With vast experience on the development side, Allan Macgregor is one of the most experienced developers of Magento. He is a certified Magento developer. Currently, he works at Magento’s most popular development and award winning company, Demac Media, as Director of Engineering. We are honored to have Allan on board for our famous interview series. “Magento PHP Developer’s Guide” is the acclaimed book for Magento PHP developers by Allan. Along with development and writing, he is also participating in several startup businesses.
In this interview, Allan talk in details about his career and his personal interests, as well as his views about Magento 2. He said “Magento 2 can offer better performance and in general a faster time to market, by this I mean that developers and agencies should be able to develop faster and more efficiently in Magento 2.”
Today, we are speaking frankly to Allan Macgregor. Let’s see what he has to say.
Cloudways: Allan, you are the most known personality in the Magento community. Currently, you work in Demac Media as Director of Engineering since the last seven months. How and why did you choose Magento as a career? What challenges did you face during your initial career?
Allan: Thank you for kind words, but I’m far from being the most known Magento personality; this community is full of people far more deserving of such a title.
I started working with Magento back in late 2009 when looking for a replacement for Oscommerce, at the time I was working as a freelancer and doing all kinds of PHP work; ever since I haven’t stopped working with Magento; so in a way you could say that I stumbled into Magento.
As far as the challenges are concerned, there were many but at the time the biggest one was just learning the platform. I was fortunate enough and had lots of help people from the community.
Cloudways: How was the experience of working with Demac Media as a Magento Practice Lead for more than three years? Do you think developer education is in absolute shape or there is a need of something more profound? How you manage your training sessions for the developers?
Allan: Certainly not, education is always an ongoing process that has to be constantly reinforced and updated; this is both true for the community and in my experience at Demac Media.
Currently, our training is primarily hands-on and focuses on a practical day to day work. With Magento 2 and the new paradigms that it introduces, I’m looking into revamping our internal training into a different, more structured format.
Cloudways: You wrote two books titled The Magento Developers Guide, and Test Driven Magento Extension Development. What made you write these books, which challenges did you face while writing these books? What are the three most viable tips for a newbie who wants to involve themselves in Magento?
Allan: The writing. Specifically, books are an enjoyable experience, very challenging. But at the same time, very rewarding as well and there is more to it than just sitting down and writing. Content needs to be planned, checked, and tested. On the other hand, writing books (at least writing them well) forces you do a lot of research, and you learn tons during the process.
What drove me to write these books was the urge to share knowledge, give back the community the resources that I would have loved to have had when I was starting. So in that sense, you can say by writing books I’m scratching my own itch.
Cloudways: Allan, you are Magento Certified Developer and Magento Certified Developer Plus. What’s your recommended learning platform for Magento certification? In your opinion, what are the advantages of being a Certified Magento Developer or Developer Plus?
Allan: In terms of training platforms or resources, there is nothing that I would particularly recommend for training other than being familiar with Magento; there are also tons of certification preparation guides and resources online.
As for the importance of the certification itself, there are obvious career advantages as having both certifications will make you more attractive to employers. Now from a purely practical and knowledged focused point of view, the certifications won’t make you a better Magento developer. In this sense the Magento 1 certifications had gaps on, what in my opinion, was important areas of knowledge for any Magento developers, like performance to give an example.
My hope is that the Magento 2 certification will do a better job showcasing and testing what should be the important and practical knowledge that Magento developers need to know.
Cloudways: You developed many Magento stores, share your first project journey with our readers. Magento 1.9.2.4 is on the market. What are the significant changes in this version? How many things has Magento improved in this release?
Allan: First project eh? Sure, it was this non transactional site that I believe is still around. At that time I was doing the transition from Oscommerce/ZenCart looking for a better ecommerce solution and I happened to stumble on Magento.
Curiously enough this first project was also with Demac Media, at the time it was my first freelance contact with them and it wouldn’t be much longer after that for me to join as a full time member of the team.
Version and functionality, that original site was on some variation of Magento 1.0 one of the very first stable versions; and oh boy have things changed. There have been many improvements on the platform.
Even better, the roadmap of improvements has continued with Magento 2 and I’m happy to say that I’m really hopeful for the future of the platform.
Cloudways: Allan, in Magento 2, what functionality do you like? Do you think merchants can increase their sales with Magento 2? What would be your recommendations for those e-merchants looking to upgrade from 1.x to the Magento 2? How do you see Magento growth with the Magento 2? What are your expectations of Magento 2 in coming years?
Allan: Right now, at least in my opinion it is too early for most M1 merchants to do the transition. There is not enough value yet to justify the re-implementation of most sites; however for new merchants the advantages are clear.
Magento 2 can offer better performance and in general a faster time to market. By this I mean that developers and agencies should be able to develop faster and more efficiently in Magento 2; at the same time offering better functionality and quality of the generated code.
On top of that, Magento 2 will very soon be offering functionality that will make this transition process worthwhile.
Overall, I have high hopes in the platform and in the fact that will continue growing and being the best in class tool for ecommerce.
Cloudways: There are many active Magento groups on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. Can you name a few positive ones you have joined? What are your views about these groups? What methods, other than social, do you use to connect yourself with Magento Community? What’s your recommendation for those people who want to involve themselves in Magento Community?
