The Essentials:

WebGUI Related Questions:

In what way(s) do you contribute to WebGUI or the WebGUI Community?
Our company has been maintaining the Arabic language translation for WebGUI since 5.5.8. And we currently frequent the forums and help newbies out.

When did you first hear of WebGUI?
I did a comprehensive study of all open source content management systems 5 years ago to determine which one we will use to build our portal and offer to our clients. WebGUI was the best then, and still is the best now.

How and when did you get involved in WebGUI?
I started with WebGUI to manage vegetarianegypt.com as a community site for vegetarians in Egypt. Later I used WebGUI to build one of the large general interest portal sites for the Arabic speaking Middle East. The site is has a world rank of 4000.

Are you paid to work on WebGUI?
Yes. All of our work to clients that want websites is on WebGUI.

How much time do you spend on WebGUI?
A lot. More than the time I spend with my kids.

What do you think is still missing from WebGUI or the WebGUI Community?
WebGUI needs more Assets or plugins in more popular terms. This needs a larger community, and that in turn needs WebGUI to be easy to install.

What keeps you motivated to keep working on WebGUI?
WebGUI keeps up, it has minor revisions a few times a month. It is alive in a way no other commercial software is. It eats Joomla for breakfast on a feature to feature comparison. The main strengths of WebGUI is that its architecture is very well thought out.

What's WebGUI's killer feature and why?
Templating. The degree of control over page layout is amazing. It is easy and very well defined. Not only that, this deep templating control allows you- with a bit of imagination- to take existing assets and apply them to new classes of problems that they where not intended to solve.

What's WebGUI's greatest weakness and why?
None, once you have it installed. Well, installing it is a bit hard for newbies.

What makes you work on WebGUI over the competition?
I believe in the core developers of WebGUI. I believe and that JT knows more about CMS design than anyone working in open source.
Also when I show people they can drag and drop elements in the page I love to see people's faces and reactions turn to that :)

What's your most brilliant WebGUI hack?
Mashy.com the Arabic language general interest portal is one big WebGUI hack. With the modular authentication we where able to get other systems to work as one with WebGUI. When a user registers they can get a free web based email account as well as free file storage and many other things that are done by other non CMS systems. All with the same authentication.

Have you attended the WebGUI User's Conference?
I live too far from any of the conferences that where held.

Where do you keep your Gooey doll?
In my imagination.

Personal Questions:

Are you married, dating, or otherwise involved?
Married.

Do you have any kids?
Yes, 3.

Do you have any pets?
No.

If someone visits your area, what's something they must see or do?
Are you kidding? I live in Egypt. A third of the world’s artifacts are here, mummies, golden sarcophagus and more in the Museam of Antiquities in Cairo.

The Pyramids are magical, nothing I can say can describe them. No photo graph can capture their magnificence. You have to see them with your own eyes as the hot desert breeze blows through your hair and then you will feel the same awe that millions of people have felt for the past 4500 years as they see the pyramids for the first time.

Thousands of miles of beaches on both the Mediterranean sea and the Red Sea. Incredible diving in the Red Sea.

Egypt is paradise if paradise was a desert.
 
What do you hate?
Nothing really.

What do you love?
The Creator, my children, wife, parents and family.
Computers.
World of Warcraft.
Pink Floyd.
Food especially Pizza and Pasta ( the Italians are on to something ).

What's the last book you read?
The Holy Quran and The Bhagavad Gita.
 
What's the last CD/MP3 you bought?
The latest album by Mark Knopfler in hope that an echo of the music of Dire Straights still lives.

What's the last movie you watched?
Monsieur Ibrahim on DVD.

You're stuck on a train/plane for 6 hours and bored out of your mind, what do you do to amuse yourself?
If a train then the marvel of 3G will make me go online. If a plane then I am sure I would have picked a good book for the way.

Any last words?
Are these really my LAST words?