How did you first get started with web design and development? Is it something you expected to find yourself doing a few years ago?

I graduated in architecture and after a few years struggling in the interior design field, I decided to change areas. Back at that time, it was 2000, web design seemed to be a promising career, so I took the chance and studied a postgraduate course in Hypermedia Design. At the same time I started working at a web agency and I’ve been working as a web designer ever since.

It’s not something I expected to find myself doing a few years ago — it’s been almost 12 years I’ve been doing this I mean, it’s been a long time! But before 2000, definitely not, my dream was to work with animation.

As an illustrator and graphic designer, do you think that you bring things you’ve learned or experimented with in those disciplines over to your work with WordPress or are they distinctly separate?

I think web design owes a lot to graphic design, therefore any work with WordPress does too, but I believe it’s a different discipline. I’d rather compare web design to architecture than to graphic design, mainly because of the relationship between architects and engineers versus designers and programmers. To design a website it’s really important to understand how it’s built, the possibilities, what can be done or not. I know that in graphic design you need to have an understanding of the printing process, colors, type of papers etc., but it’s not so much dependant on the technology behind it. About illustration, it’s something I’d like to bring more often to my designs, I don’t explore the possibilities that much, however what I’ve learned about colors and composition with illustration are reflected on my work, yes.

When did you first start working with WordPress, and what made you choose it over the other options available?

I started working with WordPress in 2007. A few years earlier I did a website for a traditional Catholic Festival in my native town, as a volunteer. It’s annual and they desperately needed to renew their website, but they had no money to pay for it. The programmer who worked with me before had disappeared and I didn’t know anyone else who would do the job as a volunteer. So I searched the internet for a solution where I could do the job all by myself and at the same time give the festival organizers the freedom to update and run their site independently. I was looking for a solution which respected web standards and that was free. When I found WordPress I thought it was fantastic, I didn’t know anything about PHP, MySQL, I didn’t know to write a line of code, but I just didn’t need to! There was great documentation and almost all of my doubts were already answered in the forums. I could do everything on my own. The other options I tried were Plone, but there was too much to learn, and Mambo (there was no Joomla yet) which generated terrible HTML. So there wasn’t a better choice than WordPress!

Tell us about a WordPress project you’ve worked on recently that made you proud. What did you enjoy and find most challenging about it?

We’ve just launched a redesign project called Catraca Livre. I did the design, HTML, and CSS. It’s a calendar for free or low cost events. It’s becoming very popular and it gets between fifty and a hundred-thousand visitors every day. Their Facebook page has been liked almost 1,500,000 times so far, too. Catraca Livre was one of Hacklab’s first clients — their website has been running on WordPress since the beginning of 2008. As it grew, its interface needed an upgrade to address mobile devices and the code needed improvements to deal with the growing audience. Besides, it needed a better search mechanism so the users could find events easier.

What I enjoyed the most was the fact the client liked the idea of a very colourful site and they gave me a lot of freedom to work as I chose. I really love bright colours and on this job I got to play with them.

The two most chalenging parts of the job from a front-end point of view were making it responsive while at the same time fitting the client’s dynamic workflow. Its homepage has a very flexible layout and its system lets its administrators choose from a set of three different types of rows of features: With one, two or three categories. Inside each row, they can choose from many different combinations of layout grids. It wasn’t easy to make it responsive, mainly because it depends on some editorial policies too.

The client’s workflow is crazy and from the beginning of the project they changed their main categories countless times. Because of this, it was difficult to make a perfect main menu. Sometimes it was best to make it horizontal, sometimes vertical. We launched it horizontal, but I believe we’ll need to rethink it soon.

From the development point of view, the most challenging part was to integrate a search server based on Solr. It allows users to find events near them by a geographical search, or filter the events by a variety of parameters. And all of this at an incredible speed.

What hard-won advice would you give to someone just starting out in life as a designer?

I read this article by Nathan Peretic at A List Apart and I couldn’t agree more with it. It’s about writing a proposal, but there’s a lot of good advice in it that I heavily recommend anyone starting out in this career to read. My favorite quote is this one:

Why should you be selected for this project? Because you’re the cheapest? The quickest? Because you promise to do more than the other guys? Maybe. Sometimes those are the reasons, but they’re also the levers you least want to rely on pulling. Website design and development are services and not, on the professional level, commodities. Providing a commodity is an exhausting, unsatisfying, deadening experience. Doing what you love, on the other hand, working as an equal partner with smart, respectful clients is invigorating.

Do you have a typical client or a particular niche you work with, or do you find that you’re working on all kinds of different projects in a given year? Would you change anything about that?

At Hacklab we like to position ourselves as a business with social concern; we believe in Free Software and we like to publish our solutions whenever we can. We also like to work with innovative projects. So though we’ve worked with different types of clients, most of them have a little bit of those values. What I’d change about it is that I’d like to work just for clients who shared those values.

Tell us about your work in the Brazilian WordPress community, and how that’s infleunced your professional or personal life?

I started the community in 2008 with Anderson Clayton, a guy from Rio de Janeiro. In the begining it consumed a lot of my time! I did a lot of everything, I translated WordPress, bbPress, BuddyPress, plugins, ran the website, moderated the forums, organized WordCamp, meetups. I had help, but I was on the front of all these activities. As I worked as a freelancer, I had plenty of time for that, but because of WordPress, more work came in and I started working with the guys at Hacklab.

So in 2010/2011 I had to let it go a little, and it was good because other people came in and started helping me out with the translations, etc. In 2012 I came back, mostly helping organize the two WordCamps we had, in Curitiba and São Paulo.

The influence on my professional and personal life was huge; since I had the idea of translating WordPress I haven’t stopped working, and what’s best, I’ve received some sort of recognition I didn’t have before. This interview, being featured in Matt’s State of the Word talk last WordCamp SF, and participating at the Community Summit are a great honor to me. I’ve met many interesting people, I’ve made great professional contacts, I’ve made good friends. There’s a feeling of fulfilment that is the best part, which is to know that with a relatively small effort I’ve helped many people and I’m part of this great thing that is WordPress .

