WordCamp Seattle 2012

Christine Winckler

Why do you love WordPress?
I love WordPress because it keeps things simple. I think in the development world people are moving past the mentality of giving software all the features they can, instead giving themthe right features, and WordPress really embodies that.

I’ve heard some criticize WordPress for its simplicity, but the overwhelming number of people flocking to WordPress shows it’s onto something. Users can work in it without being overwhelmed, and coders don’t need to learn some new templating language unique to WordPress.

All those people, in turn, enable us to add the features we want when we need them. The amount of plugins and themes available is pretty incredible. To get there, WordPress needs not only a robust development community, but lots of people out there consuming what they make, and it has that.

What is your favorite plugin?
Right now I’d say it’s a plugin called Restricted Site Access. I like to develop online, and I use it to keep the things I’m working on away from the public. Just about every site I work on has it.

I like things that keep it simple, things that just work, without having to think about it. Restricted Site Access is not only reliable, but it’s options blend right into the WordPress privacy page, you wouldn’t know a plugin put them there if you didn’t install it yourself.

I was working on a membership-only site recently. Wanting to give my client a lot of flexibility, I started with a feature-rich membership plugin. However, after finding it just wasn’t working right I scaled back — and found Restricted Site Access did the job wonderfully and with much less ado.

What’s the most interesting project you have ever done that involved WordPress?
I’ve done some interesting migrations from other systems into WordPress. These sites had two much content to make it practical for my client to move manually and there wasn’t an importer available for them, so I had to work to put a export from them into WordPress’s import format. Some features of those systems became huge roadblocks when I had to migrate their sites. It’s made me appreciate how straightforward WordPress is; it would be a lot easier to move WordPress content somewhere else.

What is that one thing WordPress doesn’t do that you wish it did?
I wish WordPress had an alternate configuration that would make it into a non-blog site at a much deeper level than simply giving it a static front page, or removing posts from the admin menu. It’s no longer just a blogging platform, it’s used for a lot of different kinds of sites. However, the blog functionality is still in many ways difficult to get away from. I’ve never had a client that wanted comments on their static pages, for instance, but that’s still the default, and there isn’t a setting that just turns it off. I want a button I can click that would make it so someone using WordPress for a non-blog site would never even know the blog functionality existed, and then be able click it again later to bring the blog back if they decided they wanted one. I’ve been gathering code snippets that one by one will bring me closer to this end, and at some point I may bundle them together in a free plugin.

Visit her site to learn more about Christine.

Here are four more speakers sharing their insight on WordPress….

Kelli Wise

Why do I love WordPress?
WordPress is the great equalizer of the internet. It takes control of your website content from your web developer and gives it back to you, the the website owner. WordPress is easy enough to use that my clients can make updates to their websites themselves, with an hour or two of training. I’m a firm believer that it’s your website, you should get to edit it if you want and I’ll be here if you break it or need some help. I switched from developing static websites to WordPress based sites about 3 years ago and I’ve never had more fun or been more productive. I love WordPress!

What is your favorite plugin?
I don’t know that I have a true favorite, but BackUp Buddy makes moving a WordPress site from a development server to a production server incredibly simple. Other than that, there are so many great plugins out there, it’s really difficult to choose just one. Just about any functionality a client requests can either be done by WordPress or a plugin.

What’s the most interesting project I’ve ever done that involved WordPress?
Creating child themes and providing tech support to Headway Themes users. I get to see some amazing projects grow from development to finished state and I get to help them make their ideas happen. It also pushes me to hone my css, html, php and troubleshooting skills. Basically, I love any project that makes me learn or try something new.

What is the one thing WordPress doesn’t do that I wish it did?
I’d love the php parse error to say something like “Don’t Panic! You broke your website. Don’t delete anything. Call your web developer and she’ll get it fixed for you.” This would come in handy when a client installs a buggy plugin or pastes some broken code. It’s a lot easier for me to fix a site if they haven’t attempted it themselves.

Visit her site to learn more about Kelli.

Daniel Bachhuber

Why do you love WordPress?
WordPress is my first and only love, mostly because it’s super accessible to end users and developers alike. Being able to customize how WordPress works on a much deeper level with actions and filters is one of the reasons I love it, and one of the reasons why it’s become the defacto standard.

