How did you begin your love affair with the web?

In 2004, while attending Missouri State (Southwest MO State at the time) at the age of 20, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. My wife was pregnant with our daughter and in the hospital with a very severe form of nausea/vomiting that was life-threatening (mainly because the doctors were unable to diagnose it at the time). I was forced to drop out of school and get a job and the only thing I knew how to do was build websites. I had been hacking around with Dreamweaver and Flash for years and had gotten to the point where I was able to design and develop with proficiency.

To prepare for a new, young family of three, I approached the leadership at a college where my parents worked and offered to redesign their website for free while I was going to chemotherapy treatments, in exchange for a job and a place to live while I completed my treatment. They agreed. So I redesigned their website during my chemo appointments over a three-month period and took a job as Webmaster at St. Louis Christian College making about $20,000 a year. (Amazing, right?) It wasn’t much, but they invented a position for me and provided a place to live and that was pretty cool. I ended up moving on to a company called Network Solutions and then to Enterprise Rent-A-Car as a front-end developer for enterprise.com. Eventually, I co-founded Lift and UpThemes in 2009 with Brad “Secret Sauce” Miller (that’s not really his nickname but I think it should be). We now build a few really awesome websites with WordPress and also create second screen experiences for television shows like The Walking Dead, Bridezillas, and Breaking Bad.

You run UpThemes and Lift. Tell us a little bit about your role at each, and your productivity secret for being able to run two web-based businesses.

Running UpThemes and Lift is great because it’s really a natural marriage of two types of business that feed into one another: services and product. With Lift, we build a lot of really cool things for awesome clients with WordPress and that inspires us to build really cool and affordable themes and plugins with UpThemes. In terms of roles, I am a wearer of many crazy hats, including, but not limited to: design, development, content creation, social media guy, payroll, HR, and quesadilla making. In terms of my secret to productivity, um… I rarely consider myself productive and that’s ok. The most important thing for me is that I’m happy and the people around me are happy. If I focus on productivity, I’m less happy (and less productive).

As a boss, what are the things you do to keep your team happy?

This is something I’m always thinking about. My goal as a “boss” is to hire team members to do things they want to be doing and help them get to where they want to go next in their career. We already offer awesome perks like working from home, company-provided computers (typically a MacBook Air or Pro), health insurance, and yearly bonuses, but the big thing I ask my employees is “what do you want to do?” If you’re a killer developer and don’t enjoy communicating with clients, I’m going to do my best to keep you focused on code and out of Basecamp. Obviously, you can’t work in a silo, but we try to do the small things to keep our team focused, happy, and as productive as possible. We also provide training with Treehouse, we pay for lunch from time-to-time, send team members to conferences, and also get together for company hack-a-thons. We’re always on the lookout for awesome people and have open positions listed on our website.

In your career, what project(s) are you most proud of? Why?

Easily, I’m most proud of the work we’ve done on The Walking Dead StorySync® and Breaking Bad StorySync® — a web-based second screen app that we built for AMC tv — allows you to vote in polls, watch videos, and chat with other fans of the shows. I mean, how often can you say you had to watch a show about zombies at work? In early 2012, we found out that The Walking Dead StorySync® won a Social TV award over NBC, Storage Wars, and another native mobile app. It was a huge honor. We’re working on a ton more stuff for television in the coming months but I can’t say too much about it or I’ll have zombies sent to my house to eat my brain.

We also had the privilege to perform a responsive redesign of IFC.com, which is all built on WordPress. I designed it and did most of the front-end development while my teammates Brad, Brian, and Anthony did information architecture, wireframes, and additional development. That was a rewarding project and working with the team at IFC was absolutely awesome.

What was the most challenging part of making IFC.com responsive? How did you overcome the challenge?

I think the toughest part was probably communicating expectations to the client. Not everyone understands the difference between a responsive website and a regular website with a separate mobile website. It definitely forced us to take a look at our responsive design process and figure out what clients want to know in terms of how it all works and what to expect when the site is launched.

What advice can you give to young web wonks who are just starting out?

