Tag Archives: speaker interview

WCSTL Speaker Interview: Emanuel Costa

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Emanuel Costa will be talking on The Ultimate Security Checklist For WordPress Websites. Emanuel is originally from Brazil, and currently lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. He’s a professional web developer, SEO/SEM specialist, eCommerce consultant and web entrepreneur at High Tech Web, Inc.

Here is Emanuel’s interview:

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?

EMANUEL COSTA: In 2005, when I first saw WordPress, I have to admit I was not impressed. I then developed my own blog code and database from scratch. 5 years later, I was invited to give a website redesign proposal to a real estate agency in South Florida and when I asked what were competitors sites, I found out that all theirs websites were built in WordPress. I asked myself, how come a blog tool be used as CMS and have so many different “look and feel” sites? I then took a second look and was positively surprised with the WordPress evolution to become a full featured Content Management System.

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

EMANUEL COSTA: After I deep dived in beyond the nuts and bolts of WordPress, I felt (and feel) I work standing on the shoulders of giants. Because of that I was inspired by many people involved in the WP community. I am an avid watcher at WordPress.tv and I am always amused by the awesome presentations people in the community give at WordCamps.

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

EMANUEL COSTA: I don’t know the exactly number but I would say 30ish in 10 different cities. I try to go to as many WordCamps as possible. In 2016 I went to 8 WordCamps including one as organizer in Brazil during the Olympic games. I guess I am WordCamp Junkie. 🙂

Networking is the number 1 reason I go to WordCamps. A close second is knowledge sharing to keep up to date with the recent WP related themes.

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?

EMANUEL COSTA: Attend WordPress Meetups and WordCamps! 🙂

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

EMANUEL COSTA: I like to push the limits of WordPress. I do a lot of custom development. So, I guess my favorite features are Hooks, Actions and Filters. 😉

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

EMANUEL COSTA: Yoast SEO, WooCommerce, Advanced Custom Fields, but to be honest, it is really hard to list top 3, so here are all my favorites: https://profiles.wordpress.org/emanweb#content-favorites

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

EMANUEL COSTA: Twenty Seventeen. I loved that now the default WordPress theme focuses more on a business type of site. It was the first time I followed from beginning to ending the WP theme development discussion at Github/Slack. I liked so much that after 7 years I finally updated my company site using it.

If you’d like to meet Emanuel and sit in on his presentation, come buy a ticket to WordCamp St. Louis!

WCSTL Speaker Interview: David Needham

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David Needham will be presenting Presentation Skills for Humans. He is from Champaign, Illinois, and works as an Agency & Community Training Manager at Pantheon.

Here is David’s interview:

 

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?

DAVID NEEDHAM: I first started using WordPress because, like many people, I needed my own website and I wanted it to be a blog. I was learning web design in college and I wanted something that would let me stretch my development expertise (or lack thereof.)

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

DAVID NEEDHAM: Tools like WordPress empower people. The communities behind WordPress and other open source tools have significantly influenced my life for good. I have dozens of deep friendships gained by people volunteering their time to help.

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

DAVID NEEDHAM: This is only my second WordCamps. Last year when I attended WordCamp Peoria I met a bunch of people I didn’t even know I was connected to! It’s really a small world.

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?

DAVID NEEDHAM: Don’t give up! There will be times where nothing seems to be working right and there’s no solution in sight. In those situations, I’ve learned that a good night’s sleep does more than I can imagine at the time. And there’s no better way to grow while making friends than asking for help.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

DAVID NEEDHAM: Approachability: I appreciate the flexibility that many themes and plugins give to non-developers.

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

DAVID NEEDHAM: My favorites:

  1. WP-CFM: Export your configuration into code so you can add it to version control and easily deploy to Test and Live environments (without overwriting the database).
  2. WP-CLI: WordPress at my fingertips in the command line. Not exactly a plugin, but it’s too amazing not to mention.
  3. Pantheon Migrations (with Blog Vault): In my last job I worked for an agency that used Pantheon. Migrating WordPress sites was always fast and easy thanks for this plugin!

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

DAVID NEEDHAM: There are so many it’s difficult for me to decide.

If you’d like to meet David, don’t be shy… buy a ticket and come on out to hang with us at WordCamp St. Louis, on March 18th!

WCSTL Speaker Interview: Jennifer Swisher

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Jennifer Swisher will be speaking on Creating Websites for Everyone. Jennifer is from St. Louis, and a Web Specialist at Centene Corporation. P.S – She’s this year’s lead organizer for WordCamp St. Louis. 😉

Here’s Jennifer’s interview.

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?

JENNIFER SWISHER: I actually started out on the .com platform. I really loved how easy it was to customize without knowing anything about HTML/CSS. Now that I have those skills, I still use it because of how easy it is to add custom CSS to a theme.

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

JENNIFER SWISHER: Without WordPress, I wouldn’t be where I am now. Because of my experience using WordPress, I was able to work my way up and get a position with a Fortune 200 company. It definitely helps that I genuinely enjoy being a part of my local community. I’ve met a lot of really great humans through the St. Louis WP community.