What can people do to get involved with localization, submitting patches, or otherwise improving WordPress, and why should they bother?

There are many channels available. I think the best way is to go to any of the make blogs and see what’s up. But if people don’t think they have the time, they should at least adopt the pratice of sharing their WordPress knowledge and experience by publishing their code under GPL. They should bother because WordPress belongs to them, they should own it and make it better everyday. Knowledge is something we should cherish and share so everyone is able to profit with it, not only a small group. That’s why WordPress is great.

Quick Overview

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Image based on Martyrs ceramic icon by Melissa Bridgman, CC-BY-2.0.

Quick Overview

Whether you totally missed the free 24-hour-streamathon of WordSesh, or just want to catch up on the infinite payload of WordPress wisdom shared by its participants, you’ll be pleased to know that the whole thing has been captured on YouTube for your viewing pleasure.

Image based on Words by Alby Headrick, CC-BY-2.0.

How did you first get into WordPress, and (presumably later) BuddyPress, and what was it that pulled you in?

Like many, I went the hand rolled route to start blogging. It was somewhat of a “rite of passage” to develop your own. I was lucky enough to be a member of the blogging network 9rules back then. This was an amazing collection of people focusing on creating great content. A few others in this community were using WordPress when it was still a fledgling platform. I took a bit of time to be convinced I could do what I wanted to do theme-wise — but once I worked that out, the simplicity sold me.

BuddyPress was a slightly different story. I was creating WordPress themes and had a chance to create some BuddyPress themes. I had time to dive into what then was quite a learning curve to create themes. Over time as I learned that communities was where my heart was, my work reflected this passion and I moved to creating using BuddyPress full time.

When did you set up Logical Binary, and what have you learned since then?

Logical Binary was set up initially nearly 12 years ago as a way to showcase the work I was doing. It for a while was name only, my “web presence” only fully forming in 2005. I’d been doing freelance by word of mouth for a few years mixed in with agency work and needed a home online. Logical Binary, the site, grew from a need to take things a bit more seriously and focus on a business.

What I’ve learned over the years is to focus on what you love, and that niché is good. I’m not someone that can do everything — if you are then great but I design better when focused. Playing to my strengths is focusing on community design.

Talk to us about your strongly held belief in “design for humans.” Where can design go wrong when it loses sight of this idea?

I think my passion for designing for humans comes from my love of psychology, which I studied up to A-level and has impacted my entire life. Some of my first experiments on my own site were with theme switches by mood. It was a perhaps naive way of exploring back in 2006, but it was my first step outside of the single experience and thinking about who was using the site.

Design goes wrong when it assumes the operator at the end is the same. As a designer it’s easy to assume everyone will think like us — we’re not “every man.” I’m very into asking stupid questions of interfaces — this is when you see the gaps. Using the word “Submit” is a prime example — how unfriendly is that? Or a page that you land on with everything at the same level, everything shouting at you for attention. Where do you look? Our brains can’t handle it. We need paths, we need emotional feedback from what we interact with, we need guidance and we need common manners on sites.

You’re a heavy contributor to open source projects. How has that fed into your work life, opportunities, and learning?

I got my first taste of the ‘net from the Linux community many years ago. This was long before WordPress so when that showed on my radar I was already sold on open source. Whilst I’m not religious, I have one belief in life and that’s karma. I truly believe if I didn’t give back I’d not get anywhere near as much as I do in work life, opportunities, and learning. You truly do get out what you put in. The ease with which people share information is mind blowing and we should never forget how special that is.

I had the pleasure of attending BuddyCamp in Miami recently and it blew my mind. At one point I was told that there were several hundred people watching the live stream. This really filled me with energy to do more, create more, and get more people involved in BuddyPress. I truly believe that I’d not be where I was without the community, and I’m thankful every day for being part of this and those I’ve met. We’re united by a love for WordPress and BuddyPress, by an obsession with open source — this is a powerful thing.

What are you most proud of having contributed to BuddyPress, and what are you most excited about in terms of its future?

I’m most proud to have been able to contribute as a designer to BuddyPress. This may sound odd but it’s a misconception generally you have to be a developer to contribute. This is far from true of course. WordPress has blown this myth away but in some ways it hung around BuddyPress for a bit longer.

An exact contribution is tricky. I’m proud of organizing the default theme CSS file. I learned from looking at people’s code and hopefully this has helped other people. I’m also proud to have been part of the Status theme and Turtleshell project. I think above all I’m just stoked to be part of the BuddyPress project in a small way at this time.

I’ve described BuddyPress before, in terms of age, as starting school. It’s a young project but growing. I’m excited about getting more people involved beyond just developers. For BuddyPress to grow I really believe that not just developers should be part of its future and present. It’s really cool to see what can be built that isn’t using everything — maybe it’s just activity, maybe just groups, using BuddyPress as a platform, as an API and as a starting point to building a whole host of things with a dash of community — now that’s exciting.

As a specialist in BuddyPress, how would you explain the key benefits of making use of it over other alternatives a client or fellow designer might be considering?

BuddyPress, I’ve said before, is social lego. You can use as much or as little as you want. You pick the tools and create the community. That’s the big benefit at the start. You can, since the release of 1.7, do all this with a flick of a switch on your existing WordPress site. Default in communities only gets you so far. If you want to build, grow, and allow your community to take off, you need to go beyond default. BuddyPress lets you do this. It lets designers be free to create, it lets developers be free to build.

BuddyPress also has a very powerful community behind it full of passion, and an open sharing of information at its core. If you build on BuddyPress you get an entire community behind you from the start. I’m not ignorant to other solutions but no other option really allows for such ease, unique communities, and support of resources.

One of your many projects is buddydesignlabs.com. What were your goals in starting work on “lab” style projects, and how are they different from your contributions to BuddyPress itself, or the work you do for clients.

Buddy design labs is aimed at being an open-ended project for me. In it, I want to explore what could be for BuddyPress. I probably will develop some ideas into plugin form but I truly have no set goal. The reason I wanted to just indulge in pure speculation and exploration was that it frees me to think outside client projects. I’m not constrained by anyone’s requirements and that’s quite a powerful experiment.

