补足。