Tassos Marinos, the man behind Tassos Extensions

Tassos is a Greek first name which, thanks to the hard work of a Joomla user, has become a well-known brand of extensions in the community.
Tassos Marinos now leads a company which provides a number of useful extensions ( some say essential ) in free or pro versions, and always with the same desire to be useful to Joomla users.
Let's take a look at the origins of this project, and find out who the man behind the developer is.

Many Joomla users are familiar with your extensions, but we don't really know much about you. Can you give us a quick introduction?

I was born and live in Kos, Greece. I’m married and have a wonderful 2-year-old daughter who keeps me on my toes. In my free time, I enjoy playing the guitar, swimming in the beautiful sea surrounding our island, reading books across various genres, and watching a lot of YouTube, which keeps me entertained and informed.

My mornings are quite structured; I start with a 30-minute HIIT workout with kettlebells to kickstart my day with energy. After a refreshing shower, I prepare a cold-press juice made with fresh fruits and vegetables, which helps me stay healthy and focused.

One of the perks of my work is that my office is in the basement of my house. This means I get to skip the daily commute, allowing me to spend more time with my family and dive into my interests.

While you might see my name a lot, it's important to remember that Tassos isn't a one-man show! We're a three-person team based in Kos.

Living in Kos offers a wonderful balance of tranquility and inspiration, which I try to bring into every aspect of my life.

What was your first encounter with Joomla?

My journey with Joomla began in 2013 when I built websites using the Joomla CMS. One of my clients, who ran an e-commerce site, struggled with low newsletter subscriptions and asked if we could increase his email subscribers. This challenge led me to think about automatically adding new website registrants to his MailChimp list.

As a beginner web developer, I searched the Joomla Extensions Directory for a suitable plugin but found none. Determined, I decided to create my solution. With Joomla’s documentation as my guide, I developed my first extension, MailChimp Auto-Subscribe, within ten days. It was installed on my client’s website, and the email list started growing immediately.

Excited by the success, I installed the plugin on several other websites and soon realized the broader potential. In 2014, I published my first extension on JED, marking the official start of my Joomla development journey.

When did you start developing? At the same period, before or later?

As I mentioned earlier, my first extension, MailChimp Auto-Subscribe, was born out of a need to help a client increase their email subscribers. This successful project sparked my interest in developing more Joomla extensions.

EngageBox came to life in 2014 when I noticed a growing trend among websites to use popups. These popups would appear as small boxes at the bottom right corner of the screen with smooth, eye-catching animations, often featuring an opt-in form or a promotional banner. Excited by this trend and confident in my CSS, Javascript, and jQuery skills, I developed the Responsive Scroll Triggered Box. This component allowed users to create these engaging scroll-triggered boxes and display them in any corner of their website with fancy animations.

Convert Forms was inspired by my belief that the Joomla form industry lacked a user-friendly, modern visual editor. I wanted to create a form builder that made designing forms quickly and without technical expertise easy. This led me to develop Convert Forms, which made the form creation process enjoyable and accessible to everyone.

Another extension, Google Structured Data, originated from a suggestion by my friend Joe Campbell on Twitter about five years ago. He needed a tool to add structured data to his website but didn’t want to use a heavy SEO package just for this feature. Seeing the potential of structured data to improve SEO and looking for my next project after EngageBox, I decided to develop a dedicated plugin.

Each of these extensions was created to address specific needs and opportunities I encountered, and they have all contributed to my ongoing journey in the Joomla world.

What challenges did you face? How did you overcome them?

In a three-person company like ours, you wear a lot of hats. We're all programmers; that's our passion—building things and bringing them to life. But the reality is, with a small team, the tasks go way beyond coding.

The biggest challenge for us is juggling everything at once. SEO, marketing, social media, you name it—it all falls on our shoulders. We even handle server administration, content creation, and working out deals with partners. And don't forget the visual side of things—graphics and illustrations! It can feel like we're constantly switching gears!

Honestly, it's a constant learning curve. We must carve out time to educate ourselves on these different areas, even sacrificing some coding time. Thankfully, tons of online resources and collaboration tools are available these days. Sometimes, we even outsource specific tasks when we're over our heads.

The good news is there's a lot of support for small businesses like ours. Plus, the variety keeps things interesting, and you never know when you might pick up a new skill that comes in handy down the road. Who knows, maybe one of us will become a coding, design, and workflow-wrangling superhero!

Did you start earning a living quickly or was it complicated?

For the first four years, developing Joomla extensions was more of a side project for me. During that time, I worked as a web designer and developer at a web design agency, and I only worked on my Joomla extensions in the afternoons and evenings. The side project wasn’t generating enough income to consider it as my main job.

It wasn’t until after five years that I saw the true potential within the Joomla ecosystem. Recognizing this opportunity, I decided to resign from my position at the web design agency and dedicate myself fully to developing Joomla extensions.

Since then, my company, Tassos, has grown steadily and now provides a stable income for my family. Despite the shrinking Joomla market, we’ve experienced slight growth each year, which gives us confidence in our continued success.

Are you in contact with other independent developers? How can this kind of collaboration work?

I always monitor Joomla’s GitHub official repository to stay updated on code changes and popular issues reported by other developers. I recently joined the Joomla Mattermost community, which has a dedicated channel for developers. I read the questions and topics reported daily, and this channel has been incredibly helpful for making informed decisions when developing my extensions and fixing any major problems.