What is your favorite plugin?
WordPress.com Custom CSS makes it easy for the site administrators to give users access to modifying their CSS without having to give them access to all of the theme files, etc. Yes I know it’s by Automattic, the company I work for, but it rose to the top quite a while ago when I managed a multisite instance for hundreds of users. Plus, it even has a revision history so you can roll back to a prior version of your CSS.

What’s the most interesting project you have ever done that involved WordPress?
For the last couple of years, I’ve worked with a few others on Edit Flow:  Edit Flow makes it possible for an editorial staff to collaborate on content within WordPress, reducing the use of email, Microsoft Word attachments, confusion, and overall inefficiency. There have been a number of fun surprises along the way as users often push the plugin in neat ways you don’t expect.

What is that one thing WordPress doesn’t do that you wish it did?
Proper media asset management! One of these days…

Visit his site to learn more about Daniel

Christine Rondeau

Why do you love WordPress?
I can code a WordPress site much quicker than a standard HTML site.

What is your favorite plugin?
There are many plugins such as WordPress SEO and BackWpUp, that I use on all my sites, but one of my recent favourite is the custom Content Types -

This plugin allows developers to create Custom Post Types very quickly simply by adding one line of code to your function.php file.

I also like the fact that one of the plugin developer, Joey Kudish, is a good friend and I know that it will be maintained and coded well.

What’s the most interesting project you have ever done that involved WordPress?
I worked on The Challenge Series prior to Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics.

This project was created to discuss the development of the Olympic Village and educate architects and developers about sustainability practices. The project was very well received in the community and the designer won an award for her work at the 2010 Design Exchange Awards. I was very privileged to have been part of that team,

What is that one thing WordPress doesn’t do that you wish it did?
mmmmm… The fact that it doesn’t have only one way to do one thing is a bit frustrating at times. I find it fascinating to look over someone’s shoulder and see how they use the tool. It makes it quite difficult to explain how to do things to newcomers, when the tool is so flexible.

Visit her site to learn more about Christine.

Lucy Beer

Why Do You Love WordPress?
Oh man, so many reasons! Primarily because of the sense of empowerment it gives me, and that I see it give others when I teach them that they can build and manage their very own website. On several occasions clients have literally hugged me just for showing them how to get their WordPress installation up and running. WordPress makes people happy! I started using it back in 2004 and as I have delved further into the rabbit hole I am constantly impressed and amazed by what you can make it do. I love it because it offers me an evolving learning experience. There’s always something new to learn, a new envelope to push, so to me, it’s always fresh and exciting. The community that has grown up around WordPress is amazing and is one of my fave things about it. I’ve met some really great people, and the spirit of sharing and helping each other out is really awesome. On top of all that, it allows me to make a living, for which I am super-grateful.

What is your favorite plugin?
Oooo, there’s no easy answer to this one. There are so many that I adore….Currently I love A/B Test for WordPress by Lasse Bunk because it makes A/B testing your site easy. I’m a HUGE Gravity Forms fan – that plugin can do SO much. One that I don’t get to use that much, but that is so brilliant in its simplicity and function is “Video Thumbnails” by Sutherland Boswell – embed a lot of youtube videos? Need to automatically create a Featured Image based on the video? That’s what this plugin does. Another one that I think will be a fave once I fully wrap my brain around it is Types & Views.

What’s the most interesting project you have ever done that involved WordPress?
Hard to say…in general I love projects where I have to figure out how to make WordPress do something new and a little out of the box. So recently I worked with a client to set up a private user area on their site to access specific downloads. This required customizing everything from the registration process, to user roles, to some enhancements to a plugin they were using.

What is that one thing WordPress doesn’t do that you wish it did?
It should have an in-built, anti-wackness scanning system to detect things like hideous color combinations (and you know….fonts like Comic Sans) on websites and then it should automatically shut down.

Visit her site to learn more about Lucy.

Recently, I asked our speakers four questions so that I could share their answers with our readers. Between now and WordCamp on the 19th, I will post a few at a time. It’s a great read and a way to learn even more about who is speaking at this years WordCamp.

The four questions were:
Why do you love WordPress?
What is your favorite plugin?
What’s the most interesting project you have ever done that involved WordPress?
What is that one thing WordPress doesn’t do that you wish it did?

Continue reading →