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

JENNIFER SWISHER: I’ve been to 4 or 5 camps now (how ever many St. Louis has had is how many I’ve been too 🙂 ). My favorite memory is getting to hear Matt answer questions about WP at the very first WCSTL. I also really enjoyed working with the kids from Hands Up United to design WordPress sites for Ferguson area businesses (WCSTL 2015).

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?

JENNIFER SWISHER: DON’T EDIT USING THE CODE EDITOR! You will be very upset with yourself when that theme gets updated. Create a child theme instead.

NILE FLORES:What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

JENNIFER SWISHER: The version control for post/page edits. I can easily go back in time very easily.

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

JENNIFER SWISHER: Jetpack – The custom CSS feature and the contact forms are something I put on all of my websites.

Gravity Forms – I use this plugin when more complex forms are needed.

WP Content Calendar – I love this because it gives you a calendar view of when planned posts will be published. It hasn’t been updated in 4 months though :'(

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

JENNIFER SWISHER: I don’t have any one theme that I prefer, but I tend use Twenty Fourteen a lot.

If you’d like to meet Jennifer and hear her presentation, please consider purchasing a ticket today, and then joining us at Washington University, on March 18th.

WCSTL Speaker Interview: David Evans

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David Evans will be speaking on User Empathy with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). He is from St. Charles, Missouri, and a developer for Red8 Interactive.

Here is David’s interview.

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?

DAVID EVANS: Honestly, my job as a developer at Red8 Interactive is why and how I got into WordPress. We used to do all sorts of web development, but once we got the hang of WordPress, we started developing exclusively only for it. Because of that, I would never build a site without WordPress.

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

DAVID EVANS: My motivation is to make WordPress as easy to use as possible for everyone. It is already extremely user friendly, but because WordPress can be customized so many different ways, trying to make it easy to use in all situations for any user is like a fun challenge for me in each project I do.

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

DAVID EVANS: 6, I think? San Francisco (1), Kansas City (1) and St. Louis multiple times. I can’t really think of one specific best experience, as each WordCamp I go to is always better than the last. Probably because I’m more comfortable with the community and WordPress itself.

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?

DAVID EVANS: No offense to themes like Genesis or Divi, but don’t purchase a theme that claims to do it all. Instead learn to make a custom theme that does exactly what you want, it’s easier than you think.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

DAVID EVANS: As simple as it is, the “Preview” feature is what makes WordPress so great. I think it’s WordPress’s under-appreciated, forgotten middle child.

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

DAVID EVANS: Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), iThemes Security and Easy Footnotes.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

DAVID EVANS: Twenty Seventeen. That responsive homepage hero is amazing and like all of WordPress’s yearly themes in the past, it is super easy to customize.

If you’d like to meet David and hear his talk, please go buy a ticket, and then come out to WordCamp St. Louis on March 18th, at Washington University.

WCSTL Speaker Interview: Paul Gilzow

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Paul Gilzow will be speaking on Access Denied: Keeping Yourself off an Attacker’s Radar. Paul is from Columbia, Missouri. He’s a Programmer/Analyst-Principal at University of Missouri.

Here’s Paul’s interview:

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?

PAUL GILZOW: Back in 2008, we had some custom functionality that had been built into our campus CMS (Hannon Hill Cascade). We discovered this plugin was causing degradation issues with the system. The vendor who wrote the custom plugin wanted a significant amount of money to fix it. I proposed I could built out similar functionality using WordPress as a temporary solution until a long-term solution could be identified. 2 months later we switched to the site over to WordPress and, with only a few minor corrections, it has been running consistently for the last nine years. WordPress’ modularity, and speed at which I could build out functionality was definitely what drew me to it as a potential solution. The massive, assistive community is what kept me coming back.

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

PAUL GILZOW: Primarily, it’s given so much to me I feel an obligation to give back. As a security evangelist, I want to see everyone’s site as secure as possible. And given WordPress’ market share, it’s crucial we secure as many as we can. The best way to do that is through awareness and education. I love teaching, I love WordPress and I love web app security. What better way to combine all three than speaking at WordCamp?!

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

PAUL GILZOW: Two: WPCampus 2016 and WordCamp US 2016. I can’t pinpoint 1 or 2 specific experiences, but the overall experiences of learning things, things you had never even thought of, that are possible with WordPress, and all the incredible people you meet who are doing some amazing things. I met a lot of extraordinary people at both camps who I still communicate with regularly.

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?

PAUL GILZOW: Just one? If you aren’t using it (theme/plugin), delete it, don’t just deactivate it. For the ones you’re using, keep them updated religiously.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

PAUL GILZOW: The auto-update feature.

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

PAUL GILZOW: My own? 😀 I can’t say I have three favorites. I try to keep plugin usage to a bare minimum. I will say for sites I build, Advanced Custom Fields has been an incredible time saver. Other than that, any of the major security plugins: Sucuri, iThemes, WordFence, etc.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

PAUL GILZOW: The only WordPress site I’ve ever built that used a pre-created theme is my own (gilzow.com), which uses whatever is the current default theme (i.e. twentyseventeen). All the others have been custom, bespoke themes my team built.

