Quick Overview
Some folks say that charging clients by time spent is no way to prosper because your time is finite. Sell a product, they say: it’s the sure-fire way to afternoons spent poolside, supping on caviar and sipping champagne like the idle rich. Respected WordPress consultant Bill Erickson says that by minimizing the aspects of your service business that don’t scale, you can maximize productive time and profit.

Image based on “In the workshop” by Les Chatfield, CC-BY-2.0

Quick Overview
Who’s the best hosting provider? Where can I find courses on WordPress? As a beginner, what’s the best way to get started? What’s the best plugin for SEO? Head on over to the WordPress LinkedIn Group to learn the answers to these questions, or ask your own. Last week alone, there were over 48 discussions, 430 comments, 22 promotions, and six jobs posted. With over 24,000 members, the answer to your question is out there, all you need do is ask.

Image credit: “Chain by Pratanti, CC-BY-2.0

How did you get started in web design and development? When did Anatta Design come into the picture?

I kicked off web design work with my first company called Dharmaboost. It did well but we were all over the place doing .net, Rails, and even Flash projects (yes, we say that with a lot of sarcasm). The motivation to start Anatta Design came from the longing to own and operate a business on my own schedule; with a team that gelled, doing projects we loved, and with no starting capital. Just three years later and Anatta Design had really taken off. We were born into a niche within web design and development. A niche where the sole focus was to improve everyday user experience problems with design and technology.

Was Anatta Design always a WordPress-focused shop or did you come around to using it later on? What made you decide to use it over some of the other options available to you?

Since it’s inception, Anatta Design has been a 100% WordPress-focused shop. We wanted to work and sell technology on the platform we use everyday. A platform that was simple, scalable, and just a delightful experience. One strong belief that we share with WordPress is a passion for great user experience. So choosing to use WordPress wasn’t really a decision. It just perfectly aligned with us and our company mission. So we ran with it and never looked back.

What type of clients do you typically deal with and what challenges do they most often pose?

Our clients fall into two buckets: high end design firms (with 15+ designers) or online-only web businesses (generating at least $250K yearly). For us, these are absolutely perfect clients. They understand the nature of running an online business, they understand development cycles, they get what’s worth spending time on, and they aim for results backed by analytics. The challenges these clients often pose are what we enjoy: usability challenges. A typical problem might be where some part of their site or a feature isn’t getting the results they want and all the solutions they’ve tried haven’t worked. In this situation, they come to us to develop a complete custom solution that requires both design and development power. These types of challenges take planning, strategy, and execution. They’re hard challenges, but super fun because it’s what we love doing—helping clients achieve what their business needs and deserves.

Do you think there are benefits to being a specialist within a field of generalists, or is it more important to be flexible with what you’re able to offer clients? How has your approach worked in Anatta Design’s favor?

There are benefits to being a specialist. As a specialist you earn the ability to dictate what works and what doesn’t backed by experience + tested results. Like being the go-to team when there is a specific challenge that no one else has been able to crack. Or having the foresight to visualize an objective solution from afar and dive into executing it. You don’t have to be flexible to make clients happy. Clients come to us because they’d rather have us be real and flex our expertise to build something that gives results than cater to everything they think they want. Flexibility gets confused with caring when it shouldn’t. We’re approachable, frank, and care for our clients, but we won’t put our mouth where our strengths aren’t.

Tell us about a big project you enjoyed or a recent success story Anatta Design has experienced.

Our biggest project would definitely be the launch of our first plugin to the WordPress repository, WP Readable. We came up with the idea, strategized it, designed it, and had it out the door, all in three months flat. We followed it up with two updates within just a month’s time. The need for such a plug-in simply arose from our personal experiences with mobile blog viewing. We found that the interaction was not fun, the design was always cluttered with functionality, and the user experience was always focused on page visits vs. reading the blog. We changed that and brought the focus back to the experience of reading and filtering through posts. It’s the first mobile plugin that lets you navigate from post to post via a touch slide/swipe interaction, effectively transforming mobile blog viewing on iPhones and Androids. What’s really exciting is the response this release has generated. It’s humbling to see mentor companies like Digital Telepathy (creators of Slideck and Slidedeck2), multi-million dollar health and wellness companies like Clean Program, and big online marketing giant Retargeter, hopping on our user lists and fueling us with some really positive feedback.

What would you say have been the biggest changes in how you run Anatta Design between now and when you first got started?

