The Kunena Team

Need to contact the Kunena Team? Use one of these department e-mails:

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - Submit your translations of current version of Kunena
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - Submit your security reports
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - Submit your licensing requests and questions
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - Send donations to the Kunena Project
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - Submit inquiries for sponsorship

Do not use these email addresses for support. Use the forum. Support questions will not be answered through email.

Oliver Ratzesberger (fxstein)
Position: Lead Developer
Location: San Jose, CA (USA)
URL: http://www.starVmax.com
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Oliver Ratzesberger is an IT Director in Silicon Valley. Born in Austria, he started programming during the early 1980s. With more than 15 years of experience in C and C++ mainly on UNIX and Windows platforms, he moved into large scale data progressing during the mid-1990s and became a specialist for extremely large scale SQL databases.

After starting a hobby website for motorcycles in 2006, he began contributing to various open source projects. Today, Oliver enjoys working on Joomla-based projects and is a co-founder of the Kunena Project.

Matias Griese (Matias)
Position: Lead Developer
Location: Turku (Finland)
URL: http://www.herppi.net
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Matias Griese currently works as a freelance programmer specialising in algorithms, optimisation and security. He started programming in C and C++ in 1991 and in PHP in 1998. His interest in content management systems started in 2005 and he later discovered Fireboard in 2008. He worked for over six years at StoneSoft, specialists in firewalls and the Linux kernel.

Matias is a co-founder of the Kunena Project and is currently working on Kunena 2.0 and improvements to Kunena with other software such as Community Builder, JomSocial, JoomFish, JoomSuite, jUpgrade and others. He helps his wife with her baby wrap shop located at http://www.wearababy.com.

Ron Severdia (severdia)
Position: Lead Designer & UI
Location: San Francisco, CA (USA)
URL: http://www.kontentdesign.com
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Ron Severdia is a Creative Director at Kontent Design in the San Francisco Bay Area and has directed interactive branding projects—from websites and brand identities to interactive campaigns—for clients such as HP, Verizon, Electronic Arts, Yahoo!, Visa, Walmart.com, and Apple. His prior experience includes stints as a Senior Designer and then Creative Director at Young & Rubicam, DDB, Glow, and Landor Associates. Fluent in several languages, he worked for 7 years in Europe, where he won a Euro-Effie award for his creative work with Schweppes.

Ron has been using Joomla since 2006 to build sites for companies, large and small, including a worldwide branding site for Citibank. He recently redesigned the new look of the Joomla family of websites. He is the author of the Using Joomla book for O'Reilly. He is the founder of the Joomla-based Shakespeare site, PlayShakespeare.com.

Florian Dal Fitto (xillibit)
Position: Forum Moderator & Developer
Location: Faverges, France
URL: http://blog.floriandalfitto.fr/
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Flo is a graduate of a French university in Networking and Telecommunications where he learned PHP, JavaScript, Java, and C/C++. H has used Joomla since 2005, but started to using CMS with Mambo just before the fork. He currently works for a local authority managing their network and implementing websites in Joomla.

Starting as an "ordinary" user, Flo has been actively involved in Kunena project since the very beginning. He is now an enthusiastic "bug hunter/fixer" and developer of many software improvements that we see in Kunena today. When he is not working on Kunena, Flo manages the official French forum for Joomla at http://forum.joomla.fr to give a voice for the French-speaking community of Kunena users.

Sven Schultschik (svanschu)
Position: Contributor, Language Coordinator
Location: Karlsruhe, Germany
URL: http://www.schultschik.de
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sven’s biggest passion is programming and developing himself further with every new challenge. Since 2006 his studies included electrical and informatics engineering at the KIT (Karlsruhe Institut of Technology). His first contact with Joomla (J! 1.0) came after joining the student council web maintenance team (which is also when he started to learn PHP and MySQL). He is now an active member of the JoomTools.de team.

Sven is something of an IT enthusiast, working with (X)HTML/XML, CSS, Javascript (jQuery and Mootools), VHDL, C/C++, PHING, ZendStudio/Eclipse, phpStorm, SVN, GIT.

He has worked on several Joomla! projects like http://fachschaft.etec.uni-karlsruhe.de, http://seelenhauch-band.de, to name two of them. His work with the the Kunea Team involves forum moderation, contributions like the “Thank You” feature and language coordination. In his own business, Schultschik Websolution, he has developed the Kunena Birthday module, templates and other useful extensions for Joomla!.

Some of Sven’s projects are listed on Ohloh; Sven is also present on LinkedIn.

Janich Rasmussen (LittleJohn)
Position: Forum Moderator & Contributor
Location: Ringsted, Denmark
URL: http://www.krak.dk

Bio coming soon.

Jelle Kok (810)
Position: Developer
Location: Enkhuizen (Netherlands)
URL: www.newf1.nl

Born in Enkhuizen, Jelle discovered Joomla in the final year of his Information Technology studies and began his career as an IT network and support professional. After a year of this, he wanted a more active job and became a fire-fighter. In 2008 he started a one-man webdesign company in his free time and has built websites like www.brandweerenkhuizen.nl for the local fire department where he is a volunteer.

He started with the Kunena project as a translator and then as the moderator for the Dutch-speaking Kunena community. Following the release of K 1.0.9 Jelle forked his own version—Kunena Ultimate—with support for hacks and tranlations. He now writes PHP and CSS and is closely involved in the development of K 2.0.