The format I’m choosing is of a blog post. It shows my sketches and mockups and reminds me a lot of the sketchbooks we kept as art students that documented the work we did. In many regards that’s what this project is becoming for me. I used to love my sketchbooks and am growing as fond of Buddy design labs for the same reasons. It’s about musing, putting things out there, and seeing what happens.

You’ve worked with some really diverse clients. What would you say unifies them, and more broadly, what attracts you most in a potential client project?

Most get to me by word of mouth. I have to take a moment here to thank those who pass work on to me the BuddyPress core team specifically are amazing at spreading work among the community. Community is really the unifying element.

What gets me to take a project is understanding. Communities don’t just grow on trees, you have to understand their complexity and that there are no easy wins. Yes, it’s rewarding and powerful to have a community but it’s something that needs work. Not all communities are successful and sometimes I have to be honest about that to the prospective client and not take a project.

Out of all the work you’ve done, which project are you proudest of, and what challenges did it present to you?

I am most proud of being part of shift.ms. The current design isn’t my work but we’re going through a redesign and this is what I’m most proud of. As a client they’ve been very open to taking a step back and re-analyzing every part. It wasn’t an easy process but everyone involved had the community goals at the heart of every decision.

We’ve gone through focus groups, inspiration collection, wireframes, and are currently in the prototyping phase. I’ve had a lot of my own assumptions challenged during this process, too. The one that comes to mind is tag clouds. They’ve in many ways gone out of fashion; their users, though, love them. This backed up the fact that sometimes we should just ignore what is “trendy” and focus on the user. We’re brewing up some interesting takes on many traditional community functionality we’d have only thought of by going through this process.

Finally, you’re one of the organizers of WordCamp Europe. What’s the big idea there, and what are you most excited about?

WordCamp Europe is a celebration of the European WordPress community. It’s a two-day event in an amazing venue which several of the organizing team (myself included) visited for another conference in December. There’s a really strong community in Europe and we hope that this event highlights that.

I think I’m most excited about the focus being on Europe and showcasing all the amazing things we as a community do. I really think the time is right for an umbrella WordCamp like this.

Today we talk about how WordPress has changed over time, the merits and challenges of Open Source software, WordPress security, digging into the guts of WP, and more development goodness than you could shake a bundle of sticks at.

What was your background before coming to WordPress development, and how did WordPress first come into your life?

My first experiences with the web were at the very beginning of everything. In the early-/mid-1990s, I was the Systems Manager for one of the first ISPs in Huntsville, Alabama. Early on, we just offered dial-up access to a Major BBS system, which was connected to a Linux box, which provided gateway access for things like email, usenet newsgroups, file transfers, and a gopher interface. This was in the 0.99.x days of the Linux kernel, and the question of whether to pronounce ‘Linux’ with a long or short ‘I’ sound were just starting. And the World Wide Web was still an academic experiment that nobody had heard of yet.

But it wasn’t long before this cool new program called ‘NCSA Mosaic‘ started making the rounds, and the GUI interface for hypertext documents was much cooler than the text-based menus offered by gopher. Mosaic was followed by Netscape Navigator (and later, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer), we upgraded our systems, offering direct SLIP and PPP connections, ISDN service, shell accounts, and customers could create their own homepages.

It was in these early days that I first heard of this CGI script called PHP/FI. At this time, “PHP” stood for “Personal Home Pages” — it was only later that it was renamed to mean “PHP Hypertext Processor”. One of my first experiments was to use PHP and MySQL to create a database-driven news site for our customers, which I loosely modeled after Slashdot. It was my first blog-like system, pulling articles from the database newest-first, and displaying them ten-per-page. I didn’t even bother to make an article editing system, I just used PHPMyAdmin to add new entries to the database.

A few years later, we were starting to see open source blogging software. There were things like Movable Type, PHPNuke, Drupal, and even Slashcode which were fairly well known, and a lot of smaller projects. When I decided to set up a blog of my own, the first system I tried out was one of these lesser-knowns, named MyPHPBlog. I even became a code contributor to that project. But the lead developer was slow to integrate changes and push out new releases, and I became frustrated with it. For a while, I considered creating my own blogware from scratch, but I didn’t really have enough free time for that, so I was also keeping my eye out for other promising projects. I had started looking at b2, and it looked really interesting, but it seemed that its developer had more-or-less disappeared, and other people were forking the code already, or talking about switching to something else. I was already aware of this kid called Photomatt, and he was talking about forking b2 into a new system, with the blessing of b2′s creator.

So I think in March 2003, Matt asked me if I was interested in joining in on this WordPress thing he was kicking off. At the time, I was super busy at work, and replied that I just didn’t have time for it. But in April, things were a little more calm, and we were still exchanging emails about it, and I said that I could try to join in and at least contribute some ideas, if not code. Soon after, I was doing things like adding HTTP 304 browser caching support to the RSS feeds and expanding the XML-RPC API with support for the Movable Type and metaWeblog APIs. I remained an active core contributor for at least the next year or so. And I’ve tried to stay active in the community up to the present day.

As a “Developer Emeritus” of the WordPress platform, and a former Core Developer you added elements to WordPress, such as XML-RPC API support and Post Custom Fields, that are still fundamental today. Which are you proudest of?

I think I ‘d have to say Post Custom Fields. At the time, I was very interested in metadata systems, and I had been experimenting with things like FOAF (the Friend of a Friend data format) and other RDF vocabularies. When I first mentioned the idea of postmeta for WordPress, the other developers seemed to think it was a mildly interesting idea, but were not as excited about it as myself. I knew that it would open the doors for some really fun and interesting possibilities for plugins, though. But even then, I didn’t imagine just how many different ways people would end up using it. Eventually, we also got metadata for users and comments, too.

I’m proudest of that because I love seeing how many different plugins and themes rely on it now, and for all the creative ways people have put it to use!

What are you most and least enthusiastic about the way that WordPress has changed since you first got involved?