The biggest change has been moving from an entirely service-based company to a product development company. And as a result, having the opportunity to live out our company focus which is to improve user experience problems with design and technology. This is hands down the biggest and the most gradual change since we started Anatta Design. This transition from service industry to product industry is huge. Previously all our timelines and motivation were driven by our clients who had their own agendas. When a milestone or launch was completed for them, we were done. But not anymore. Now everything is driven by our customers and our core team. And we’re never done until we’re 100% satisfied with the service we give to our customers. In this scenario, we want to keep giving and keep pushing harder in projects we believe in. It’s fun and makes work satisfying for each one of us.

Tell us about your approach to branding Anatta Design. One of the things that really stands out about your site is the core narrative and imagery you use when describing your company, in words, images, and even video. Do think it’s important to stand for something as a company out there on the web, and if so, what does Anatta Design stand for?

We’ve always been focussed on telling the true story of our team and what we really care about. It’s never been about a single person or getting a single sale. It’s been about communicating our passion and our purpose for being a company. Our company solves complex web problems through simplicity. And the more complex the challenge, the simpler our solution. So to answer your question, I think it’s essential to take a stand in the web space, especially at a time when there’s so much going around. We have the same tenacity and solid effort behind our products and solutions, that the WordPress core team has behind every WP release. The end-user is our number one focus and we can fulfill that aim because we’re always true to ourselves.

Which go-to plugins save you time and headaches when you’re developing client sites? Or do you prefer to build from scratch?

We created our own starter theme back in 2009. But now we’ve switched to Automattic’s underscores theme as our starter theme  because it’s awesome. We’re always open to using another’s theme if it provides the core components we need for our client’s project. We care deeply about site load time and code cleanliness, though we’re not fanatical about doing everything perfect at first go. We do things that get the job done and then relentlessly refactor. This way the clients are happy and we are too.  And we adopt this approach in our product development too: get it out there and get iterating. We love the plugins below simply because they make everything we do so much quicker:

• Developer ensures we have all the tools we need.
• Debug Bar gives us a fast way to find PHP warnings and notices and debugging.
• Core Control is great for letting us see how Core works and how we can plug into the system.
• W3 Total Cache takes care of everything we would have done manually for front-end speed optimization.
• WordPress SEO takes care of everything SEO-related.
• Gravity Forms works out of the box and is very extendable.
• Slidedeck 2 is the perfect content slider solution.

Where would you like Anatta Design to be in five years’ time?

I hope that it’s not very different from what it is right now, though with much deeper experience in the product sphere. We’ve only just engaged in the world of product development and we would love to become a driving force in the WordPress plugin world. Having a few products in the top 100 WordPress plugin market would be a great achievement. But at the end of the day, our real test is to see how our products influence the user experience. In five years, it would be great to see our products being used to solve real challenges.

Which one piece of hard-won advice would you give to someone just starting up their first WordPress shop?

Learn WordPress to the very core and understand how and why it was constructed the way it is. Only when you do that, can you understand how to build amazing, high-end, scalable websites with it. WordPress is a super powerful system and it’s only when you break away from its architecture and design will you run into problems. Stick with it, and it will stick with you.

How did you get started working on the web? What do you love about it?

While attending Eastern Michigan University for graphic design, I worked for the student newspaper designing print pages and layouts. The new web team had a position available and in 1998 I was hired to post news and photos to the newspaper website. In 1999, I took on an internship where I learned to update the company website. That same year, in my senior graphic design class, one of our final projects was to design and build a website. Opportunities for working on the web seemed plentiful and these experiences were enough to get me started. From these basic skills I began to build my own sites. I’d always loved the instant gratification of the web—even more so back in the day when printing wasn’t as quick and inexpensive. And I enjoy making the design come to life with clickable elements and rollovers.

Graphic design is my specialty. I’m experienced in just about any medium from web and print to signs, t-shirts, and other promotional goodies. I really love starting from a blank (or near blank) canvas and defining an identity for a new brand. My art degree has taught me to focus on the emotion that certain shapes and colors create. Not just that they look cool, but why they look cool. Or classy, or friendly. And I really love making my designs come to life with custom WordPress themes and CSS3. For jQuery and database awesomeness I call in the machine guns over at BinaryM. There’s so many possibilities with coding that I’ll always be learning. And that helps drive me too, because I love seeing how things work.

Tell me a bit about your design process.

It all starts with the client. Most of the time I phone clients to learn about their personalities. This step involves mostly listening. I keep them on the phone until I have a clear idea of their goals and a visual for their sense of style. Most clients have a hard time saying what they want—after all, they aren’t designers! But they all know what kind of emotion they’re looking to invoke or what kind of look suits their business. (Or that the sidebar should go on the right.)