I don’t know, this feels super cliché but I really would say that the best advice I can give is to find something you’re passionate about and figure out a way to make a living doing it. Surround yourself with people that can help you grow and learn every day. Don’t burn yourself out and remember that patience is hard but necessary. Sometimes things don’t happen the way you want them to, but if you keep at it, they’ll happen the way they’re supposed to.

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned in life that you’d like to share with others?

I’m a follower of Christ and I’ve learned that there’s a plan for my life. I may not always know it, but He says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Even for people who aren’t religious, I think it’s great to remember that. There’s a plan and a purpose for your life and it’s a process to learn who you are and what you’re good at. So go forth and be awesome.

Tell us the story of how you fell in love with the web.

I’ve always been an artist. From age six I used to draw like crazy and did so through high school. I rediscovered my passion for art when I started going to school for IT in 2000. While waiting for classes to begin I would dabble in Photoshop and began making my first website. It was an indie rock blog that featured a lot of cool bands and in turn some of those bands would come around asking for websites and design. So that site landed me some of my first website projects. I was able to parlay that into a part-time web gig for some other record labels.

I began to fall in love about three years later when I started to delve deeper into user experience design. I started building more interactive things for the web for clients. It allowed me to figure out what I was best at and I began learning all I could to make better websites and interactive projects.

How did you get started working in WordPress?

I started codyL in 2004. I added to my resources and worked on more projects. WordPress became a necessity, because at the time, we were building custom CMSs and scaling them to each website. It was super tedious and our client budgets were very low at the time. We initially began using WordPress as a blogging platform in 2005. When we saw we could use it as a full-fledged CMS, we quickly made the switch and haven’t looked back!

Tell us a bit about your areas of WordPress expertise: what are you best at? What do you enjoy most?

I’m a user experience designer. I function best in that role whether I’m actually in the design chair or consulting on UX for companies. Our shop does WordPress custom theme development very well. We also really like to build platforms using WordPress. We’ve found it extremely refreshing to focus on WordPress exclusively because it’s helped us maintain a level of expertise and quality that some other shops who are software agnostic can’t provide.

You’ve spoken at several WordCamps on theming and design. Public speaking is a daunting thought for some. What advice can you offer to up and coming speakers?

I would say that it’s important for the community that you share your knowledge. Everyone comes to a WordCamp to learn more about their craft and be inspired to grow. No one truly has everything figured out. So perhaps you may share some things other folks are already familiar with, though there is a great chance of you adding value to other folks in the community and that’s part of what makes WordCamps so great.

Tell me about a favorite project? What about the project made it a favorite and what did you learn from working on it?

My favorite project was more of a passion project. We recently did the WordPress site for the Phoenix Suns. Being a lifelong fan this was like a dream come true. It’s like, choose your fantasy client and BOOM there it is!

We learned a lot from going through the process: mainly things that would help us serve other large organizations. Setting the expectations for all project phases, configuring the proper staging server, and making specific recommendations for website hosting.

There was an assumption these things were well in practice for them but we found that we were able to bring these practices in as a benefit to their company.

Learn more about Cody: visit his website. Follow him on Twitter.

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.

Theme Sense is not about memorizing code

Let’s think about mathematics and “number sense” for a second. If you teach a kid just to memorize arithmetic facts on flashcards, without explaining why the answers are what they are, that kid may struggle when they encounter a fact they haven’t memorized. For example, demonstrating 5+2 = 7 using blocks helps the kid “see” how numbers work. They can then use this knowledge to help solve any problem they run into in the future, even if they haven’t memorized the answer.

Theme Sense works the same way. It’s important to focus on the larger picture of what you’re trying to achieve, instead of memorizing specific bits of code.

How do I develop my Theme Sense?

Theme Sense is about being aware of what you’re doing, and making conscious, informed decisions along the way. For example, if I asked you to design a car for me, you’d instantly know which parts to include in your design—engine, frame, tires, windows, exhaust pipe, and so on. You might not know how every single part works, but you’d be able to explain why you need them in the design, and you’d be sure to verify the quality of the parts—which is super important for safety.

Use a similar approach when you tackle your next theme project. Ask yourself:

• Which files do I need to include in my theme?
• What role does each of these files play?
• Why am I about to paste this bit of code into my theme?
• Where did this bit of code come from, and who wrote it?
• What purpose does this code bit serve? Is it up to date? Is it safe?