I am most enthusiastic about the massive uptake of WordPress. At last count, it’s powering something like 18% of the top 1 million sites? I think *anyone* would have to be impressed by that. And anybody who has ever contributed the least little bit of code or idea to WordPress can say, “I’m a part of that!”

I am least enthusiastic about some of the recent dogmatism we’ve seen over the “100% GPL” guideline for WordCamp contributors. I think the idea of barring someone from organizing or speaking at a WordCamp simply because all of their code is not available in a “100% GPL” fashion (e.g. in a split-license situation where the PHP code is GPL, and the CSS/images are under a different license — which *is* allowed under the GPL interpretations we’ve seen), is just too harsh, and only serves to divide the community.

It would be one thing to ask speakers to only promote “100% GPL” projects at a WordCamp. It’s quite another to bar them from speaking about *anything*.

You’ve developed and contributed several plugins to the WordPress ecosystem. Is that something you’d recommend doing, and are there any caveats to go with that recommendation if so?

I highly recommend it. Sometimes the simplest of ideas can take a life of their own and become popular. If you think of an idea for how to add a feature to your site, and can create a plugin to implement it, you might find that you weren’t the only person to want that feature. Declare it GPL, submit it to the plugin repository, and then have fun obsessing over the download counts!

The caveat is, on the internet, there are plenty of people with lots of time on their hands who like to point out faults in others. If you are not an expert coder, someone is likely to point out flaws in your code, and sometimes they might do so in a very unkind fashion. If your skin isn’t thick enough to put up with that, and you tend to take criticism of your work personally, it can be very depressing when somebody tears your code apart and tells you that You’re Doing It Wrong! If this happens, try to use it as a learning experience. Find out how to Do It Right, improve your code, and update. Life is all about constantly learning new things. When I first started learning to play trumpet in 7th grade, I sounded pretty terrible. But I practiced, and got better, and in high school I was in the symphonic band and marching band, and had solo parts. It’s the same with coding, and putting your code out for the public to see is like playing a concert in front of an audience.

As your career has developed are there certain types of projects or clients you’ve gravitated toward more, and if so how are those different to the type of projects or clients you were interested in a few years back?

That’s a hard question. I’d *like* to be doing full-time work involving WordPress. But unfortunately, the job market hasn’t been able to lead me in that direction. As a result, lately I’ve been gravitating more towards front-end work (JavaScript and CSS) than back-end coding. With the semi-exception that I’m also interested in the node.js server, though I don’t use that in my work, and I don’t have much time to play with it on the side.

In the past, I have stayed almost exclusively in the back-end of web development, dealing mostly with overall business logic, database interactions, integrating other data systems and sources, etc. But more recently, the browser has become a much more interesting platform in its own right. The power of modern HTML5, JavaScript, WebGL, and other associated bits makes for a very fun playground to explore.

You’ve presented (and will be presenting, at WordCamp Atlanta 2013) on WordPress security more than once. What would your top three tips be for locking down a WordPress installation, and more generally, what are the most overlooked security issues you see developers make?

Fortunately, WordPress itself tends to be pretty secure. Even when we do see point-releases for security problems, most of them have been ‘privilege escalation’ types of things, where you’d already have to be a validated user in order to take advantage of them. Random, anonymous internet users wouldn’t be able to get into anything.

Tips?

1. If your site doesn’t need the ability for new users to register an account, don’t turn that feature on. And don’t create user accounts for anyone that you do not *absolutely* trust. And when you do, only give them the access role they *need* (‘Contributor’, ‘Editor’, etc). If your site *does* need registered users, make absolutely sure that you have a backup system in place. Back up your database, and also any theme or plugin customizations, and maybe your media uploads if those are important. BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP!
2. If your web host makes you use FTP to transfer changes to your site, don’t do that (“You’re Doing It Wrong!”). Use a secure file transfer method like FTPS, SFTP, or SCP. If your host doesn’t support a secure file transfer method, it’s time to figure out how to move your site to a service that does. The FTP protocol transmits your password in cleartext, and while you might think the chances of somebody intercepting that information are small, I can assure you that it happens all the time, often to people who do know better.
3. If your web site is mission critical (whether for a business or just because it’s important to you), try to evaluate the reputation of any themes and plugins you add to your site. *For the most part* plugins and themes you download from wordpress.org should be pretty safe. Especially if there are a lot of downloads and good ratings. If there seem to be some bad ratings, read the forums and see if there are valid complaints that you should be concerned about. For third-party sources, if you aren’t sure of the reputation, ask around the community (on Twitter, in the wordpress.org forums, etc.).

Programmers don’t like to re-invent the wheel. Instead, we like to take an existing wheel, share it, improve it, re-share it, improve it some more, and so forth. This is how WordPress came to be. And because of that nature, WordPress contains within it a toolbox full of utility functions that solve common problems, ready for developers to use. This includes many functions to help you code more securely. One of the main things to learn about is the ‘esc_*()‘ family of functions.

Also, for plugin or theme option pages, learn about the Settings API.

Security is such a broad subject, it’s nearly impossible to convey the complexity to someone who doesn’t already have some technical background. You have to consider every piece of a system — not just the WordPress source code, or even just the themes and plugins you add. Because that all sits on top of PHP and MySQL, which have their own security concerns. And PHP is running alongside a web server, which might be Apache, Nginx, IIS, or something else. And those are running on a server, which might be one of several different flavors of Linux, or FreeBSD, or Windows, or who knows what else. And those servers might also be running other services, like SSH, FTP, email, IRC, etc. And if there are other users on the server, they might have installed other software that you don’t even know about. And there are the network routers, and load balancers, and the DNS system, and…! The internet is a vast system, and while individual pieces of it can be somewhat simple, they are woven into a whole that is extremely complex.

You continue to be active in the WordPress community, including presenting at WordCamps. What keeps you involved, and why would you recommend getting involved with the wider WordPress community to someone just starting out?

I suppose my continued involvement largely comes from the fact that I was fortunate enough to be so deeply involved in the early days of WordPress. I enjoy looking back and seeing how far WP has come over the years — how the features and interface have evolved. And even though I can’t always spend as much time working with WP as I might like, I also enjoy guiding newer community members to an “aha!” moment when they understand how to make WP do something they need.

