Frank Rakow
CEO at Gestaltende GmbH
Bielefeld, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Summary
👤
SeniorFrank Rakow is a seasoned software leader and CEO with over two decades running Gestaltende GmbH and 11 years of focused professional experience as a web and backend developer. Rooted in early home-computer days on the C64 and assembly, he now delivers PHP-, SQL- and JavaScript-driven systems, frequently using TYPO3 and deploying on Linux while developing on macOS. An active open-source maintainer in the TYPO3 ecosystem, he has contributed bug fixes, PHP7 compatibility work and feature additions to prominent extensions like FluidTYPO3/vhs and flux. Frank blends hands-on engineering with product leadership, favoring pragmatic refactors and long-term maintainability—a mindset reflected in his repeated improvements to core viewhelpers and form handling. Based in Bielefeld, he brings a rare mix of historical low-level perspective and modern web architecture to client and platform projects.
11 years of coding experience
English
Github Skills (12)
fluid10
cms10
php10
view-helpers10
typo3-cms-extension10
typo310
debug9
debugging9
refactoring8
javascript7
css5
git4
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
FluidTYPO3/vhs
Mar 2015 - Apr 2022
TYPO3 extension VHS: Fluid ViewHelpers
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:26 commits, 39 PRs, 2 pushes in 7 years 2 months
Contributions summary:Frank primarily contributed to bug fixes and the implementation of new features within the VHS extension. Their work involved modifying PHP code within several ViewHelpers, addressing issues related to deprecation, and adding new functionality, specifically the "property" attribute for meta tags and filtering null values. They also made several code improvements, including refactoring, and ensuring compatibility with PHP7, suggesting a focus on maintaining and improving the extension's core functionality.
fluidtypo3-cms-extensionphptyposcripttypo3-cms
FluidTYPO3/flux
Mar 2015 - Nov 2022
TYPO3 extension Flux: Dynamic Fluid FlexForms
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:40 commits, 63 PRs, 4 pushes in 7 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Frank primarily contributed to bug fixes and feature enhancements within the Flux extension for TYPO3. Their work involved resolving deprecation warnings, removing duplicate code, and addressing issues related to form rendering and data handling. They also implemented features such as the addition of the `emptyOption` argument for select fields, improved the behavior of grid column collapsing, and ensured proper behavior of paste and reference buttons.
fluidtypo3-cms-extensionrectortypo3flux
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