You don’t have to understand the mechanics behind every single line of PHP, because it may change two, three, or four release cycles down the road. What’s important is that, like with cars, you’re able to demonstrate a macro understanding of what your theme is doing under the hood.

That said, here are some specific things you can do to develop that macro understanding and to keep your Theme Sense sharp.

Know “What’s New” with WordPress

WordPress code is all over the web. It’s even found its way offline, and into books and magazines. When you gaze at stars in the night sky, you’re seeing them as they existed millions of years ago. Likewise, when you examine a WordPress code sample, that sample is a snapshot of WordPress as it existed at the time of writing, and not necessarily WordPress as it exists now.

Awareness of the latest WordPress versions and major new features will help you evaluate the timeliness of WordPress tutorials, books, and plugins. To keep up with WordPress releases, subscribe to the WordPress News blog.

Get in the habit of checking dates

The first thing you should check before reading any tutorial or book is the date that it was published. Remember how important it is to know “what’s new” with WordPress? That will help you evaluate which parts of a tutorial are still relevant, and which code is still current enough to use in your theme. As you may already know, it’s dangerous to use obsolete code in a theme because it may have known vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit. Relevancy is not an all-or-nothing deal, though, and code doesn’t come with expiration dates. You must determine relevancy on a case-by-case basis. The good news is, there are several resources you can turn to.

If you do use outdated code in a theme, it’s not the end of the world. There are plugins, such as Developer and Theme-Check, that will help you optimize your WordPress theme development environment and scan your theme’s code for currency, respectively.

In addition to the developer plugins, it’s great to get into the habit of adopting the best security practices listed in the Theme Security and Privacy Guidelines on the WordPress Codex’s Theme Review page. Scan the list and make note of any that refer to features you’re using in your theme. For example, items that refer to data validation and sanitation are necessary to protect your site from Cross-Site-Scripting (XSS) attacks.

The principle behind the second item on the Security and Privacy list is especially pertinent when we’re talking about code relevance and timeliness:

Themes are required to implement Theme Options and Theme Settings pages deliberately, rather than relying on copy-and-paste scripts from website tutorials.

Copy-and-paste scripts may become obsolete very quickly. This applies not only to theme options code, but code from any tutorial. Be aware of the importance of timeliness and keeping your theme as secure as possible.

Understand the essential elements of WordPress themes

Most websites, whether they run WordPress or not, have the same general sections: a header area, a main content area, a sidebar, and a footer. It might be helpful to think of these sections as blocks (or car parts, your choice). You’ll use some blocks, such as the header, footer, content, and sidebar, in every theme you develop. You just might stick them together differently depending on the purpose your theme is trying to serve. With WordPress themes, template files such as header.php, index.php, sidebar.php, and footer.php are your “blocks.” Therefore, the theme is the completed structure that you build with these blocks.

Awareness of these essential elements will go a long way to helping you to develop theme sense. For a quick primer on the parts of a WordPress theme, check out the The Theme Development page on the WordPress Codex.

Know where to find the latest coding examples and standards

The WordPress.org Codex is a great starting point to research WordPress functions and template tags that you find in tutorials. If a function is deprecated, The Codex page for that function will note it and point you to the most current alternative. You can also find a list of all deprecated functions in the Codex. Additionally, check out the Log Deprecated Notices plugin, which logs deprecated functions, function arguments, and files whenever they occur in themes, plugins, and WordPress Core.

The WordPress Theme Review Team has a set of guidelines that all themes must meet to be approved for the official WordPress.org free themes directory. Evaluating your code against these standards can help you to stay abreast of best practices and standards.

Finally, when in doubt about something, there are places you can go to ask questions, such as the Themes and Templates section on the WordPress.org Support forums. If you prefer live chat, there’s the general #wordpress support channel on the irc.freenode.net network.

This is not to say that you should never break out of the mold when building themes. Rather, the idea is that it’s smart to be aware of the decisions you’re making for each theme you develop and why you are making these decisions.