The vast majority of the WordPress community are some of the most helpful and friendly people you could hope to meet. If you ever have a question about how to do something, all you really have to do is ask — on the support forums, on Twitter, the WordPress Stack Exchange, etc. You will generally get answers to your questions by someone who really knows what they’re talking about pretty quickly. And by using that opportunity to learn, and then later pass along some of your own knowledge to somebody newer than yourself, you have a chance to pay it forward.

What are the biggest benefits and challenges you’ve faced working with Open Source software? Does one outweigh the other for you?

The biggest benefit to working with Open Source, especially as a developer, is that I can modify the code however I see fit. There are very few closed source applications that let you do that at all, and if they do, it’s only if you pay a hefty licensing fee and sign strict contracts. As a user, you generally get the benefit that bug fixes and new features are released at a much higher rate than with closed source products. Since the source is available to all, many developers are able to investigate bugs and determine the best way to fix them.

The main challenge, though it’s lessened these days, has been getting companies to utilize Open Source alternatives to closed source commercial products. Most corporations are strongly attuned to Risk Management. With Open Source, you often (but not always) are not dealing with a centralized entity with contracts to hold them accountable should something go wrong with the product. Many companies consider this a very high-risk problem. You find it much less with the kinds of products associated with web development (web servers, database servers, browsers, etc).

You’ve previously advocated getting stuck into the guts of WordPress. What do you think are the least understood or most under-utilized aspects of WordPress as a platform, and how should designer-developers be making better use of them?

I’m not sure I have a good answer for that. I can say that some of the features that *I* am not as familar with as I’d like to be are the WP_Rewrite class, Custom Post Types, and Custom Taxonomies. I’d really like to find time to dig into those more, and find some interesting ways to use them for my own projects.

Maybe I can side-step the question a little bit here, and suggest that if you’re just getting started with learning to write plugins or themes for WordPress, you obviously have to start with the action/filter hook system. Find some simple examples to work from, experiment, learn the basics of those. Poke around in the WordPress source, and find places where it calls do_action() or apply_filters(). As you dig around, you’re very likely to see an action or filter that you never knew about, that might spark ideas for how you can use it for your own needs.

Once you understand the hooks well, start looking at the various files in the wp-includes directory. See how WP uses the walker classes, how the XML-RPC server class can be extended to add new API calls, how the image editor classes are used. Or you can start with your theme files, see how each piece of content is put into place, and what filters it goes through along the way. When you start looking at the code on your own to figure out how it all fits together, you are bound to learn something new and surprising. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone through the WordPress source, trying to figure something out, and said, “I didn’t know we had a function to do *that*!”

What’s the biggest difference between web development as a job and web development as a hobby? Can one feed into the other, or should they remain distinct?

Generally speaking, web development as a job will often limit which technologies and platforms you get to work with. On the one hand, by focusing on those core pieces, you will become very proficient with them. But on the other hand, web development as a hobby lets you explore wherever your interests take you. In my current gig, I’m dealing with Drupal, PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, and some of the more common parts of CSS. But what I’d *like* to be playing with node.js, websockets, WebGL, HTML5 canvas, CSS animation, and Arduino systems. And of course, WordPress.

I think for most people, the two do feed into each other. Obviously, the things you work on as a hobby outside of your job let you explore new areas. This can lead you to have new perspectives, new ways of thinking about and approaching problems, and this will almost always improve your overall skills and ability to do your job. And likewise, the focus you get through your work lets you gain a deeper understanding of your core tools. You get a similar benefit here because that strong reinforcement of knowledge keeps your skills honed and ensures that you are able to solve problems quickly. You can often extrapolate that knowledge and apply it to the new things you are trying to learn in your hobby life.

Quick Overview
In this roundup of the best and brightest offerings for WordPress designer-developers looking to put Twitter Bootstrap to use, WP Arena supplies plentiful options and alternatives for you to check out if you could use a head start on the front end of your beautiful WP-powered website.

Image based on “These boots are made for walking Project 365(4) Day 28” by Keith Williamson, CC-BY-2.0.

Quick Overview
Shoptalk is a podcast from the perennially prolific Chris Coyier of CSS-Tricks fame and Paravel‘s awesome lead developer Dave Rupert. With special guests and listener-submitted questions, it’s an essential listen for anyone interested in getting their hands dirty with UX and front-end design and development.

Image based on “Kalinka Gifts Storefront.” by Violette79, CC-BY-2.0.

How did you first get involved with WordPress, and what was it that drew you in?

I started doing front-end design work as a hobby in 2000 — back then, I was working primarily in static HTML (Dreamweaver, FrontPage, et al) and that progressed into working with some of the blogging systems of the time — mostly Movable Type and Greymatter. The b2 blogging platform was in my periphery, but not something I’d ever used before, until a friend of mine brought it to my attention in 2003 under a new name, WordPress. I got the “Try it…you’ll like it!” sales pitch from my friend, so I did. Movable Type was my primary platform at the time, and I was pretty frustrated with the system and having to rebuild all archives anytime I made a change to the templates or CSS…which, today, is not something we can imagine, much less tolerate. I tried WordPress in 2003 and fell in love with the simplicity of it.

How important (or unimportant) has being involved in the WordPress community been for you to date, and how, if at all, has that changed over time?

Though I’ve been a WordPress user since 2003, I didn’t really get involved in the community until around 2006, or so. I was never really used to a platform having a “community” — Movable Type didn’t really have one, certainly not one that extended offline; and none of the other platforms I was using at the time did either. So the whole community thing was a relatively new concept to me, but a very valuable addition to my personal and professional life. Even now, after 10 years, I am sure that I am not AS involved in the community as I would like to be. For me, the biggest challenge is finding the time for volunteering in the areas of the community that interest me.

