TYPO3 Talk With Frank Nägler : CTO of TYPO3 GmbH

I am working for the TYPO3 GmbH as the CTO and live with my wife and cat in Hamburg, Germany. Since around 2010, I have been part of the TYPO3 community.  I had my first experience with TYPO3 with version 3.6. From 2014 until 2021, I was part of the TYPO3 core team as a framework merger. I have been an active member of the German Red Cross for more than 30 years.

As already mentioned, my first TYPO3 version was 3.6, but I was not successful ;) With version 3.7, I started my first CMS project, which was going live. At this time, a core patch was handled by sending patch files into a mailing list and discussing them there. I started writing some patches but was soon frustrated for several reasons. Some weeks later, I decided to stop contributing again but still use the CMS and report issues. After a few more years, I had a very long and excellent talk with Christian Kuhn (also known as Lolli) at the TYPO3 user group in Hamburg. He was the reason to dive deeper into the TYPO3 community and get involved in the core team.

The TYPO3 GmbH is providing services around the TYPO3 community. We support the whole community with platforms like My TYPO3, the official TYPO3 Shop, or the Exam Tool, where everyone can get certified online. We are running various other systems on an administrative level. But we are doing more things, for example, managing the TYPO3 YouTube channel or providing the ELTS program that extends the support of every TYPO3 major version for an additional three years.

Before I started at the TYPO3 GmbH, I was working for various bigger and smaller agencies. The advantage for these agencies was my proximity to the community. Contributing to the core during working hours was a win-win situation for both the companies and the project. It is the best training for an employee, and the proximity to the project helps improve their skills and make projects better. I can give that recommendation to any company working - and making a profit - with open-source products like TYPO3: Enable your employees to contribute and enforce community work. You will have a huge benefit even if you cannot put a price tag on it directly.

When I think back to my beginnings and look at the product today, I am proud of the development. From a technical point of view, we have been stable and predictable for years and remain up-to-date.

With three years of public support and an additional three years with the ELTS program, customers and agencies get the possibility to plan for up to six years in total. I am not sure if many other open-source products provide this. I think the project will have a great future, the community is growing, and many people love TYPO3.

In my opinion, this question should get answered by people other than me. But I think the future of TYPO3 is depending on what the community is doing. Indeed, we have people like Benni Mack with some visions or ideas, but TYPO3 is also what everyone can and will contribute. Open-source means bringing in your thoughts and concepts and taking responsibility for your ideas. You don’t need to be a programmer to contribute.

I don't think it's fair to compare the market share of the two systems.

Each system has its strengths and weaknesses. Compare specific use cases and features, e.g., how many multi-language sites are available with the respective systems, how many instances are one-pagers, or how many instances have more than 10, 50, 100 content pages. I want to say that the market share alone is not the basis for a direct comparison.

If we missed things in the past, I would say it is maybe the ease of use and perhaps the documentation, but teams are already working on it. In many talks, I heard, “TYPO3 is so complicated” or “Every time I need it, the documentation is missing or wrong.” And yes, this was often a problem in the past, but we have made excellent progress, the documentation team did a great job, and the usability gets better and better with every release.

The statement is “TYPO3 CMS is an Open Source Enterprise Content Management System”, and yes, it is on an enterprise level. But TYPO3 CMS is suitable for a private homepage, the craftsman in the neighborhood, the school homepage, or a small society. If I ask people: “Why do you not use TYPO3?” I often get the answer: “No, that is too much for my project.”. I say no, TYPO3 is for everyone and can be the right solution for nearly every CMS project. With tools like the bootstrap package, you can directly start creating content and have a rock-solid frontend out of the box. My personal opinion: “TYPO3 is a CMS for everybody.”, but people don’t know it :)

Global expansion starts in the local area. Sometimes I hear statements like “I don’t need this or that feature.”. Ok, but maybe someone else needs it? Or “Why should I write or talk in English?” Because we are a worldwide community! We have contributors from all over the world! Don’t get me wrong, every contributor is very welcome, but everyone should think bigger. I think a little less egoism and a little more thinking outside the box could help the project the most. Be open to new ideas, think outside your own needs, and ask yourself what will be the best for the whole community.

I think T3Planet is a good example of the power of open-source and the opportunities. T3Planet provides services and solutions that help our community, from the customer to the developer to the agencies. And T3Planet also supports the project by making TYPO3 more popular overall.

If we talk about popularity, we should mention that about 70% of all websites are built with PHP, so PHP is very popular and under active development. In the last years, many new programming languages were born and disappeared after some years. PHP has existed for more than 25 years, and I am sure it will live for at least 25 more years.

I am very sure that the popularity and ease of PHP are some of the reasons for the success of TYPO3. But if you would start TYPO3 today with the most popular programming language, would it be successful like TYPO3 is today? I am not sure, but I guess no because it is not the programming language that makes a product successful; it is the community and the programmers.

An interesting question, and if I think about my time at the agencies, the power of extendability was the most crucial feature for me. If the core does not provide the functionality, there is a big chance that you can find an extension or write your own.

Another significant feature was the multi-language feature, which has existed as a core feature for many years and is still missing in other open-source CMS.

That is hard to answer because many people in the open-source world have inspired me, not only in the TYPO3 universe. To name a few: Benni Mack, Oliver Hader (TYPO3), Fabien Potencier (Symfony), Nikita Popov (PHP), Nils Adermann & Jordi Boggiano (composer). But around each project, you find a lot more people, blogs, or other sources. It is hard to follow them all.

There are a lot of sources, but one I get in mind first is the TYPO3 developer blog “use TYPO3” of Daniel Goerz, he is writing about how to use all the new features of TYPO3 with code examples, and he also explains complex things in a way that everyone understands it. A second source is the blog of my colleague Susi Moog. On “susi.dev”, she writes about developer-related topics, also with code samples.

To get help and support and be part of the TYPO3 community, I recommend joining the TYPO3 Slack.

I already talked about the global expansion, but sure, the project needs active contributors at any time and in nearly every area. We already have fantastic teams, but every team can profit from more contributors because we also lose team members from time to time. The whole TYPO3 project can benefit from more contributors. If you are a marketing expert, UX guru, security expert, or nearly anything else, you can improve and help the project.

For two years now, I love to fly with my drones and take nice pictures and videos from the bird’s perspective.

As mentioned in the beginning, I am an active member of the German Red Cross. I started at the age of 12 in the youth organization of the red cross, and at the moment, I am the manager of the Civil Protection Unit of a local Red Cross District association with around 80 people.

I like and love the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement idea and am proud to help people if they need help.