After the meeting, I start with a quick layout. For a bigger project I’ll get out a notepad, but most of the time I can visualize the direction and go right to Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is wonderful because I can sketch and edit appearances in vector format without having to mess with Photoshop layers. And if a client wants to switch mediums, for example, to create print pieces from a website design, no time is wasted because I can scale the elements without losing quality.

Once I have the document sized and elements placed, I start a type study. I use a type manager to preview titles and text as they will appear in the design, and select several that speak to the project. I’ve found this to be a very important step because fonts really set the mood. I usually create three sets of type, each with two-three fonts that work well together. That way I have a backup if I don’t like the way some of the letters or numbers turn out.

Then, I size the design elements and create a hierarchy for the design. I choose which title or group of text needs to stand out the most. Then the second most, etc. When I can design around the project content, I can assure a unique look because I can pay attention to the way letters come together and choose appropriate text sizing for a perfect fit. And adding photos and other graphics too soon can sway my decisions. In black and white, I start adding design details. Most things look better in color because colors all have emotion. So if I can get that feeling into the design before the color, it will be that much more flexible, and I won’t be relying on color to sell the design.

Once I’ve got the design details set in black and white, it’s finally color time! As the design comes to life, I look back at the original client notes to capture any last details and make sure I’ve addressed everything. And since we spent so much time on the previous steps, the design looks great even when the client chooses wacky colors like brown and yellow! If I’m designing screen graphics, I’ll recreate the layout in Photoshop to make sure everything is pixel-perfect. That always sounds cumbersome, but it’s actually a swift process, and makes my Photoshop files very minimal. I can also include elements as vector smart objects for easy resizing.

Tell me about your favorite project. What was most challenging about it? What did you learn that’s served you in your work?

Most definitely preggiepals.com has been my favorite. It’s been challenging to launch such a big site—and then have two sites using child themes launch immediately behind it. Throughout the process I’ve learned how to use child themes and GIT to keep track of what was uploaded where. I think I’ve used every skill in my toolbox on this project, from a fresh design with print pieces to a website design flexible enough to look unique on each site.

How did you get into working with WordPress?

I was tired of updating my static website and I had been reading about WordPress and other platforms. One day I downloaded them all, tried them out and, of course, WordPress was my favorite. To say it stuck would be an understatement!

What made WordPress stand out among the crowd when you were trying out the platforms? In other words, what was it about WordPress that made you stick with it?

Honestly—I wasn’t able to break it! Getting into WordPress as a graphic designer and being able to create totally custom themes with a little bit of PHP knowledge was—and still is—really just amazing to me. I would never be able to build a database-driven website on my own. The other platforms weren’t as easy to theme and didn’t have good help and resources.

Tell me a bit about your freelance network. How did you come to cultivate it and how does it help you in your work?

My network of clients has grown from just a few clients to working full time. Upon graduating college in 2000, I started freelancing. I built a hobby Jeep forum in 2002, and when vendors saw the logo and site layout, they wanted me to do the same for them. Any way that you can tell the world, “hey! this is what I do!” is always helpful in the long run. Once I decided to start my own business and dedicated myself to that goal, it was easy to make it a reality. I’ve found that if you do what you say you’re going to do—on time and for a fair price—the referrals will follow!

You’ve sponsored WordCamp San Diego—are there other ways you give back to the community?

I really enjoyed working with the WordCamp San Diego team and hope they will have me again in the future. Unfortunately, there aren’t any meetup groups near me, and I don’t spend a lot of time on social networking sites. I’ve found other ways to volunteer in the community around me, however. I’ve donated web design time to political parties, candidates, the San Bernardino National Forest, and local clubs.

To learn more about Sarah, follow her on Twitter or visit her website.

Quick Overview
Most WordPress pros got into web design and development because they love spending time up close and personal with pixels and code, not because they relish figuring out what to charge and sending out invoices. Jason Blumer earns his living coaching designers and developers to slow down their sales process, get schooled on precisely what the client needs to be successful, and how to set pricing by the job, so that they earn not just an hourly wage, but what they’re worth. Let him take you to pricing school.

Image credit: “Price of Gasoline: Hawaii” by puuikibeach: CC-BY

How did you get started in web design?

In 1998, my last year of high school, I was selected for a Canadian exchange program. There, I learned how to create pages in HTML and about FTP, and various social platforms (yes, we had social platforms even then), like ICQ and IRC. We played games like Doom. (Who remembers that!?) I’d been doing Computer Science at school, learning the Basic programming language. I began to love coding, so I just continued to wrestle with the web and programming languages as time progressed. I started off building sites by hand in HTML, then XHTML, then HTML/CSS, and then I graduated to content management systems around 2004. Around mid-2005, whilst working at an advertising agency as a graphic designer, I began seeing the value of the internet to local businesses.