Take-aways

The points to take away from this article are:

• Know what major new features were introduced in the latest version of WordPress.
• Pay attention to the dates on all WordPress-related tutorials. Use those, combined with your knowledge of the newest WordPress features to evaluate the relevancy of any given tutorial.
• Understand that code changes regularly, but the basic building blocks of a theme stays generally the same.
• Be aware of current best practices and standards. This can also come in handy when evaluating a tutorial’s relevancy.
• Understand why you are making the decisions you’re making for your theme—for example, what purpose does each template file in your theme serve? If you’re about to paste a large block of code into your theme that you dug up from Google, what purpose is that code serving? Is the code relevant? Up to date? Secure? You don’t have to memorize every line of PHP. What’s important is that you’re able to comprehend your theme on a macro level.

Image credits:

• “IKEA Espressivo Bulb Replacement Instructions” by Richard Eriksson, (CC-BY 2.0)
• “Please Don’t Eat Me” by Nikki.L, (CC-BY 2.0)
• “DOS Angry Birds” by Patrick Hoesly, (CC-BY 2.0)

How did you get involved in using WordPress?

I started blogging in 2002 with MoveableType. I added a blog to my site and then created a few others for clients. I did a few Blogger customizations as well, but started to get more and more requests for WordPress. In those days, the sites consisted of PHP or HTML pages, and the blog component was tacked on. I also built custom CMSs using PHP, but when WordPress introduced Pages, that took care of that.

You teach a college-level course on WordPress—tell us a bit about how you got involved in teaching it.

The WordPress class that I teach is part of a one year full-time program that focuses on visual and communication strategy. Students generally come in with very little web knowledge but have a strong focus on visual design.

In the beginning, students were taught Flash and Dreamweaver. As the web evolved, the focus on Flash and Dreamweaver was omitted in favour of jQuery and WordPress. A colleague of mine was teaching the web design class. She asked me to come in and spend six weeks co-teaching with her. She took the students through mood boards, wireframes, mockups, and then I took the class through an intro to WordPress and got them to build their online portfolio.

This experiment worked great, but six weeks wasn’t enough. Eventually the class was split into two and I now teach a full 12-week class (36 hours in total).

Tell us a bit about your philosophy of WordPress education.

I love that WordPress comes in many flavors and that students have many options when starting to use WordPress. I like to break down these options into the types of clients they might work with and the type of programmer they will become.

For example, you have a client, let’s say it’s your dad, with no budget. In this case, a free theme with a few tweaks or maybe a child theme would be the best solution. You might not yet be confident with your coding skills, but if you love puzzles, then perhaps breaking down a “premium theme” or working with a framework is your best solution. If on the other hand you are a whiz at jQuery, you write your own plugins, and your client has money, then custom theming is the perfect choice for you.

When teaching WordPress it’s important to give students various options. That way, I’m making sure that no one is left behind thinking, well I can’t write a plugin, so WordPress is not for me.

Of the concepts you teach in your WordPress course, what do students grasp most easily? What concepts do they struggle with?

When I was first asked to teach, I had to think about which theme I would use as my starter theme. If each student picked their own theme, the class would have been chaotic and no one would have learned anything. So I put together a starter theme which is very bare bones. Using that theme over and over again, I now know it inside out and can take students through the templates and explain in detail which part does what. After a few lessons students can easily grasp the template hierarchy.

WP Yogi, Christine Rondeau’s teaching site.

Things get a bit more complex when students want to incorporate advanced design features in their theme, such as one-page websites with jump downs, slideshows, and animation. Enqueuing jQuery and multiple loops are advanced techniques and what looks great in a Photoshop mockup is often way too difficult to implement in your first-ever WordPress site.

What has teaching WordPress taught you about WordPress?

Teaching WordPress has taught me that I know nothing! Coding away alone in my studio, I was building sites but when I started teaching I had to explain to others, why I was doing what I do, and the way I did it.

That led me to question everything, read articles, dig into the Codex, and get feedback. Was I using best practices? Was my starter theme as good as it could be?

I have had several of my themes reviewed by a WordPress theme reviewer just to make sure that I was teaching the right thing. The last thing I wanted was to teach bad practices.

As a result, I’ve learned tons since teaching and still consider myself a beginner with so much to learn.

Did you change your own site building practices and processes after teaching for awhile? If so, how did they evolve?

