Ever wondered who’s behind a GitHub username? Now’s your chance to find out! Contributor interviews, like the one you are about to read, let you connect with the people driving the PrestaShop project forward.

Meet Paolo and CODENCODE

Dear readers, meet Paolo from CODENCODE. Paolo has been one of the most active members of the community in recent months. We wanted to get to know him and his company and understand what motivated him to contribute to the PrestaShop project.

team_codencode

Can you introduce yourself and your agency?

My name is Paolo Cunti and I’m a web developer specializing in the creation of ecommerce and corporate websites. I work with technologies such as PHP, JavaScript, HTML, and I use PrestaShop as my main CMS. I handle the entire technical side of projects, developing all the necessary functionalities to meet the specific needs of each client.

I work for CODENCODE https://www.codencode.it, an agency I co-founded with two other partners. CODENCODE is a branding, communication, and marketing agency with a strong focus on ecommerce. We manage integrated projects, from brand identity and visual design to the development of corporate and ecommerce websites. We also handle all related web marketing activities. Customization is at the heart of our work—we design everything from scratch, including both the UI and the specific functionalities required by our clients.

What type of work does your agency do with PrestaShop?

We use PrestaShop to build ecommerce and corporate websites that include product catalogs. We are both front-end and back-end developers of the platform: we create custom graphic templates and develop tailored ecommerce modules to meet any client requirement.

Why did your agency choose to contribute to the project?

We’ve been using PrestaShop for years as our go-to platform for ecommerce projects. It’s a solid, flexible, and well-structured solution that allows us to adapt it to the unique needs of our clients, even the most complex ones.

Because of this, in our day-to-day work, we often come across small bugs, structural limitations, or features that could be improved. When this happens, instead of fixing the issue locally in each individual project, we prefer to propose an official solution via a pull request. This way, the issue is resolved at the root for everyone—including ourselves in the future. This approach allows us to work more efficiently and sustainably over time.

Moreover, we strongly believe in the open source philosophy. PrestaShop is an open project that gives us a lot, and contributing is our way of saying “thank you” to the community. It’s a way of giving back, but also a collective investment in the continuous improvement of the platform.

What benefits have you seen from contributing?

The main benefit is a practical one: no longer having to fix known issues, because they’ve been solved upstream in the platform. This saves us time and makes the development of future projects more efficient.

There’s also a valuable human and professional aspect: interacting with other developers helps us grow continuously and gain deeper knowledge of a complex and powerful platform like PrestaShop.

Would you encourage other agencies to contribute? Why?

Absolutely. Any agency using PrestaShop for their projects should seriously consider contributing to the project—at least whenever circumstances allow. You don’t need to start with major features: even small fixes, documentation improvements, or well-detailed bug reports can make a big difference.

Contributing means improving the platform for everyone, including your future projects and clients. It’s an investment that brings tangible returns. In addition, actively participating in the project means becoming part of a community of professionals who share the same goals. This can lead to new collaborations, opportunities, and most importantly, continuous technical growth.

In a world where web development is constantly evolving, maintaining an active role in an open source project like PrestaShop is an excellent way to stay up-to-date and relevant.

Any notable projects or contributions you’d like to highlight?

One of the most interesting contributions we’ve recently proposed involves introducing a shortcode system into PrestaShop’s content editor. The idea is to simplify the management of dynamic references—such as products, categories, or manufacturers—within text content like descriptions, articles, or CMS pages. Thanks to these shortcodes, users can insert dynamic references to products. If the product URL changes or the product is updated in the future, the referencing content is updated automatically as well. This reduces the risk of broken links or 404 errors, improving the overall quality of the site and the user experience.

This idea came from real needs we encountered during our projects, and we hope it will be well received by the community. Here is the link to the pull request.

Also, where can we follow you?

Find my account on GitHub, which is also my agency’s profile, visible on the CODENCODE page.

Let’s make PrestaShop better, together

Paolo, thank you so much for this interview and your help! Keep up the great contributions!

Do you wish to contribute to the PrestaShop Project? Everything you need to know to get involved is available here. You can join us on the PrestaShop Project, available on GitHub.

You may also want to join our PrestaShop Project Slack.