At that time in Trinidad, there was still only a handful of business websites. There was a lot of experimentation from web and tech enthusiasts, but mostly on a hobbyist level. Back then, websites were mostly HTML or ASP. CMS sites weren’t even in use yet. I decided to leave my job and start doing websites. I got acquainted with Joomla and used it for about two years, but found that the biggest issue was explaining to clients how to use the backend. I continued to search for a solution that was flexible enough to be used for any kind of site, yet easy for the client to add and update their content. WordPress was that solution. I started to dig very deep into WP around 2008 and by 2009, I was saying things like, “WordPress, you’ve got me by my plugins,” and “WP, I love the way you code,” ha!

Your focus has changed from building websites to helping businesses build their brand—tell us a bit about that.

Since I don’t position my company as a web development or graphic design outfit, I’m able to divert the client’s focus toward the big picture. I’ve found that approaching my web work with an integrative outlook helps my clients to unify their branding. I never look at a website as just a website but as an extension of the brand, persona or service that the client is offering. I devote myself to figuring out how to push that brand as far as possible with each project. Also, because I aim to educate clients about their brand and how they can maximize it, they often return with a follow-up project, and I can use the brand palette and language that I’ve already begun to develop. Although I work alone day-to-day in the business, there are key people that form part of the extended family. They have knowledge and experience in areas such as web and domain hosting, copywriting, social media, photography, web design, and web and mobile programming. That enables me to give clients a range of options and perspectives in their projects.

Do you find it challenging to communicate technical and data-based information to your clients? How do you approach this?

I definitely find that it’s difficult to talk with clients about the technical aspects of their projects. I wobble between over-simplifying and talking in jargon. It’s a rocky road, but I continue to try to develop a vocabulary that’s inclusive and that accommodates my clients. WordPress’ backend make it easy for clients not to feel overwhelmed, though. One of the biggest hurdles to get over has been “expectation management.” As web professionals, it’s easy to take for granted how we interact with the internet and how we understand it. Many people have an image of the internet that’s very different from our own. Sitting and having at least one long conversation in front of the client’s website design and talking about how things on the site should or will function is a good way to get misunderstandings out of the way. Being patient with clients and letting them ask even “stupid” questions (according to them) helps them relax and express their needs for the website. Oftentimes, because the internet grows at such an alarming rate, my understanding of a simple term like “banner” could be totally different from how the client understands the term. I find it best to not assume anything, and ask every possible question to figure out the workings of the entire site before proceeding toward completion.

Visuals also help greatly. For instance, I normally do a site map, so that clients can see the links on the site and what links where. I put notes on the design to explain functionality, and I sometimes create a style guide which outlines in detail the sites they liked and which parts of those designs I would use. If in the early stages of a project, I spend a lot of time getting into a client’s head, it removes doubt and saves lots of time in the long run. I’d like to say I’m super savvy and use tools to do those things, but some of these tools hold me back more than they help me work faster—but that’s just me. I find that Adobe Muse is good for wireframes, but other than that I use Illustrator for my site maps, and a text editor to do up the style guide. That WP101 plugin looks very handy, by the way.

Tell us about a recent project you liked or big win you’ve had.

Recently, I created a discography that’s backend friendly and works on the frontend using jQuery and HTML5. I used a plugin that creates custom fields and set it up to allow the user to upload their album’s name, image, artist’s name, and the songs within a post (as a custom post type). Then I made templates to display the discography. I created php calls to load the album information using jQuery. So credit goes to the plugin creator: Elliot Condon and the jQuery Discography All I did was create a bridge to combine great pieces. I’m not finished with it yet, but the site is 95% complete. I’m so content with myself on this project, because I’m sure I’ve created something that can be re-used not just by me, but by others, so when the solution is complete, I’ll put it on my blog for sharing.

How has shifting from short-term to long-term projects changed your business?

It hasn’t drastically altered my business yet, in terms of the projects that I get to work on, etcetera. It has however drastically altered my approach to projects. I used to be intimidated by acting on and talking with clients about my branding ideas, because I hadn’t learned it at school and hence there was no reason for clients to see me as a branding aficionado. I realized that I do have an eye and knack for it, so I do my own reading and self-study to grow. I also just completed a Diploma in Marketing and Sales Management and it opened my eyes immensely to the possibilities and developments within the field of “brand strategy” as an offshoot of marketing.