Frank Gore (GoremanX)
Position: Forum Moderator & Contributor
Location: Île-aux-Noix, QC (Canada)
URL: http://www.friendlyphotozone.com
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Frank is an avid Joomla enthusiast who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty with PHP when necessary. As a long-time publisher of CMS-based web sites since the early days of Mambo, Frank has many years of experience with Joomla. By combining Joomla with Kunena, Frank has recently built a successful photography community (Friendly Photo Zone) where members share pictures, learn from each other and interact socially with other people who share similar interests. This community acts as a convenient test bed for developmental releases of Kunena and allows Frank to test new potential features which may be included in future releases of Kunena. Other hobbies besides Joomla and Kunena include photography, mountain biking, welding and auto body.

Frank was recently shot by sozzled—and the bullet holes are still visible in his forum avatar. Frank hold no grudges, however, but barbeque flavoured rice crackers would be appreciated.

Joshua Weiss (coder4life)
Position: Kunena Designer
Location: Los Angeles, CA (USA)
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Josh is a full time college student in the Los Angeles area in pursuit of a degree in Computer Information Technology. He was exposed to the ideas for Content Management Systems during the Joomla 1.0 transition from Mambo. Since adopting Joomla 1.5 he has focused greatly on website templates. As a web designer and developer enthusiast, he believes in an active balance between function and design.

His experience includes markup language in HTML and CSS, some coding experience in Javascript, PHP, Java, and C, operating system experience on Linux (Server), Mac OSX, and Windows. Has used tools like Coda, Netbeans, Pixelmator, Photoshop, and Final Cut Pro.

Kunena is an opportunity for him to learn and improve on a project that holds a great amount of pride in the Joomla community.

Kunena Forum Moderators

Michael Russell (sozzled)
Position: Forum Moderator
Location: Canberra, ACT, Australia
URL: http://quorooom.com.au
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

In a nutshell, his career in Information Technology spans over 40 years, nearly all of that working in various Australian Government departments and agencies. For the last 15 years of that time, he's had a keen interest in developing intranet sites and this naturally evolved into the Internet space. His experience covered most activities in the IT field: systems analysis and design, programming, testing, project management, customer relationship management, knowledge management—you name it and he's probably had something to do with it (or he managed teams of people who had the subject-matter skills). It was only in the last couple of years when, by chance, he was introduced to Joomla that he's more easily realised many of his web-based ambitions.

He retired from the workforce in January 2007 and, if he thought he was busy when he was working, he's been busier now than ever—mostly he's busy having a great time!

Richard Binder (rich)
Position: Forum Moderator
Location: Turnau, Austria
URL: http://www.rich20.at

As a trained electrician, Rich had never done anything with computers or creating websites. One might even call him an adventurer because, after his training, he travelled to many countries. He took a truck to places like Iraq, Iran, and the Middle East. In 1981, he moved on to his new interest—wireless technology and computers. His first experience was on an Atari and everything he knows he's taught himself.

He has followed the development of Kunena from beginning. He feels it's a great project and is glad to be a part of this great team.

Gilbert Olguin (CheechDogg)
Position: Forum Moderator
Location: Riverside, CA (USA)
URL: http://www.cagclan.com
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Gilbert started working with Kunena and Joomla powered websites in 2009 with the creation of his own website for a video gaming community. After several requests from friends and other video gamers to set up a website with a forum, he came across Kunena. With 3 years of experience in HTML, CSS and now learning PHP on his own, he has been able to maintain and create several websites for other gaming communities. He is proud to be part of the Kunena team and is always willing to give anyone a helping hand.

When he is not patrolling the forums here, helping the Kunena community or moderating the forums, you can find him playing video games online on XBOX Live or the Playstation Network along with his 11 year old son Isaac. His alias, "CAG CheechDogg" is the leader and co-founder of the video gaming Community Combat Applications Group [CAG] .

Sami Haaranen (Mortti)
Position: Forum Moderator
Location: Lahti, Finland
URL: www.joomla.fi
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sami has qualifications in Information Technology and Marketing with over 14 years' experience in the field. He currently works with programming CNC operations. As the Finnish Joomla! language co-ordinator he is responsible for Joomla as well as the translations of other Joomla extensions that are used in Finland. Sami's interest in Kunena began in 2005 while using Fireboard and he is now an active member of the Kunena testing team. Because his day job does not allow any margin for error, he wants to make sure that Kunena is as free from software errors as possible. His hobbies are Joomla! Finnish, Kunena, DOCman as well as several other Joomla extensions.

Sami's passion is to make Kunena the most-used and popular forum add-on for Joomla—and to take a break at the weekend to go fishing.

Joe Collins (Jiminimonka)
Position: Forum Moderator
Location: Dunstable, United Kingdom
E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Bio coming soon.

Special thanks

There are also many other people, past and present members of the Kunena community, who have helped to make Kunena what it has become today:

Josep Giribet (johnnydement), Louis Landry (louis.landry), Angelika Reisiger (Lintzy), Noel Hunter (noelhunter), Marc Ross (grumblemarc), Roland Furtmayr (roland76), Mark O'Connor (Spock), Beat B. (Beat), Dragoljub Zečević (@quila), Tomislav Ribicic (Riba), Jónatan Núñez (JoniJnm), Gonzalo Meneses (alakentu), Phil Bennett (cerberus), Jay Burton (BoardBoss), and many others. Thank you.