This website uses cookies

Our website, platform and/or any sub domains use cookies to understand how you use our services, and to improve both your experience and our marketing relevance.

📣 Try the fastest hosting platform with pay-as-you-go pricing & 24/7 expert support! MIGRATE NOW →

Iurașog Ștefan Discusses Magento Frontend Development

Updated on May 10, 2017

4 Min Read

Iurașog Ștefan is an experienced Magento frontend developer with more than ten years of experience in the field. He is well versed in Magento storefront design and related aspects of the platform. He is well known in the Magento community for his excellent sense of humor.

Iurașog Ștefan Discusses Magento Frontend Development

So, without further ado, let’s start the interview. 🙂

Cloudways: Iurașog Ștefan, you are the Senior Magento Frontend Developer at WeltPixel. You have more than ten years of development experience with several Web Applications. Please share some highlights of your career with our readers.

Ștefan: I started in January 2006 with the Joomla powered website of Cluj County Association of Handball. On this project, I learned a lot about Joomla, HTML, and CSS. I learned PHP by building plugins, modules, and components on Joomla. From January 2006 till the summer of 2009, I created Joomla based websites.

In 2009, I started doing my first Magento store. At first, it was not easy working on a new platform, but I knew that it was worth my time to learn all about Magento. Worth it to learn Magento due to the way it functions. The biggest challenge for me was to understand how MVC and Layout work. However, I loved the fact that despite the complexity of the platform, launching and managing single and multiple stores was a piece of cake! And playing in his Administration, I fell in love with its complexity and how easy is to manage a shop or more shops on the same court. To date, I am well versed in HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, XML, PHP, SQL, XHTML, and shell.

At present, I have my own company, Green Art Business where I work on several projects. I closely collaborate with WeltPixel, a well known Magento Agency that offers complete solutions for Magento 1 (Cleo Theme) and Magento 2 (Pearl Theme). It also provides themes for Magento Community and Enterprise, extensions for Magento 1 and 2, custom development; marketing integrations and automation, Speed optimization, Fraud prevention, and integrations with third-party solution providers.

Working with the WeltPixel team, we developed our first Magento 2 Theme, Pear that is already available on the Magento Marketplace. We also developed four modules for Magento 2 (also available on the Magento Marketplace).

Cloudways: You are a highly skilled frontend developer with a busy schedule. How did you manage your personal and professional life?

Ștefan: It would be simple to say that my personal life is like Magento: complex but easy to manage. I think my professional life takes more than 70% of my time. However, to be successful in any field, you have to work, work, and work more!

Cloudways: Magento is already very popular across the world. What would be your advice to the merchants thinking about moving to Magento? What benefits does Magento offer over other ecommerce platforms?

Ștefan: My advice for the merchants is this: Learn how the platform works. Magento is a very stable platform with a great community. Managing a Magento store is not that challenging, and there is a lot of help available through the community.

The advantage of using Magento, in my opinion, is the regular updates of the core Magento platform. Magento partners and solution providers offer very customized solutions.

Cloudways: What makes Magento different from other ecommerce platforms in the market? How would you describe your relationship with the Ecommerce environment and Magento?

Ștefan: From my point of view, Magento offers stability, security, innovation and regular updates to the general ecommerce market.

I have a very active relationship with Magento. I attend conferences and try to actively contribute to the community. I try to keep myself updated with the developments in the core platform and the general ecosystem of Magento.

Cloudways: You are a Magento Certified Frontend Developer. When did you realize that this certification can give you an edge in the Magento market? Why is there a need for such certification?

Ștefan: I believe that the certification does not highlight your expertise in the development but rather indicates that you can develop on Magento. Certification is a plus for a developer and they necessarily demonstrate to the employer or the client that you are able to develop a store on Magento.

I think that my certification mattered a lot when I started collaborating with WeltPixel.

Cloudways: What do you think it takes to become a good Magento frontend developer? What strategy do you follow when it comes to making responsive designs and views?

Ștefan: To become a very good developer, you have to specialize in one area of Magento development. In my case, I specialize in Zend framework, PHP, and MySql.

To implement a responsive design, you must keep this in mind: optimizing the resources and information for a fast browsing experience and comfortable is necessary.

Cloudways: Magento is a powerful and complex ecommerce platform. What would be your advice to the newbies for getting the most out of the Magento platform? What do you think are the main challenges for a student stepping into the Magento frontend development?

Ștefan: Magento is a real challenge for beginners. My recommendation is to understand MVC well and how it works with the layout template. Beginners should also realize that Magento is more than a simple online store.

Cloudways: Please tell our readers about your typical work day.

Ștefan: A day in my life:

  • Wake up at 5 AM and go to the office at 5 30 AM.
  • Start work at about 6 AM. Take a quick lunch break and continue work till 2 PM.
  • Go home and spend time with the family. (this is when there is no emergency!)

Cloudways: Do you like watching movies, playing games? How do you spend your leisure time?Please tell our readers about your hobbies and interests.

Ștefan: Yes, I like movies and games. However, I have two children, a girl of 2 years, and a one-month baby boy. Thus watching TV and movies is now a secondary interest. I used to play handball and ride a bike or a motorbike. Now, I feel that my family needs me more!

Cloudways: Name some people who have inspired you in your personal and professional life.

Ștefan: The most important person in my personal and professional development is my wife, Roxana.

Cloudways: Cloudways provides 1-click Magento installation with awesome speed and very stable cloud infrastructure. Do you prefer shared hosting for Magento stores or a cloud hosting environment like Cloudways?

Ștefan: Cloudways is a very good solution because of ease of installing Magento. From personal experience, I recommend shared hosting in every case. Cloud hosting solutions are far superior to shared hosting and Cloudways offers a great cloud hosting platform.

Share your opinion in the comment section. COMMENT NOW

Share This Article

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]

×

Get Our Newsletter
Be the first to get the latest updates and tutorials.

Thankyou for Subscribing Us!

×

Webinar: How to Get 100% Scores on Core Web Vitals

Join Joe Williams & Aleksandar Savkovic on 29th of March, 2021.

Do you like what you read?

Get the Latest Updates

Share Your Feedback

Please insert Content

Thank you for your feedback!

Do you like what you read?

Get the Latest Updates

Share Your Feedback

Please insert Content

Thank you for your feedback!

Want to Experience the Cloudways Platform in Its Full Glory?

Take a FREE guided tour of Cloudways and see for yourself how easily you can manage your server & apps on the leading cloud-hosting platform.

Start my tour

CYBER WEEK SAVINGS

  • 0

    Days

  • 0

    Hours

  • 0

    Mints

  • 0

    Sec

GET OFFER

For 4 Months &
40 Free Migrations

For 4 Months &
40 Free Migrations

Upgrade Now