Allan: I used to be part of all those groups in particular the IRC channel. Nowadays, I limit myself to only participate the on Twitter and Slack.
Trying to keep up with all the social media and different media channels proved to be too time consuming. As far as recommendation goes, as long you are connecting with people from the community and be consistent on the channel that you use.
For anyone looking to get more involved into the Magento Community, there are tons of options from Stackoverflow to the Magento official forums or even their own private blogs. If anything, I would urge your audience to go out and contribute to the Magento community even if is in small ways; we need more people producing content and helping the community learn and grow.
Cloudways: Allan, what is your finest accomplishment that you are proud of :)? Is there any famous quote or motto that motivates you and helps to achieve more day by day?
Allan: I’m going to sound a little cheesy, but in terms of accomplishments I’m not done yet. There is still too much that I want to do to kind of settle down or be happy. I tend to do that a lot. I go back and review things I’ve done in the past with maybe indulge in too much self-criticism.
So for me, selecting an accomplishment is kind of hard; however if you were to twist my arm here I would say that contributing back to the Magento community is my finest accomplishment and being able to give that back in a small way is huge for me.
Regarding quotes or mottos I really don’t have a go to that I use every morning; however I do have a daily morning routine that I try to follow to near OCD inducing levels. I’ve noticed that following this routing helps me be more energetic, productive and in general feel better.
Cloudways: In your opinion, what are the advantages of attending the Meet Magento and Magento Imagine and other Magento conferences for amateurs who want to involve themselves in the Magento Community? How has your experience been so far with the community members :)? Have you ever attended any Magento event? If yes so share your interested moments with our readers. 🙂
Allan: I can’t speak directly about the Meet Magento’s as I haven’t been able to assist one yet, (although I might go to the next New York one), Magento Imagine I’ve gone to every single one with exception of the one in LA and I must say its worth every penny.
The reason Magento Imagine, or any conference for that matter is so valuable in my opinion is not necessarily the talks but the interaction with the rest of the community; and oh man does Magento have a great community.
All the community members I’ve ever met have been great, you would be hard pressed to find a nicer, down to earth, group of community members. Biggest advice that I can give to anyone going to their first conference is don’t be afraid of approaching community members; you won’t be disappointed.
Cloudways: Let’s get outside of Magento and talk about your personal life. I follow you on Facebook and saw some of your pictures, and I thought you are the guy who loves food 😉 Do you love to try new types of food dishes? Some people find it hard to manage their work-life balance. With a hectic schedule already in place, how do you find time to manage yourself?
Allan: I am a bit of a foodie with moderation. I’m nearly obsessed with sushi but outside that I try to keep a few healthy and no so healthy hobbies to keep me occupied. To mention a few, I recently got a bit of an obsession with fountain pens so I’ve started a small collection. I’m also a heavy gamer and enjoy spending a fair amount on that.
Work-life balance, well that’s an interesting question and there is really not a magic bullet that anyone can apply; where the balance lies is for each and everyone to define. I personally really like programming and technology so I will often spend what some might call an unhealthy amount of time programming or learning about tech; for me this is not work and I’m having fun as well relaxing.
For someone else the balance, might lie somewhere else; and that is perfectly fine. Schedule and time management skills that I have had to learn the hard way, best advice I can think is to be mindful of your time and say no more often there is a video by Derek Sivers that I would recommend your readers watching he drives the point home with a very simple maxim, either say HELL YES! Or no.
Cloudways: Every one of us gets inspiration from some influential personalities. Name some of the people within the Magento industry who have influenced and inspired you throughout your life?
Allan: Ok, I’ll do my best here to name a few but frankly there are so many to do them justice.
Fabrizio Branca – One of the smartest and kindest people that I’ve ever met and constant source of inspiration to continue learning more about our craft.
Vinai Kopp – Another extremely sharp and smart developer that I have the privilege of knowing, furthermore I owe Vinai for helping me out when I was just starting as a PHP developer and with Magento, he helped me to solve innumerable issues in the early days of Magento.
James Cowie – Great pal, extraordinarily humble developer and the person responsible for me getting neck deep in the world of testing, I’ve learned so much from him and I would strongly recommend everyone to keep an eye on this gentleman.
Phillip (aka Winkle) Jackson – Another Superstar of the Magento community, smart developer and source of inspiration that drove me and Jams to start Magecasts.io and now MageRoundTable.
Finally, I apologize to anyone that I left out; without exaggeration I’ve learned something from everyone that I’ve ever met at Imagine.
Cloudways: Using Nginx, Varnish, Apache, and Memcached as a recipe to optimize the server speed, Cloudways provides one-click installation of Magento 1 and Magento 2. What’s your opinion about it?
Allan: I’ve never had the pleasure of trying Cloudways directly, however I’ve designed and currently use a very similar stack on my production servers. I would be very interested on comparing performance and possibly learning something new from the way that Cloudways is doing their setups.
Abdur Rahman
Abdur Rahman is the Magento whizz at Cloudways. He is growth ambitious, and aims to learn & share information about Ecommerce & Magento Development through practice and experimentation. He loves to travel and explore new ideas whenever he finds time. Get in touch with him at [email protected]