One developer I communicate with is Nicholas Dionysopoulos from Akeeba. He is a genius when it comes to Joomla development. Whenever I encounter significant challenges, I reach out to Nicholas for his thoughts, and he always provides detailed and insightful replies within minutes.

Another developer I frequently talk with is Yiannis Christodoulou from Web357. Yiannis is an excellent developer who also runs a Joomla company. We often have long mobile calls where we exchange our thoughts. It’s always enjoyable to hear his perspectives on Joomla extensions and how he manages his company.

This collaboration works well because it allows developers to share knowledge and solve problems more efficiently. Being part of a community where everyone can exchange ideas and support each other is invaluable for continuous learning and improvement.

Which of your extensions is your favorite, or the one you're most proud of? Why?

I am really proud of Convert Forms. The 800+ reviews and the 5-star rating on the Joomla Extensions Directory speak for themselves. It now ranks #2 in the top-rated extensions list in the market.

I never imagined working on a Joomla extension like Convert Forms would be so much fun. Its user-friendly form builder in the backend makes building forms incredibly easy. When it’s time to develop a new feature for Convert Forms, I genuinely look forward to it. Although it requires a lot of brainstorming, research, and coding, I always enjoy the process.

Convert Forms is our flagship product, and seeing how much our users appreciate it brings me great satisfaction.

What are the most common misconceptions about your extensions?

Common misconceptions about our extensions:

EngageBox Popup Builder: Our popup builder is versatile and can be used for various purposes, such as growing your newsletter subscribers, boosting sales, and guiding visitors to landing pages. It also includes tools like cookie consent control. However, this feature is often misunderstood. It simply displays that your site is using cookies and is for presentation purposes only. Some users mistakenly believe it is a comprehensive cookie consent tool that manages preferences and tracks visitor agreements, which it is not.

Google Structured Data Tool: This tool helps you mark up your pages with structured data to enhance your chances of achieving rich results in search listings. A common misconception is that using the tool guarantees these rich results will appear in Google’s search results. In reality, it only increases the chances. Users often ask why they don’t see changes in their search listings after implementing structured data. It’s important to understand that Google needs time to determine eligibility and there is no guarantee of immediate results.
What is the one thing people don't know about one or some of your extensions?
What are the topics people always ask for support?

Common topics that people frequently seek support for:

Discount Requests: Many users inquire about discounts when purchasing the Pro version of our extensions.
Email Delivery Issues: A frequent issue is with email delivery—either emails are not being delivered at all or ending up in the spam folder. This is usually due to a misconfiguration in the form settings.
Multi-Step Forms: Another popular request is a multi-step feature in Convert Forms, which is currently under heavy development. Implementing this feature is rather tricky as it requires a lot of refactoring and ensuring that we do not break anything during updates.
Popup Display Issues: Users often seek support for EngageBox popups that either do not appear when they should or appear when they shouldn’t. This is usually due to incorrect configuration of the popup display conditions.

What is your involvement in the Joomla community?

Given that our company is small, our workload is quite demanding, which unfortunately limits my ability to volunteer as much as I would ideally like. While I’m not proud of this, I have always wanted to contribute more actively to Joomla.

I aspire to carve out additional time to become a more dedicated contributor. Joomla has been integral to our success, and I am eager to give back more significantly to the community that has provided us with so much.

In what way(s) do you give back to the Joomla Community?

Giving back to the community is essential for us. Joomla puts food on our table, and we believe it’s important to contribute in return. We always want to help local communities with their finances to create great events and promote Joomla to everyone. Events are crucial, and we want to be part of them.

Every year, we sponsor Joomla events worldwide to support the community. This year alone, we have sponsored the following events:

Sponsoring these events is our way of supporting the vibrant Joomla community, which has given us so much.

What do you think of Joomla's ecosystem?

Joomla's true magic lies in how much you can extend it. With the right extensions, you can practically build anything you can dream of, and a lot of that functionality is available for free, which is unheard of in other CMS platforms.

It's a bit of a running joke that people keep asking if Joomla is even still around. It drives me crazy! Joomla's extensibility keeps it fresh and relevant. A whole community of developers is out there creating new extensions and keeping Joomla thriving. We all have a responsibility to keep that fire going, you know? Building awesome websites with Joomla and showing the world its potential – that's how we shut down those 'is Joomla dead?' questions for good.

I'll admit that in the past, there was a valid fear that major updates might break your site. This definitely led some users to jump ship. Thankfully, that's changed! Joomla now makes a huge effort to maintain backward compatibility, making updates much smoother. They really communicate this better these days, too. It's a great time to be a Joomla user, and with the strong community behind it, I see nothing but a bright future.

How do you see your future with Joomla? Do you have any surprises up your sleeve?

I’m all in with Joomla and see myself working with it for many more years. We have exciting product plans, and you can check out our roadmaps on our site. We aim to get more users and keep showing everyone just how awesome Joomla is. I want to help make Joomla bigger and boost its market share with our software.

We’ve also got some new product ideas brewing. I can’t spill the details yet, but we’ll be rolling out some cool new tools in the next few years. Keep an eye out!

Tassos Marinos extensions site: https://www.tassos.gr/joomla-extensions