Yes I’ve changed a lot of my processes since starting to teach. I’ve simplified my theme even more. I’ve adopted Automattic’s recommend way to write code. I used to use plugins which I no longer use. I switched to HTML5 and of course, I now use way more CSS3, most of which I’ve learned from my students. The evolution of my processes was through both students and other WordPress themers. I’m constantly asking for feedback and I’m like a sponge anytime I’m around another theme developer. I’m sure it must get on people’s nerves, but I think that I reciprocate.

What has teaching taught you about yourself?

I’m a wee bit impatient…ok, I’m very impatient. I like things done quickly, efficiently, and accurately. I studied Chemistry in university and worked on ICI Autocolor on automotive paint for three years. For three years I did research on the same thing with no real results, Ugh! I never want to do that again and that’s why I love WordPress. I love building a site in a week. It’s fast, it’s done, and I can move on to the next project.

I realized very quickly, that I can’t teach that way. I need to slow down, break things into small pieces, and let students play with the code themselves. I could give them all the answers, but they need to dig through and figure it out, just like I did.

You’re public about the fact that you like to narrow your work to what you enjoy—what type of work do you enjoy most? What’s most exciting about it to you?

I love building WordPress sites from scratch. I’ve built so many of them now, that I can build them super fast. I also think that once the site is at the building stage, the worse part is over. The brand is in place, the visuals have hopefully been signed off on and the content written. I do like to take part in the planning stage, but I’m not the best person to ask about colour palettes and typography. I’ll leave that to others to decide.

The most exciting part of my work is getting to work with various designers. Some have amazing design skills. They think of every little detail while others provide only a home page and let me play with the rest of the site. Some designers have their quirks and demand pixel perfection, but more often than not, there’s a reason for that perfection.

You’ve published your design principles on your site—tell us a bit about how you developed your principles and why you believe they’re important.

That’s a great question and I’m glad you reminded me to go and re-read that list. Reading it again, I think that the reason they resonate with me so strongly is because I truly believe that being humble is the only way to happiness. Being humble and admitting that you don’t know something or being wrong seems to be frowned upon these days. Maybe it’s because I’m Canadian, but I believe that admitting you don’t know something and seeking advice makes you a better person. You learn something, you can share scenarios, and you also gain trust.

You publish a list of partners on your site—how did you come to cultivate this group?

WordPress has a great community. It’s so easy to “meet” people via Twitter and everyone is so helpful. I dislike saying no to people and love to connect others. As an example, instead of saying “no, sorry I don’t do SEO,” I love to recommend two of my favorite gals here in Vancouver who do SEO, yet have their own unique skill set.

Vancouver is also very Drupal-centric and there are request for Drupal sites. I never took the time to learn Drupal, so I’ve made sure to get to know Catherine Winters and others. Most of the people on my list are Vancouver locals which I consider friends and meet with either at conferences, meetups, or just casual drinks. But I’ve also formed great relationships with WordPress folks on the support forum and Twitter. Everyone is so friendly.

What do you love to do in your spare time?

I’m at the yoga studio or on my mat at home at least once a day. It’s a sad day when I can’t make it and there’s probably an outdoor activity that replaced it like a walk around the sea wall or a bike ride. I like to eat out a lot too…

If you could learn to do one thing in the world, what would that be?

I would love to go back to school and learn horticulture and become a landscape architect and just be outside playing in the dirt all the time.

How did you get your start in web design?

Bronson: I took a keen interest in web design and development when I studied a web design module during a diploma in Applications Programming. I enjoyed making websites more than I enjoyed traditional software programming and I also loved how quickly the web was evolving.

Lachlan: For me it started with a passion for technology. I’ve worked in several business development roles in tech and finance companies but always had an underlying passion for the web.

Where did the idea for Sennza come from?

Bronson: Lachlan was talking to one of our mutual friends about potentially changing industries and moving into business development and sales in web design and development. I wasn’t aware that Lachlan was interested in the tech scene so we had a chat and found out that we read a lot of the same blogs. I was freelancing at the time and was spending too much time emailing clients and wasn’t getting to code as much as I’d have liked, so we discussed starting a business together doing web design. I was using WordPress and Joomla at the time but I really preferred WordPress because it’s so easy for clients to use and I was faster at developing in WordPress as well. I also preferred WordPress because of the community behind it. The Joomla community was good but the WordPress community was amazing. WordPress was rolling out more releases and better features in my opinion so we decided to be a ‘Powered By WordPress’ digital agency.

