Giancarlo Morales is a professional web and ecommerce developer and CEO of Fragment with extensive knowledge of Magento. He is very dedicated to his work and always seeks to resolve problems and questions anyone may have.
Giancarlo started his development journey 8 years ago and today he is above the rest in the development of the Magento platform. His dedication, innovation, and commitment give his clients a result in the right product.
Let’s read his informative and enlightening interview.
Cloudways: Giancarlo, you are the Founder and CEO of your company, Fragment. You have more than 8 years of experience in the field of Web Development which also includes vast years of experience with ecommerce and Magento. Share your career history with our readers.
Giancarlo: I started in the world of programming at the school stage, with the development in Visual Basic 6.0. My father taught programming language at university, and I saw the forms being created, which I found interesting. Later, I enrolled in a technical school, and I learned how to program with greater skill.
Throughout my career as a programmer, I have had the opportunity to work in projects on different platforms and programming languages such as C #, VB.Net, Java, Python, Zope, PHP, WordPress, CodeIgniter, and others. Since I have worked in an advertising agency, I also took an interest in the design using Photoshop, Fireworks. Finally, I participated in the creation of advertising campaigns.
Cloudways: You have worked on numerous Magento based projects. How did you connect yourself with Magento? What challenges did you face initially and how did you manage them?
Giancarlo: Before I started to work with Magento, I had developed eCommerce projects with customized solutions in PHP. From 2011, I had the opportunity to work on my first project using Magento 1.6 version.
In the beginning, I was frustrated with the complexity of some parts of the platform and getting used to the long steps for adding functionalities, especially in Layout XML files. But exploring and playing with codes for some months I was able to develop my first project.
Cloudways: You are a Magento Certified Solution Specialist & Magento Certified Front End Developer. How important are these certifications for a Magento Developer and from where should one prepare for them?
Giancarlo: The Magento Certifications are very important because you can demonstrate your knowledge. The certifications open many doors for us so that work is available in any country. In fact, it’s international recognition. You don’t need to have a career to work as a Magento Developer in a company. I know Magento Developers, who didn’t study for any career, but they are working in a good job.
To prepare, a person must have made quite real projects and should play a lot with the codes. You should study deeply the main lines of code. I recommend using Magicento and Commerce Bug to review in detail how the code works and read some eBooks as “No Frills Magento Layout” by Vinai Kopp.
It is also important to read the Official Magento User Guide, especially if you are going to take the certification exam Magento Solution Specialist.
Cloudways: As the CEO of your company, on which area do you mainly focus on? How do you maintain the quality of work? What would be your suggestion for others who want to increase the quality of their work?
Giancarlo: In my company, I focus primarily on the areas of Design, Development and Technical Support; especially in technical support because as we provide 24/7 service. Sometimes customers call you at any moment for an emergency or need some urgent implementation. This happens because we do not have enough staff specialized in Magento all the time. I sometimes have to play with some code and solve problems. So, I like to keep tight control over everything that is done in these 3 areas.
On the technical side, to maintain the quality of work, we use tools like Selenium for external quality assurance, PHPUnit, CasperJS, Git. In Fragment we have rolled out this methodology to many of our Magento projects.
On the human side, we have many benefits in Fragment to work from home or traveling, because comfort and relaxation are important for higher productivity. Also, I would say that “my team is the company” because when they join the team, they also become shareholders of the company. This entails a greater commitment to the organization.
Regarding business, we have as a premise that the businesses of our customers are also our business. Therefore, we grow hand in hand with them.
My suggestion is that companies should not take lightly the use of tools for quality control. In the future, you will save many hours of work by solving problems. Also, I recommend focusing on the human aspect of the company, “The company is also alive and not just work.”
Cloudways: In your opinion, what is the greatest impact of Magento 2 on the ecommerce market? What changes would you like to see in Magento 2 and why?