Based on your experience attending college in the US and working in Trinidad, are there challenges that Caribbean designers/developers face that those in other parts of the world may not?

One of the challenges that Caribbean developers face is access to hands-on programming training. There are information technology and software courses both independent and as part of a degree program, however, there are no ways to go sit in a classroom and learn a programming language. It isn’t given much weight in information technology courses either. With all the fuss web technology gets on the user end, from a developer’s perspective, you’re on your own in the Caribbean—you just have to teach yourself.

As for Caribbean designers, there is very little appreciation for the best practices in design. I think this has to do largely with misinformation on the client’s end, and practitioners who shirk the responsibility of telling their clients what to expect, given what they themselves know. With all the claims of “graphic/web designer” very few people in the Caribbean actually practice these trades professionally and stay current. Add all this to the fact that the Caribbean is about two pulses behind the US and Europe when it comes to digital and new media, and by extension design and development for those mediums.

What are your favorite plugins?

I like All-in-One SEO Pack and Better WP Security, but I honestly don’t have favorites because I like trying new and different ways to do things with each project. This also helps you learn different plugin authors and the pros and cons of their style of plugin creation/development.

What are your go-to resources for staying informed and continuing the education process?

I do online courses or read/participate in forums at a number of sites such as sitepoint.com, learnable.com, lynda.com, wordpress.org, codepoet.com, webdesigner depot, and CSS Tricks. I sometimes browse Twitter for great articles and am part of an amazing Facebook group for Digital and Social Media practitioners.

Five years from now, what goals would you like to have accomplished?

Because greenInk facilitates just one of my many interests, within the next five years, I want to become a MUCH better musician and singer, have a functioning tee-shirt company, produce at least two more books and cds, and be recognized as a brand strategy consultant, a coder, and a seriously talented face painter.

How did Hapaweb Solutions get its start?

Hapaweb was an accidental startup. I learned about blogging around June, 2009 and created my own self-hosted blog in August 2009 using WordPress. Having fell in love with blogging, I created a blog for my friend Dr. Sodzi who loves to write.

A year later, a former lecturer, Professor Addae, needed a website, so I landed my first freelance job. After finishing the site, I found out that the professor’s organization would only issue a cheque to a company. Thus, I registered a company so I could get paid. The Registrar General required at least three directors for the formation of a company, so I called up my two good friends Gideon and Ben to sign the papers…thus Hapaweb was born on October 10th, 2010. One referral led to another and on January 1st, 2012, Ben and I left our jobs to focus on Hapaweb full time.

As of July 2012, you went 100% WordPress. How did you come to this decision?

When we started designing websites, we committed ourselves to build using only open source CMSs. Back then we settled on Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress. After a year and a half of using theses CMSs, we came to the conclusion that WordPress was best for our clients. Joomla and Drupal are strong and comprehensive CMSs, but our preference for WordPress stems from the ease-of-use for our non-technical clients and the massive support provided by devoted and dedicated forum members.

What changes in your business have you seen since making this switch?

We have had less customer tickets, as a good number of our customers are comfortable with using WordPress. Developing with only one CMS has also enabled us to provide better customer service as we can now concentrate on providing more non-human support such as videos, user guides, and tutorials to our clients on only one CMS.

Are most of your projects short-term builds or do you work with your clients to incorporate various services with long-term goals?

Over 80% of our projects are long-term projects. Our first clients were small businesses and sole proprietors who wanted websites for their business. Now we are receiving orders for middle and large-size companies who want us to redesign their existing websites from static html websites to dynamic websites which enable them to control the content from their end…and that is why we love WordPress…it meets the needs of our clients.

What have you been working on that you’re excited about?

We love our Free School Project. A key part of it includes building websites for the school and obviously WordPress is the CMS of choice. Thus far we have 14 schools on the project and will be adding 10 more by the end of the year.

We have just completed developing custom plugins for some of the schools which will enable them to put student results online. Soon, over 50,000 parents will be enthused to know that the problem they face with receiving their wards’ results due to the unreliable postal system in Ghana will be over as they will be able to check results online.

Corporate social responsibility is something that Hapaweb is very passionate about. Could you share a bit more about your philosophy and how you got involved in it?

When Isaac Newton wrote to Robert Hooke on February 15th 1676, he said “If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Hapaweb would not be what we are today had it not been for giants such as Automattic, Google, and OS4Ed. These companies have given so much to the world for free. We owe it to them, to ourselves, and to our people to act in the manner in which we have been treated. We cannot solve all the problems of Africa, but we can contribute to the future of Africa by supporting the next generation.

