Alright guys, it is time for our second interview and we are very happy to meet you with Valentín García (htmgarcia). Learn more about Valentín, what his typical day looks like, who his favourite author is and so on :)
Valentín García (aka htmgarcia) is an Elite Envato Author. He joined the Envato Marketplaces back in December 2011 and became an active author in August 2012 when his first item was approved for sale on Codecanyon.net. Currently, Valentín is focused in the Template Development and for less than two years he managed to build an extensive portfolio with quite various items.
Tell us a bit more about you, your workspace and htmgarcia as a whole.
htmgarcia is a team of one person (me) + some of the best web designers around the world.
This great adventure started while I was living in León, Guanajuato (México) after finishing my career as IT Engineer at Universidad Tecnológica de León. Now back in my town, San Julián, Jalisco (México) I work in a "small office" located inside my bedroom. Planning to move to a new location with more space and at least a wall between my bed and my work space ~ lol
When I'm not coding, I'm coding (again). I really enjoy making Joomla stuff, also I do design and coding at OSTraining.com, the best place to learn Joomla from beginner to advanced.
What does a typical day look like for you?
A common day is about providing support, create new templates and keep our Themeforest stuff updated. We are talking about 10 to 12 hours of hard work. The weekends I'm totally offline.
When did you discover the beauty of Joomla and how did you start your business?
Around 2010 discovered Joomla in a work interview, a guy who was selling websites based on Joomla told me about the magic of using this CMS. I was amazed by his words, so, I started learning Joomla 1.5 by myself.
I started working on some CodeCanyon items around 2012, then I quickly jumped to design HTML templates in Themeforest. Now, Joomla is the main focus.
What is your favourite part of being a part of the Envato Community?
Envato makes it possible to achieve my goals at my own pace. That is the kind of freedom that is appreciated.
Envato is the best school for entrepreneurs, so much to learn here, I remember my first rejections, at the beginning I was disappointed, then I realized that was the clue to develop better items. Kailoon and Ivor, the reviewers made a great job by telling me the truth about my first tries.
You convert existing Wordpress/HTML items to Joomla and you are doing it perfectly well. How do you choose the items to work on?
Thanks for your kind words, Ivo!
Joomla is the best CMS, but some of the best themes are only available for WordPress. So, I decided to make it possible to have the flexibility of Joomla with the great designs that are only available for WordPress.
Do you have a favorite Themeforest author? If yes, who is he and what do you like about him?
Yes, I'm a big fan of Marius Hogash, he is the best Joomla template developer in my humble opinion.
What advice would you give, as a successful and Elite Author, to someone who is just entering the Envato community?
Always work hard no matter how many rejections you can get (and you can get a lot). Once you discover the positive side of rejections, you will be able to produce much better results.
What is the next big thing for htmgarcia?
Honestly, sometimes I feel tempted for WordPress and PSD category, but the plan is to make Joomla stronger.
A personal life goal I'm excited to achieve is travel to Japan. It is one of those expensive dreams that I plan to come true.
What do you think about the future of Joomla? How do you see the CMS in 5 years from now?
Joomla will be lighter and the backend will be much easier to manage.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Thanks Ivo for the opportunity to share some thoughts about my experience with Joomla in the Envato community.
There is a lot of work to do to make Joomla a much easier and popular CMS. I'm confident Joomla authors on Themeforest believe in this software because it is simply the best.
Thank you very much for the time you spent on this interview Valentín! I'm sure it will be interesting for our readers :)
Yes, we also love the Joomla! CMS and we are confident it is the best CMS out there! Have a great day Valentín and we wish you a lot of success with your projects :)
