TYPO3 Talk with Richard: TYPO3 Core + Symfony Specialist

Hi, well my name is Richard Haeser and although some Germans think based on my name, I’m from the Netherlands. I’m 38 years old, married to my wife Japke and have 3 kids called Koen, Hannah and Daan.

Although I’m a developer from origin, I also really like to discuss with clients about how to solve their problems and consult them how they can work in a sustainable way.

Back in 2010, I started as a PHP developer at a TYPO3 agency called alterNET. Nowadays the company does not exist anymore, but during that time I worked together with for example Ric van Westhreenen and Jigal van Hemert. Both quite familiar people within the community.

Although I was working with PHP for several years already, I did not have any experience with TYPO3. By doing great projects and with help of colleagues, I was able to pass the TYPO3 CMS Certified Integrator exam within 6 months. I saw the potential of TYPO3 and loved the modularity. Another thing I really liked was the TYPO3 community. I liked the amount of information that was shared and although a lot of great information was often in German, it was always good to see that “inspiring people to share” were not only some marketing buzz words.

I became an active contributor about 5 years ago. I always wanted to be of help, but always found it difficult to start. When the company I worked for back then (MaxServ), partnered up with the people of Yoast, I became the maintainer of that project. It showed me some missing parts within the TYPO3 core to do SEO the right way so I started to provide patches for SEO-related things in core. I also started to make the company more aware contributions are really valuable. This resulted in having multiple people contributing to the TYPO3 ecosystem and organizing several TYPO3 events.

Now 5 years later, I’m an active TYPO3 core developer and working on all sorts of things within TYPO3 core. For the last three years, I mainly focussed on SEO and the new Dashboard.

This year I started my own business. I’m lucky that I’m able to do the thing I really love: spending even more time on TYPO3 core. This is only possible by companies and people sponsoring me to do so. So I am really grateful for all my sponsors and hoping to get even more sponsors so I can spend even more time on enhancing TYPO3.

Besides doing TYPO3 core development I also help TYPO3 agencies. Sometimes by providing development capacity, sometimes just by sharing knowledge with training or consulting. One of the things I love to share is my experience in making companies more aware of the sustainability you could get by using and sharing open-source. If you do it the right way, I’m sure this will help every company. Both agencies as clients!

In the Netherlands (and I guess in several other countries), TYPO3 is not that familiar as a product. Several municipalities are using TYPO3 as a product, but most of the TYPO3 users in the Netherlands are not really aware they use TYPO3. They just use it as a tool. So we really have to show the possibilities of the product. So the thing I would recommend is don’t “sell” TYPO3. Sell the solutions you have with TYPO3.

I don’t really like to look back and blame people or situations. I think everybody does everything with the best intentions. Maybe that is naive, but I'd rather trust someone than be very suspicious. I think we all have had our doubts with the situation around TYPO3 v5 / Phoenix / Neos. Which way was the CMS heading? The thing that convinced me that TYPO3 was heading the right direction was when I saw the passion from Mathias Schreiber, Benni Mack and lots of other people resulting in great TYPO3 releases. Nowadays, I’m not that afraid anymore. I know that several people spend more and more time on enhancing TYPO3. It is always good to keep an eye on other CMSes, but as long as we keep listening to our users, I’m sure TYPO3 will have a bright future. All the key ingredients are there.

I can only speak on my own behalf but in general I think most people agree that we should do more on the editing experience. This part has my particular focus. How to make it easier for editors to create high quality content. Together with Benni, I’m working hard on those things and I’m sure (most) people would love those things.

Well, I’m in doubt. The first thing that comes to my mind is that I’m not sure if you want to compare TYPO3 with WordPress. TYPO3 has functionality that WordPress is lacking as well as the other way around. Both have their own pros and cons. On the other hand, I disagree with people saying TYPO3 is for enterprises only. 

For most people it is still easier to create a new basic website in WordPress than with TYPO3. So I think it is good that there are more and more easy-to-start solutions with TYPO3. By making it easier to start, more and more people will try TYPO3. They will see the potential and will not only use it for their local soccer-club-website, but also for the website of their company. But we also should not focus to become “the new WordPress”. That should not be the goal. It could be the result though.

I think we are already working hard on that: marketing. I think we have a great product, now people have to know about that. The marketing team is doing a great job and I think it is only a matter of time (and money) people will know about TYPO3.

If you want to expand the market-share I think it is essential to spend a lot of time in non-German-speaking countries. No offense, but I think in the German-speaking regions, there is not that big of a “problem”. Having people spending time to help developers in Africa is really promising. I also offered my services as a mentor for people in this project. Hopefully I can be of help to expand TYPO3 in other parts of the world.

It is good to see such an initiative. It is always hard in the TYPO3 community to talk about money for extensions or contributions. We are spoiled with lots of good free of charge extensions. If you compare that to communities like WordPress or Magento as well, people are way more willing to pay for good extensions. I think having a marketplace is a good thing in general, but it should get some time before it will be used a lot I guess. People will slowly get used to the idea that open source is not always the same as free software. We all want to earn a bit of money to be able to share and support the open source extensions. Having a platform to sell your extensions is key for that.

I always liked that it is based on PHP. Otherwise I think I would never have started with TYPO3 as I was a PHP developer before I started with TYPO3. Nowadays I think being a “PHP-CMS” is not enough. Most of the PHP developers are specialised in one or more frameworks. That is why I like it very much that TYPO3 is using more and more Symfony components. Developers that are familiar with Symfony will have way less to learn before they can get the most out of TYPO3. For sure the other frameworks are good as well, but it is a good thing we use components of such a framework.

In most of the projects I did, the multi-everything was always the main success. I worked on projects with lots of languages, lots of sites and lots and lots of pages. Ok, sometimes it was hard but most of the times, TYPO3 didn’t let me down.

Well the first one is really easy: Benni Mack. I really doubt if TYPO3 would be the product as it is today if he was not leading the core team. I am really privileged to work together with him for the core and I learn a lot from him (follow him and his colleagues on b13 on social media for excellent knowledge). The second person I would like to highlight is Susi Moog. I think I met Susi for the first time on TYPO3 UX week. She really mentored me during my first steps on core contributions and is still sharing a lot of knowledge not only to me but to everyone. 

Other people I would suggest to follow on social media: Daniel Goerz, Daniel Siepmann, Georg Ringer and Tomas Norre. I’m sure I miss a lot of people, but those people show on a daily base that contributing to open source is fun and we can all learn a lot of those people!

Besides the website of T3Planet https://t3planet.com/blog, I have several blogs I follow and I think those are interesting for everyone: https://usetypo3.com/, https://www.scripting-base.de/, https://daniel-siepmann.de/ and of course my own website https://www.richardhaeser.com ;-)

Yes, we do! Being active is pretty subjective. I think we as a community should be aware that if we want to make the next step, we should invest. Invest in spending time on contributions (on all parts) or invest money in people that can do that for you. This is also why I applied for budget to create some digital workshops how to contribute to the TYPO3 ecosystem. Follow me on social media to get the latest news about those workshops.

Apart from developing with TYPO3, I also like to talk about TYPO3. Just kidding. After doing my hobby called TYPO3, I also like to travel with my family. Work hard, play hard. Spending time with my wife and kids is really important to me.