Our Free Schools Project is our main corporate social responsibility project. Thus far we have invested over GHS20,000 ($10,000 USD) in cash and in kind toward this project. Although the cost has had a significant influence on our profits and time, we are excited to know and see that we are gradually making a difference in the lives of over 26,000 students and 1,400 teachers as they make better use of the web.

As part of your commitment to corporate social responsibility, Hapaweb has shown support to several different activities. Tell us more.

Information Technology, especially web applications, is our strength, Education is our passion and free is our belief. Whenever we see these three in action, we try to get involved and support the cause.

Thus, we have been involved in sponsoring a number of Barcamps in Ghana, where young people are introduced to ways they can make better use of the internet. We have provided sponsorship to the national Conference of Directors of Education (CODE) to support IT education and training. We have partnered with Google Ghana and sponsored free training to businesses in making better use of the internet and we are currently supporting the publicity efforts for Embedded Systems training being organized by Kumasi Center for Lifelong Learning.

What (if any) challenges do you face as web designers in Ghana that others in the rest of the world may not encounter?

1. Foreign exchange losses
We host our websites with HostGator and register domains with eNomCentral. Payment for these are in US dollars. With the weekly increases in exchange rates, coupled with the fact that our rates to our customers are in Ghana Cedis, our profits are significantly impacted by exchange rate losses especially during periods of higher and rapid exchange rate changes.

2. Lack of local WordPress experts
In the majority of our website design projects, we need to develop custom plugins. We have been trying for months now without success to find local programmers who can build WordPress plugins to join us. We have been left with no alternative but to hire these skills on oDesk and Elance, and since we have to pay in dollars, our profits are affected by exchange rate.

How do you continue to motivate and educate your team in this ever-changing world of technology?

A key tool has been our intranet, where we all share resources we find useful. One of our favorite resources is the plugins spreadsheet, where everyone adds plugins they have used in building a site. Thus when anyone needs say a Facebook “Like” plugin, there’s no need to spend loads of time testing the many plugins in the WordPress directory—just check out what a team member has found to be the best and go with it. We also have the blogs lists, the tips and tricks list and many more. We usually take an hour or two every Friday to read around so that we can share some of our insights in our bi-weekly Wednesday meetings.

You’ve done a lot in the two years since you got started. What would you like Hapaweb to accomplish in the next two years?

Everyone in the office can tell you that even if you wake him or her in the middle of the night: we want to get 200 schools on the Free Schools Project. We want to have eight offices in Ghana and four country offices across Africa.

One word to describe your team.

Hmmmmm—one word. I would have said passion, but our favourite word is FREE.

For more on Albert, check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Tell me a bit about each of your backgrounds. How did you end up working on the web? How was Pixel Jar born?

Brandon: I have a background in film and computer animation. I pursued that further at the college level. (I dare you to rent the Golden Blaze!, a film I animated.) At the time I graduated, Flash and Generator were all the rage on the interwebs for dynamic content, so I worked on those sorts of jobs. Many of those jobs required me to build a lot of ActionScript. In those cases, I worked with the UI/UX team and the designers to create usable Flash applications. The need for dynamic sites got me interested in server side scripting languages like PHP.

Jeff: At school I earned a degree in applied mathematics. While the computer and modelling classes taught me computer and logic skills, the internet as we know it today was still in its infancy with Juno, AOL, Geocities, and the like. It wasn’t much of a viable career path at the time. Still, to help pay the bills I got my first web job working on the website for my university’s bookstore, at the end of my junior year. (I had zero web skills at the time and spent the summer learning HTML and JavaScript to be ready for my new job the following autumn when school started back up.) After graduation I spent a few years substitute teaching, then teaching junior high and high school. But the dot-com boom was blossoming and I switched careers. Working on the web was already a fun hobby. I wanted to try and turn it into a full-time paying gig.

We met at a boutique web firm in 2001. I started working there in 2000. Brandon was brought on to do some Flash work for the firm in 2001. While working there, we found that our work ethic was similar and we shared a nerdy passion for pursuing better solutions. During the four years we worked there together we also developed a great friendship and a deep trust in each other (we were often mistaken for brothers, which is not far off). At one point we had the idea that we should go into business for ourselves and chart our own destiny. So, we gathered up whatever freelance work we could, filed some official paperwork, and Pixel Jar was born.

Pixel Jar has been in business since 2004. How did you get into working with WordPress?