What challenges did you face in starting a new business?

Lachlan: I think hiring has been our biggest challenge to date. It’s very hard to find someone that can see things from a practical side as well as a development side. We have a small team of A Grade designers and developers at Sennza and for now we’re content to keep it at that size. Quality matters more to us than growth.

Bronson: Another one of our challenges has been hosting. It’s hard to find reliable and speedy hosting especially in Australia. We’ve been through half-a-dozen hosts since we started business and we’ve finally found a great Australian host with servers in Australia. Given the amount of files we’re pushing and pulling on a daily basis, we needed an Aussie data center. I think all web designers and developers know that you have to have stable and easy-to-use hosting, because when something happens with your host, you can easily end up with a nightmare.

Do you each have a clear role within the business?

Lachlan: One of the big pitfalls of being a freelancer is that you have to do all of the “other business stuff” if you want to practice your craft. Often designers and developers understand that this is a necessary evil of being a freelancer, but even still would much prefer to get on with the job. My role at Sennza is to manage projects and clients effectively so that our designers and developers can get on with what they prefer to do.

As well as managing the project, I need to advocate for the client and our team. I advocate for our team when talking to the clients about how we work and what we feel will get them the best results. Likewise, I advocate for the client when communicating their goals to our team and to make sure they understand what the project needs to make it a success for the client.

Bronson: I’m the code monkey for Sennza. I spend most of my days slicing up Photoshop files and turning them into WordPress websites. I create bespoke plugins when required as well. I do a little bit of sys admin work on our VPS when required as well. I’m not much of a people person so I like staying behind the scenes and focusing on making sites that are easy to maintain and update. I’m a firm believer in keeping things as much like the WordPress core as possible and because of that I’m always reading blog posts about WordPress to keep an eye on developers who come up with new ways to manage custom content types.

Do you have specific criteria for the types of projects you take on?

Lachlan: All of our websites are custom designed and developed based on the client’s needs. We don’t have a bias as to which companies we work with, but as all of our work is customized to suit the client, it therefore generally comes down to budget. We typically find ourselves working with mid- to large-sized companies.

For example we recently redesigned and developed www.data3.com.au. Data#3 is an ASX listed company with a market cap of over $170 million. Prior to approaching us they were using a WordPress theme that was cobbled together in a strange way. For example, all the pages were set up as either a list of tags or categories. In our initial meeting we explained to them that WordPress should not be this difficult to use. For example, a page should be set up as, well, a page. Judging by their feedback we think we have more than proven WordPress easy to use.

The redesign also does a lot of other things. It integrates their contact form with Salesforce, and we’ve added extra custom post types to better handle content such as case studies, awards showcase, and location details for their offices around Australia.

How has the company evolved since it opened its doors two years ago?

Bronson: When we first started we made a couple of sites that were based on WordPress themes we had purchased. At the time we thought that this might be a good way to provide clients with affordable websites, however we soon found out that we really didn’t like many of the options that these themes came with. Many of them had terrible code.

I used to create the designs in Photoshop when we first started, but we’ve partnered with an amazing web designer so he looks after all our designs now. By getting Kenny to look after design I had the time to refine my coding process to increase my development speed. One of the best things I did was to start keeping track of my frequently-used code snippets so I that could reuse them in projects. Over the last couple of months I’ve started working on making my code as extensible as possible which also helps decrease the time it takes me to develop bespoke themes.

We’ve also gone from working from home for 18 months to shared office space and now we have our own office! We started with the traditional bootstrapping methodologies so renting office space seemed like too much of an expense for us until we refined our costing and business plan. We grew as our business grew.

How is Sennza different to other web design agencies or consultancies?

Lachlan: I would say we are different in two very specific ways:

1. We’re not afraid to stick with what we do best and say no to the everything else. Being 110% focused on our niche (WordPress design and development) means we can be really awesome at a few things, instead of being really average at a lot of things. For us, this has paid off in spades.