My primary community involvement revolves around WordCamp and Meetup events because I do enjoy sharing my experiences and knowledge with other users, and on the flipside: learning from those far more skilled than I. I enjoy the give and take those events have to offer. Last year (2012), I think I spoke at a total of 12 WordCamps and four Meetups. My involvement in these events have affected my professional life, as well as my personal life in extremely powerful ways. Professionally, I have made some of my strongest contacts for business and collaboration through these events and, personally, I have made some of the strongest friendships with people — some of whom I consider as close as family.

All in all, I think involvement in the community, on any level, is going to benefit you professionally because there is always something more to learn. Discovering how other developers are using WordPress and finding out what their workflow is has been invaluable to me, as I learn and grow as a developer. I have learned more from the likes of Brad Williams, Cory Miller, Dre Armeda, Mark Jaquith, Michael Torbert, Ryan Duff, Andrea Rennick (and so many more I’m not mentioning) on developing with WordPress and entrepreneurship just by simply listening — either to their official talks, or just general WordPress banter over lunch or drinks. There are folks at these events who really, really know their stuff and the advantage to having access to brains like that is huge. That is one of the many things I do love about the WordPress community is that users, at any level, do have access to the brains of people that really know what they are doing with WordPress. Developers, core commiters, themers, etc., — they are accessible in a way that I’ve not seen in other communities — and that is a very valuable thing.

What challenges did you face when you first set about working professionally with WordPress, and what would you have done differently in retrospect?

I learned WordPress by breaking every WordPress site I could get my hands on — mostly my own. I don’t have any formal (or informal) training in programming, design, development, etc. I just knew I found it fascinating and fun, so I just decided if I just took a leap — feet first! — I would eventually figure it out. I would say the years between 2003-2005 in WordPress, for me, were years of breaking and fixing…and then breaking and fixing. Back then, WordPress core was this big mystical beast that I didn’t understand. It worked, and for that I was grateful — but I didn’t understand it at all. I just went about my way, developing sites on a wing and prayer! I had the front-end design skills down — I could do graphics, I had a solid understanding of HTML markup and I could code up a mean stylesheet, but my first few years in WordPress themes and templates, I was flying by the seat of my pants, and my work definitely reflected that. I should publish the code from some of my early, early work for everyone to have a hearty chuckle at, because it is entertaining to me to go through some of those files.

In retrospect, I would have reversed my process and started out trying my best to understand core. I would have spent more time in the Codex and whatever documentation was available at the time and I would have participated more in the support forums and mailing lists, interacting with other developers to really learn the platform from the ground up. I also would have definitely invested in some practical courses or books on the basics of PHP, MySQL administration and then extended to JavaScript and jQuery. Figuring it out “on the fly” is actually fun (if not sometimes very frustrating), I enjoyed the challenge of it, if I’m honest. However, if I had it to do over again, I would have abandoned my “cowgirl” coding practices and prepared myself with a bit more education and study. Maybe then I could have understood why things were breaking and could probably have saved myself hours of headaches trying to make them work again. Education and knowledge brings confidence to your craft, and I didn’t always have the confidence that I do today.

How has writing books about WordPress informed your design and development practice and vice versa?

Speaking of doing things on the fly! If you would have asked me 10 years ago if I ever imagined myself the author of a suite of books on a software program, my answer would have been a very confident: NO. And yet, today I have four books out. Three of them in multiple editions, at this point. So, I guess life throws curve balls in your direction and sometimes you have to go with it.

When I was first asked, in 2006, if I would be interested in writing a book about WordPress, for new users, I was pretty excited. I knew WordPress pretty well, by then — from a users perspective, at least. The first edition of my first book, WordPress For Dummies, hit the shelves in 2007 and it did well, however the readers of the book wanted more out of it than information and instruction on how to use WordPress to publish content. The reviews started coming in from people wanting to know how to create themes, how to develop plugins and how to use WordPress as a CMS. For the second edition of that book, my editor also wanted me to add more meat to the book, to give readers what they were asking for. This really forced me to step up that education process I spoke of in the previous question. By 2006, I knew themes pretty well and was already doing client projects that involved using WordPress as more than just a blog (eCommerce shops, magazine/media outlets, etc.) — so I needed to put all of that information in the book in a way that was easily consumable by the reader. The second edition came out with chapters on developing your own theme — including a step-by-step walkthrough on creating a theme from scratch using basic template tags and theme practices. That remains the most popular part of the book today, almost seven years later.

That book is currently in its fifth edition, undergoing the sixth as I type. Keeping up with rapid WordPress development in print is not the easiest thing to do and it’s really forced me to keep up to date with ongoing development, changes, new features, deprecated features, etc. I strongly believe this has made me a better developer because now I’m looking at things a lot more closely and critically than I was five or six years ago. Professionally, I’ve improved my ability to advise my clients on best practices and keep them abreast of changes, upgrades, features, etc. I, also, had to really look at my code with a very critical eye and make sure that what I was doing was current and in line with today’s best practices. It was eye opening, humbling, and very valuable to go through that process — but necessary because I needed to make sure that what I was publishing was the most current and best way to get the desired outcome. As a result, my code on my own projects started to improve a great deal — so it benefits me as an author, but also as a developer to be involved in this book project.

Is it the job of a designer/developer to inform or educate their clients as they work together, or is that beyond the call of duty?

I strongly believe that education is a critical piece of client services. It will always depend on the specific project you’re working on, but I don’t think a designer/developer, involved in client services, can get away from educating their clients in one aspect or another when it comes to WordPress. Support is key and it doesn’t matter if you are doing custom work for hire, or if you are in product development; everyone, rightly, expects support. With support, comes education.

I think any developer or designer who says that client education is not their job is in for some pretty tough client relationships.

As a female entrepreneur, have you found any additional challenges along the way in what has been typically perceived as a male-dominated field? Is the WordPress community any different to the tech community at large in that respect?

This issue is brought to my attention on a regular basis, more within the past year, as the topic of inclusivity and diversity is brought more to the forefront, particularly in the area of events and conferences. However, that is about the extent of my experience with being a woman in the WordPress community and the tech community at large — I hear about it. I read about it. I recognize that women in technology have experienced challenges along the way, however I cannot say that I have, personally, nor have I ever really witnessed blatant sexism or harassment in my own corner of the tech world.