One of the Holy Grails of being a web firm is finding a Content Management System (CMS) that’s usable and that clients can easily learn. We’d tried every PHP CMS solution we could find: Joomla, Drupal, MovableType, etc., and even went so far as to build our own (nicknamed The Blogotron). When we first stumbled on WordPress, not only did we find that our clients were receptive to the dashboard, we really dug how easy it was for them to use. Once we saw how driven and vibrant the WordPress community was, we were sold. Within months, we began recommending that our clients adopt the WordPress platform. Since then, we’ve been focusing all of our development efforts on WordPress-based work. That is still our business model today.

Pixel Jar prides itself on coding. Can you share a bit about the best practices you’ve developed?

Good code comes from revision and review. A great novel isn’t written in the first draft. The same is true for good code. When re-examining our work we’re always looking for better and more elegant solutions. We’re afraid to scrap an idea and start fresh. More times than we’d like to recall, we’ve stumbled on a better solution halfway through a project. But the code and usability is really important to us. So we take a deep breath, strip it down, and start again.

We also use a lot of peer review. We often work with John Hawkins
, Matt McInvale
, Blair Williams
, Dave Jesch, and 
Jon Brown. The more eyes you have on a piece of code, the better it’s going to be. Through all of the WordCamps we’ve been to over the years, we’ve met some amazingly smart people. If we feel like we need an extra set of eyes on something in particular, we’ll send it over for suggestions and improvements. We do the same for them.

Tell us how you divide the work between the two of you.

We use the buddy system! Generally we’re working on separate projects. Since we’re mildly distributed, we run video chat constantly so we can pick each other’s brain about issues that come up. When a project is completed, whoever is free will take the lead on the next project in the queue. Each Monday morning we get together to review what’s completed and what needs to be done and re-adjust focus as needed. With regard to clients, usually whoever made first contact will continue to act as the liaison throughout the project. We try to make sure the workload is balanced and equitable between us.

Tell us a bit about how your strategic partnerships work: do you have a network of folks that you bring on based on the project?

For a long time we did 100% of the work for each of our projects. But as time went on and demand went up we had a hard time keeping up with the workload and we didn’t always have the skillset to deliver everything we wanted. But, we also have a hard time letting go as we’re wholly responsible for the quality of the work we deliver. The bulk of our work comes from referrals so we’re careful and guarded about our reputation. Luckily, over the years, we’ve formed some relationships with trusted compadres who share our work ethic and passion for quality.

We’ve occasionally brought on folks—on an as-needed basis, but lately we’ve been trying to work with other developers just for the fun of collaborating. Since delving into the WordPress world, through WordCamps and meetups, we’ve met a ton of other great designers and developers. The number of people we share work with has grown considerably. When schedules allow, we like to collaborate with others on projects. We’d love to work on something with the BinaryM guys or develop a design by Cody Landefeld. We did get to work on a project with our buddies from CubicTwo and found it very rewarding.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time, away from PHP functions?

Jeff: I spend a lot of my non-PHP time either surfing or camping. My wife and I are avid travellers, always looking for the next great adventure. On rainy days, nothing beats a euro board game with friends. But most importantly, I’m always searching for that next great cup of coffee. Oh, lovely coffee.

Brandon: I love spending time with my family, and my two kids (ages four and seven) are very active. With dance, gymnastics, tae kwon do, swimming, soccer, school, and language programs, sometimes it feels like we run a taxi service. My wife and I try to cram in as much culture as we can so that the kids will grow up to have good global awareness. To that extent, we visit national parks, zoos, museums, and performing arts events as often as we can. We also love hanging out with our pal, Mickey Mouse, at the Disneyland/DCA resort here in Anaheim whenever we can.

Together we have four shared hobbies that also serve as breaks from work: burritos, surfing (Jeff is the superior surfer), ping pong (Brandon always wins), and bowling (still determining dominance).

Jeff spoke at WordCamp Las Vegas in 2011. You both co-organize the Orange County WordCamp. In what other ways do you give back to the WordPress community?

We’ve each spoken at a few WordCamps over the years. Our local meetup, the Orange County WordPress Meetup, meets twice a month—there’s one session for beginners and one for developers. We’ll attend and present there on a regular basis. When possible we also try to contribute to the Pasadena and Maui meetups as well, which are run by friends we met at the Orange County WordPress Meetup. The official WordPress repository hosts several freely available plugins that we’ve released publicly. They include Favicon Generator, RSS Icon Widget,
 Conversation Starter, SpamShiv Lite, and Geocache Stat Bar Widget. Recently, Brandon contributed code to core for the first time with version 3.3 and has a couple of patches slated for inclusion in 3.5, of which we are particularly proud. He’ll also be attending the Community Summit in October.

Of the plugins you’ve created, which are you most proud of and why?