2. We have a passion for making things as easy to use for the non-tech person as much as possible. We understand WordPress and we understand how to make it as easy to use as possible for clients to use both now and into the future as WordPress grows.

Sennza attended SXSW this past March, what was that experience like?

Lachlan: It was a fantastic experience. The scale of the event is massive in the US, let alone any events in Australia. SXSW had very high level topics and we got the chance to meet a variety of different people that we otherwise wouldn’t have met. We have WordCamp San Francisco on the agenda for this year and looking forward getting to a more WordPress-centric event in the States.

Bronson: SXSW was absolutely amazing! I hadn’t been overseas before (unless you count a trip to New Zealand) so just being in another country was a fabulous experience. I enjoyed the networking side of things more than the conference itself. We made sure we did our best to meet as many WordPress people as possible. I really enjoyed meeting people like Evan Solomon, Jane Wells (who was nice enough to let me help out with the official WordPress SXSW party), Andrea Middleton, Ron Rennick, and Chelsea Otakan. We bumped into (read: stalked on Twitter) Mark Jaquith, Daryl Koopersmith, Evan, Chelsea, and Sara Cannon while they were waiting in an epic queue to get their SXSW badges.

Out of all the WordPress people we were lucky enough to meet my favourite people—the iThemes crew: Cory and Lindsey Miller and Matt Danner! They’re all amazingly passionate and genuine people. I loved having a couple of beers with Cory and talking about our businesses and the similarities we share. Cory and I talked about the challenges we face and what we’re both trying to create thanks to the wonder that is WordPress. I’m very much looking forward to catching up with him at a WordCamp either in America or in Australia.

We were also lucky enough to have Pete Nelson from BaconIpsum.com take us both out shooting which was an unforgetable experience seeing we don’t have guns in Australia.

You both play a huge role in the Australian WordPress community. How did this start?

Lachlan: To be honest, it really started out of necessity. Just over two years ago when we started Sennza, there was only one WordPress meetup in AUS that I know of and that was in Melbourne. We started the Brisbane meetup and then soon after that we flew to Sydney to kick start that meetup as well. We’ve helped the WordPress community in Australia grow by getting all the WordPress meetups on meetup.com and all of the different states have fantastic volunteers who keep the meetups running on a month-to-month basis.

While we did help start some of the meet ups, they wouldn’t be running today without the help of these volunteers.

There are now meetup groups for Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, Adelaide, Gold Coast, and Perth so Australia has come a long way in the last two years.

Bronson: As we haven’t yet contributed code back to core we did want to contribute in some capacity so starting the meetups was one of our ways of giving back to the WordPress community. We also organized WordCamp Gold Coast (with the help of Brent Shepherd and Dion Hulse) so that Aussies had a way of meeting other WordPress developers. WordCamp Gold Coast happened because we attended WordCamp Melbourne which was fabulous and decided Australia needed another WordCamp. In turn, WordCamp Gold Coast inspired some Sydneysiders to start WordCamp Sydney which will be happening this month.

What challenges do Australian web professionals face that might be unique to the rest of the world?

Bronson: I’d have to to say hosting again. We really don’t have the range of cloud-based hosting companies over here because of the bandwidth costs in Australia. Hopefully that’s something that we get better at once our National Broadband Network (NBN) is rolled out.

I also think that it’s harder to learn from other WordPress developers in Australia. Because our country is so large, all the awesome developers in Australia can hardly ever catch up face to face to share ideas and knowledge. A lot of us keep in touch on Twitter and Skype however you can learn so much more when you’re sitting next to another WordPress developer.

What does the future hold for Sennza?

Lachlan: We typically work with larger clients, but in the near future I would like to release tools that small businesses can afford. We have a lot of plugins and knowledge that we’ve created to solve problems that we see time and time again for client-facing websites. I dare say there are a lot of other developers that have hit the same problems that we have over the years. This will include things such as themes, plugins, and code snippets among other stuff. All of this will embody the same Sennza thinking (keep it simple) that we’ve used with all of our clients to date.

For more information on Sennza, visit their website at www.sennza.com.au. They can also be found on Twitter as @bronsonquick and @LachlanJ.