I find WordPress, the platform as well as the community, to be filled with progressive types…people who are forward thinkers and people who are not always satisfied with the status quo. I believe that progressive attitude and approach toward development tends to bleed over into other aspects of their personalities and lives, as well — so, without question, it extends to the acceptance that women are as capable and talented as their male counterparts. Other female members of this community may want to weigh in on their experiences — I can only speak to my own and say that if I have ever witnessed a moment’s pause over my gender in this community, I didn’t notice it or it wasn’t brought to my attention. In the WordPress community, at least, it seems like a non-issue, to me. However, that does not mean that we should be happy with maintaining that as status quo. I think the WordPress community is doing much to the effort of keeping it that way and presenting a model to the tech world, at large, on how life should be for women in tech.

I am very grateful to be part of a community that has never made me feel “less than.” I’ve only ever experienced open minds, willingness to teach and to learn and acceptance from both males, and females, alike in my 10 years.

Ok, ok — there was this one time at a very recent WordCamp when I was attending a speakers’ dinner…I introduced myself to a developer (male) and explained what it is I do and got this response: “You develop in and write books about WordPress, AND you’re a WOMAN?? Wow — that’s awesome.” Yeah, I happen to think that’s pretty awesome, too! So, maybe I have experienced a handful of…let’s call them “teaching moments.” But nothing on the scale of some of the things I’ve read about out there — and nothing that couldn’t be resolved by taking some time for a little one-on-one education so the next time that guy runs into a woman developer, he won’t act like he’s seeing a three-headed purple giraffe. If I were a betting woman — I’d bet that guy now has a full grasp of the concept that woman-as-developer != alien life form.

Regarding experiences I’ve read about in other communities, my feeling is this: If you don’t want women to feel different, or awkward, in your community — then don’t treat them differently. I start by making the assumption that open communities are open to anyone willing and wanting to join and I, personally, don’t wait for permission to do so. Don’t treat me with kid gloves. Don’t treat me like an anomaly that needs to be coddled and specially cared for. Don’t offer me special discount pricing for your event just because I’m a woman. Don’t paint my tech books pink or wrap code in butterflies and bows in an effort to help me understand it better. Don’t put me on your speakers’ list to fill a quota — do it because you think I have something to offer the community, because of my skills, talents and experience — not because I wear a bra instead of a jockstrap. Being a woman is not a qualification for a job or a speaking slot, anymore than being a man is. If you tell me you’re filling a quota by having me involved — you’ll find my resignation in your inbox faster than you can say “Girls Rule and Guys Drool.” This isn’t rocket science — it’s about common sense, respect, and decency. Any community, tech or otherwise, that struggles with those three basic human traits have far larger problems than girl germs and cooties.

The WordPress community excels at fostering an open environment and speaks for itself with the amount of very very talented, capable and kickass women involved in the project and community. Ongoing efforts that continue to promote and showcase that is a testament to the open environment that is fostered here and opens the door wide open for women, in fact — anyone from any walk of life, to feel welcomed, accepted, and invited, at any level.

How conscious have you been of positioning yourself and your work, and has that changed over time? Does good work market itself, or is marketing something that needs as much attention as designing and development?

It was in 2004-2005 when I started doing client work in earnest, and in the Fall of 2005 when I quit my full-time job as a Registered Nurse to do client work full time, working from home. Back then, there were but a handful of design shops that were doing WordPress work and word of mouth travelled fast. In those days, I got most of my work based off referrals and having my published work in a portfolio that was accessible to anyone thinking of hiring me were the only marketing I needed to do to keep me busy on a full time basis. That was then…

These days — you can’t spit on the internet without hitting a shop that specializes in WordPress development. The competition is much heavier than it used to be and shops really need to stand out from the other to keep up. That being said, I’ve never been much of a “marketer,” either and today, I still rely on word of mouth and referrals for the primary source of my client work. I think a good body of work does speak for itself — but find it also gives other people something to speak about. Networking works so much better than outright advertisements and old fashioned cold calls. Although, I do have to say that one of the largest projects I was involved with over the past 12 months has come to me as a result of an old fashioned cold call — which is something that was an isolated incident; cold calling is not something I’m fond of doing, nor is it a regular practice of mine.

I have a bit of an advantage over most, however. The books I write are a great marketing vehicle and I get a fair amount of referral work from that. Not every shop or freelancer is going to have the benefit of a book under their belt, so they do have to find their own niche to make a splash in the industry and start people talking and referring projects in their direction. I do find that another benefit of being involved in this community is the networking abilities that are out there. Every shop and freelancer who offers products or custom client work is a source of referral and collaboration. Being involved in the WordPress community is a great marketing tool that people may not have considered, but if I were still a freelancer today; my contacts in the community would probably keep me busy on a full-time basis, so much so that I wouldn’t have time for traditional marketing.

What advice would you give to someone looking to make a career change and get involved more heavily in professional design and development with WordPress?

Three things: education, community, and collaboration.

The education advice goes back to my earlier answer in terms of preparing yourself with the knowledge you need for success. Things are much different for you now in 2013 than they were for me in the early 2000s because WordPress has not only grown as a platform, but the education and resources around WordPress have grown as more and more people use it. Get to know the best practices and integrate them into your workflow so that they become habit and become the rule, rather than the exception. For each theme and each plugin that hits the interwebs, the more best coding practices we have in place, the better WordPress, and the community and users are for it. Use the Theme Check plugin to discover what your theme may be lacking and learn about deprecated functions and how to update them, turn on WP_DEBUG to discover any errors, notices or warnings in your code, read up on the recently published official Theme Guide from WordPress.com, check out the Codex for plugin practices, localize your themes and plugins — I could go on. But learning the best way to go about your work and keeping up with standards will put you on the path of success with your projects.

Getting involved in the WordPress community is also very beneficial for all the reasons I’ve already outlined in this interview: networking, learning, teaching, exposure, etc. Don’t discount how very beneficial it can be to be involved with some of the brightest minds who shape the development and future of the platform you are working with. Getting involved in Trac and helping squash a few bugs can go a long way in your education process, as well as help the platform evolve and grow for everyone’s greater good. Stepping up to speak at a WordCamp or local Meetup will help you meet people who are trying to achieve the same goals you are — these events are great for that.