It may be one of our least downloaded plugins, but it would have to be Conversation Starter. In 2009, we entered a plugin competition held at WordCamp NYC. We built the plugin with contributions from John Hawkins, Drew Strojny, and Andrew Christian. The idea is simple enough—add a specific question at the end of a post to start the conversation, rather than just having the “Comments” header. WordPress has always been about communication and we thought this would help spur responses to a post. Judges Matt Mullenweg, Mark Jaquith, and Brian Gardner all agreed that our plugin made the best use of the WordPress interface, built-in technologies, and was an interesting idea.

Winning that award wasn’t all gravy though. While I was standing on stage, in front of a crowd of what seemed like hundreds of people, Mark put on a demonstration of how NOT to build a plugin with our plugin as the example. The great thing about that moment is that it burned into our memory the responsibility that we accept as plugin developers.

Beyond that, what we find amazing about our publicly released plugins—this one is no exception—is the creation process. Most of our ideas are spawned during our WordCamp travels. When traveling to a WordCamp we are generally disconnected from client related work and we start in on the “wouldn’t it be awesome if…” conversations. We get a chance to hash out the functionality and interface without much distraction. It reminds us of why we adopted WordPress in the very beginning…because it can do just about anything.

Tell us about your favorite project: what did you enjoy the most? What did you learn from it?

Our favorite project so far has been working with Krochet Kids International back in the fall of 2010. We were particularly proud of the site we have developed for them. Their site includes custom post types and custom taxonomies, ecommerce, and social integrations.

Krochet Kids has an interesting business model. We were inspired by what they’d accomplished as a company and liked the plans they had for the future. This was one of those projects that, not only were we proud of what we delivered, but we were also proud to be a part of what they were developing and helping them to increase their brand recognition. The satisfaction we felt after this project made us re-examine how we were choosing projects to develop. Krochet Kids has really grown over the years and we feel lucky to continue to be a part of that.

There were two big milestones for Pixel Jar that spawned from this project. First, it was our first full project we started and completed in conjunction with Robert Nienhuis of Nien Studios which has continued as a great partnership for us. Second, it was the best example we’d seen of a client putting in the necessary effort to harness the power of the platform we developed for them. We continue to be excited by what they’re doing with the site since the initial hand-off.

Tell us about Krochet Kids.

Krochet Kids International’s (KKI) motto is “buy a hat, change a life.” The central idea of the company is to empower people to rise above poverty. It spawned from a group of friends with two common hobbies: crocheting and traveling. During their trips they witnessed communities stuck in a cycle of surviving on outside aid. They wondered if there was a way they could help people break out of this cycle and KKI was born.

With their first project, they went to Uganda and taught a group of ladies how to crochet beanies. They then sold these beanies through their website. But the unique twist was that each KKI product sold was signed by the lady who created it. The website allows each buyer to connect with the creator and close the loop between consumer and producer. The consumer gets to connect and participate and see the change they are directly affecting with this model that KKI set up.

Since starting with Uganda in the mid 2000s, KKI started another program in Peru, and they’ve partnered with Volcom and Vans on projects. Their products are available through major chains like Nordstrom and they were featured in a commercial for Bing. The success of their program is that people they’ve employed around the world have gone on to start their own business and take control of their lives.

If you could learn to do one thing, (anything—not just in the realm of WordPress or code) what would you choose to learn?

Brandon: I remember being at a WordCamp with Beau Lebens last year and talking about an urban survival class that he’d taken recently. Forget the urban survival class, I just want to be Beau, he’s awesome. =) Seriously though, I’ve always wanted to learn Capoeira. What intrigues me about it is the fluid, yet often acrobatic nature of the movements. It’s not unlike what we do in web development. The whole thing is a delicate dance.

Jeff: I would like to become a whiz at regular expressions so I don’t always have to go to Blair Williams for help. Barring that, I think it would be awesome if I could have the kind of memory to recite famous quotes and literary passages appropriate to a conversation. I’d also like to be a polyglot.

Tell us about how you balance work and surfing.

Surfing is a great counterpoint to coding (for us, anyway). When the pressure rises, a few hours out in the ocean is a great relief valve. There have even been a number of occasions when a solution has hit us while out surfing. Not to get too kooky, but surfing takes all one’s focus (not the bobbing around/waiting part, of course, but the actual wave riding part). It forces us to let go of everything rolling around in our heads and focus solely on riding the wave. If you don’t focus, you wipe and get a head full of salt water, which can also clear your head, but not in the way you want. It’s win-win! If nothing else, it makes sure that we get out of our chairs and get some exercise which is important to the whole mind-body-soul balance.

Quick Overview
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