Giancarlo: In my opinion, Magento 2 will end up by being crowned as the best Open Source platform because it will have rapid growth and will have formed a large community of Magento developers. However, it also depends on the emphasis that will encourage chief executives of Magento. To carry out strict quality control of code up to Magento Connect because that was one of the flaws in Magento 1. Technology teams of companies will think many times before venturing with Magento.
One of the things that I’d like to see in the future of Magento 2, is full integration with any platform Open Source Business Intelligence. This would help Magento to compete directly with eCommerce payment platforms such as IBM, SAP, Oracle, etc.
Cloudways: What is your recommended source of learning about Magento 2? How did your company start development on Magento 2? How do you think merchants can increase their sales with Magento 2?
Giancarlo: Of course, we are currently developing a Magento 2 store for a customer and also developing our store plugins under this new version.
Magento 2 can help businesses to manage very high peak of sales thanks to performance improvements. This enhanced and scalable architecture are a solid foundation for business growth.
On the technical side, updating versions Magento is something that retailers often are concerned about. This is simplified with Magento 2. Likewise, improvements in the import and export of products, customized options, and products are one of the improvements that save time for merchants.
To learn Magento 2, I recommend the following:
Blogs:
Magento 2 on Inchoo Blog
The Magento 2 Object System by Alan Storm
Books:
Magento 2 DIY. The Complete Guide by Viktor Khliupko
Magento 2 Developer’s Guide by Branko Ajzele
Tools:
Magicento2 (beta) by Enrique Piatti
Commerce Bug 3 by Alan Storm
Others:
Magento2 Samples
Cloudways: What do you think is the importance of Magento events like Meet Magento, Imagine Commerce, Developers Paradise for novice Magento learners and developers in the community? How do events like these support them? Have you attended any such events or plan to attend one?
Giancarlo: These are exciting events that bring much to all. I am planning to go next year to some Meet Magento to be organized in Latin America and, if possible, participate as a speaker and tell my experience on the Implementation of an Online Travel Agency on Magento using Web Services.
Cloudways: I see you are the founder of the Facebook group “Magento Peru.” Was your group able to attract Magento developers in the community? Do you think Magento developers use Facebook more actively, or they prefer any other forum?
Giancarlo: The group has been created to bring together developers interested in Magento in Peru; we currently have about 145 members who many are very good professionals using Magento. Here in Peru eCommerce is taking off recently and is seeing a rise in the demand of experts in Magento. So I think this year Magento will start to sound more in my country.
I prefer to use the Google Search Engine, Stack Exchange and groups in Facebook and LinkedIn. I rarely have had to post any questions in the communities because almost everything I found on the net.
Cloudways: Let’s put Magento discussion away for a while and tell us about your personal interests and hobbies. Do you love playing any sports or watching movies?
Giancarlo: In my free time, I like to practice Ninjutsu, the ancient martial art of Ninjas in the International School Bujinkan. I also like traveling, watching movies, reading about business strategies and new technologies related to computing.
I have many influences, and I’m sure everyone has some behind their success in personal and professional life. Name some people, who inspired you most.
People who inspired me at all times are my grandparents and my parents, who have taught me to be persistent and always have a vacation for work. I am also inspired much by the teachings of life and philosophy of Grandmaster Masaaki Hatsumi, which has helped me to have more confidence in myself, to live happy and carefree.
Cloudways: Cloudways provides 1-click Magento installation with awesome speed & famous cloud infrastructures embedded within the platform. Would you prefer shared hosting for Magento stores or a cloud hosting environment like Cloudways offers?
Giancarlo: For small projects, I opted for shared servers; for medium and large projects, I have used cluster server solutions. But in the latter, I have had bad experiences with some suppliers and have had to migrate to Amazon Web Services in which things went very well. I was reviewing the solutions that Cloudways offers, which I found out very interesting. I may use it for some of my projects in the future.
Fayyaz Khattak
Fayyaz, a passionate Motorbike tourist, works as a Team Lead — Magento Community at Cloudways - A Managed Magento Hosting Platform. His objective is to learn & share about PHP & Magento Development in Community. You can contact him at [email protected]