Finally, collaboration has been a big part of my work for the past several years in this community. Don’t look at your competitors as competitors — rather, look at them as potential opportunities for collaboration, resource and knowledge sharing. I have discovered time and time again that my competitors are not my enemy, as they may be in other industries. On the contrary, some of my most respected peers and closest friends are competitors in this business in one way or another — but we all bring a little something different to the table. I have learned from so many of them, and hopefully vice versa.

What are you most proud of having worked on in your WordPress career to date?

Hands down, the books that I’ve published on WordPress are something that I am particularly proud of, mainly because of the huge amount of effort involved in writing a static book on such a dynamic platform.

Having designed or overseen the design of over 1000 websites now, how has your design process evolved over time and what do you consider to be essential — or inessential — to every job?

A bit about design vs. development — I do both and over the years my process has changed on how I approach both.

When I refer to the “design” of a project, I am referring to the front-end work that goes into it — primarily the graphic design, HTML markup, and CSS. Through the years, design is a never-ending college course for me. I am self-taught, so am accustomed to self-learning, and in design, things are always evolving and changing. I started out as a static HTML designer who did table-based designs and mocked up graphic concepts in PaintShop Pro. These days, I use Photoshop tools for design mockups, I abandoned tables for CSS in 1999. Every day since I started designing is a learning process for me, as I think it’s important for anyone working in this field to keep up with the evolving technology. One of my favorite resource sites for this is Chris Coyier’s CSS-Tricks. More recently, probably within the past two-three years, I’m finding myself doing less and less design and more and more development as clients are approaching me with their design work already completed. I’m still doing some of the front-end CSS and markup work, but in terms of graphic design work, I’m doing so much less of that these days. I think that is either because clients are becoming more and more educated and skilled in areas they didn’t used to be — or my client pool is made up of larger entities who employ in-house designers and agencies that do their branding for them. Probably a little of both.

From a development perspective, I think I described a little of my pain early on in my career in an earlier answer. Over the years, I’ve added new techniques and tools to my workflow that have greatly improved my efficiency and skill. Version Control is not always something that I always employed, for no other reason than the fact that I just didn’t get it and I was always so busy, I didn’t take the time to learn it. Once I got it, I could kick myself for the years that I didn’t use it and now cannot imagine living with out it (big shout out to Brad Williams for knocking me over the head with it until it sunk in). Now, I’m comfortable in both Git and SVN — but I used to read tweets from people like Mark Jaquith and he’d tweet something about “cowboy coders” who code on production sites without using version control…yeah, that was me. These days, I sing the praises of version control and would say to any developer who is not using to make it part of your regular work flow immediately — it is never to late to learn it and employ it and you’ll be happier for it.

You recently decided to merge your company eWebscapes with WebDevStudios. What motivated the change, and what new business affordances are you most excited about now that the wheels are in motion?

Funny thing about WebDevStudios is that, up until very recently, they were always a competitor of mine in the custom WordPress space. Looking back on the earlier question where I discuss competitors being a potential for opportunity and collaboration — this is a good example of that. Brad, Brian, and I met in 2009 at a WordCamp I organized in Chicago, and have been friends since then. Over the years, I always envied the fact that WebDev operated as a team, whereas I primarily operated as an individual who occasionally outsourced to freelancers when the project load got too heavy. I operated eWebscapes like that for almost 12 years and I think it was in 2010 that it began to dawn on me that I could probably accomplish a lot more as part of a team, rather than on my own. Through my experiences collaborating with other shops, like iThemes, for example — I really began to appreciate a team environment of collaboration and cooperation and in 2010, I started to quietly look for a team to either merge with, or join because I could see the benefit. I like the collaboration. I like the ability to bounce ideas off other developers — use them as a resource, and also be a resource for them. I was missing that in my work. Brad, Brian, and I started talking about merging, in earnest in 2012. By then, I was drowning in work at eWebscapes — not only with client projects, but also managing other projects that I had my freelancers working on, as well. The projects I was managing and developing were not small projects — so it was quite a challenge to do it all on my own. Merging my client base with WebDev’s client base is a win for everyone involved and merging talents and resources is, as well. It was probably the best move I could have made and am more than thrilled to have done it…I’m hoping Brad and Brian feel the same way!

We officially merged in January 2013 and have been spending the first couple of months of this year transitioning, which hasn’t been painful at all. In terms of the future — I’m excited at WebDev. Brad and Brian are both brilliant developers, along with every single member of the team. I’m really proud of what they’ve accomplished so far and proud that they are blazing the trail in the area of using WordPress as an application framework, a topic that Brad is speaking on at WordCamp Miami in April 2013. They have developed some pretty amazing apps using WordPress, and BuddyPress, at the core — unfortunately I am not yet able to disclose those projects, and the apps are not currently public, but I can say that I’m excited at what is currently brewing at WebDevStudios, proud to be a part of it and excited to be involved in the development process, as well.

Quick Overview
In this video of his An Event Apart presentation, recorded on June 18th, 2012, Ethan covers how to use fluid grids and media queries to handle trickier elements of designing responsively, including advertising, complex layouts, deep navigation patterns, third-party media, and more. Allow the man who coined responsive web design back in 2010 with his canonical A List Apart article, to take you to the next level of designing a user experience that works, regardless of the size of the user’s viewport.

Image based on Ripple by robin_24, CC-BY-2.0.

Layout, navigation, images, forms, media, and modules are all in there! Responsive patterns covers the gamut of permutations and commutations you’ll encounter in making your WordPress sites responsive. Did we mention that the carousel and navigation patterns put a gleam in our eye? What’s more, pro/con descriptions for each pattern give you just-in-time information to help you figure out where they’ll be most useful to you when you’re up against a deadline and trying to get a site out into the world.

Image Credit: “Czech Rep, Prague, Babushka” by travellingtamas, CC-BY-2.0