If you’d like to meet Paul or hear his talk, you’ll need to buy a ticket for WordCamp St. Louis, on March 18th!

WCSTL Speaker Interview: Aaron Graham

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Aaron Graham will be speaking on Developing with WordPress Multitenancy. Aaron is from St. Louis, and a Web developer for Washington University.

Here is Aaron’s interview.

 

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?

AARON GRAHAM: I had been writing HTML for years and just started to use PHP when I discovered WordPress in 2010, I was excited by being able to be able to build on top of an already great system with a wonderful community surrounding it.

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

AARON GRAHAM: I’ve made so many friends in the WordPress community and have seen the amazing things they do for people that if I can give back one tenth of what they do I’ll consider myself to have left this world a better place than I found it.

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

AARON GRAHAM: This will be my 8th WordCamp. My favorite WordCamp experience will always be my first, I went to WordCamp Kansas City in 2012 and met a (relatively unknown at the time) developer named Pippin Williamson, I consider myself very lucky to consider him friend and mentor to this day. The second best would be meeting Greg Homyak (aka the host San Diego Beer Talk) at WordCamp San Diego 2016 and getting a personalized tour of some of the best breweries in one of the best beer cities in the world.

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?

AARON GRAHAM: Don’t be afraid to ask questions, I have yet to meet an unfriendly person in the WordPress community.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

AARON GRAHAM: The Filters and Actions system is one of the handiest things, I get really frustrated when I’m trying to build something with another system or framework that doesn’t have as many places to hook into the core code. (Bonus: The fact that WordPress is open source and if you’re patient enough you can walk through the code and figure out where/when/why just about anything happens in the system).

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

AARON GRAHAM: Easy Digital Downloads – like I said above I consider Pippin a mentor and I love using is plugins (and how-to’s) I also love reading through the code and seeing how he does things.

Advanced Custom Fields – when I discovered this plugin I thought I had just worked myself out of a job, that’s how powerful it is.

Jetpack – I have a love/hate relationship with Jetpack (usually based on which blog post about it I’ve just read) but I like it mainly for its WordPress.com single sign on.

(Bonus: I would have listed the WP REST API but since it’s now part of core I can’t call it a plugin anymore but when it was I had it installed on all of my sites )

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

AARON GRAHAM: I’m a big fan of Twenty Seventeen. As a developer I’m a big fan of Automattic’s Underscores, but since it is more of a framework you have to do most of the heavy lifting yourself so I wouldn’t recommend it for most end users.

If you’d like to meet Aaron, and sit in on his talk, you’ll have to go and buy a ticket to see him on March 18th!

WCSTL Speaker Interview: Mary Baum

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Mary Baum will be speaking on All around the block with Flexbox. She is from the St. Louis area, but also lives in Lancaster, California. She is the Owner and Creative Director at RacquetPress.com.

Here’s Mary interview.

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?

MARY BAUM: I think it was the idea of plugins. Even before I installed it for the first time, I had read enough about it that I was sure almost anyone could make it look like anything, thanks to css, and could make it do anything, thanks to plugins.

The reality turned out to be a little more complex, but immersing myself in a new, big learning experience turned out to be the perfect way to get through the shock of turning 50.

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

MARY BAUM: I am a selfish and greedy human being who cannot live without-

  • the dopamine rush I get from being involved and helping out.
  • the warmth of the friendships I’ve made in the community.
  • The fun of speaking! I’m a natural ham.

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

MARY BAUM: I believe this Camp makes 20!

My all-time best experience as an attendee wasn’t at a WordCamp but was certainly the result of being at all of them: the Saturday outing, and then dinner-plus-beer (Diet Coke for me) at Pressnomics last March.

 

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?

MARY BAUM: Update. Update. Update. (Also, go to Meetups.)

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

MARY BAUM: The community!

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

MARY BAUM: What the File, Regenerate Thumbnails, and Jetpack.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

MARY BAUM: I’m a Genesis person, so any answer I give, will be a Genesis child theme. Of the StudioPress themes, Parallax Pro and Altitude Pro.

If you’d like to meet Mary and hear her talk, get your ticket today, and then come on out to Washington University, on March 18, 2017!

 

WCSTL Speaker Interview: Dane Morgan

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Dane Morgan will be speaking on WordPress Theme Code Reviews. He’s from southern Missouri, and he’s a freelance WordPress developer and says he’s an experimental blogger.

Here’s our interview with Dane.

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?

DANE MORGAN: I had been building PHP/HTML websites for a certain group of aggressive internet marketers, when one of them asked me if I had used WordPress, and could I make it look different for him. That was WordPress version 1.2, and making it look different was a much more challenging proposition back then.

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

DANE MORGAN: I’m just sort of built that way. I joined the Army out of a sense of civic responsibility, though I admit the idea of adventure didn’t hurt any. But I can’t help but try to make groups I identify with better if there is a way for me to do so.

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

DANE MORGAN: I’ve been to two of them. WordCamp St. Louis 2016 and WordCamp US 2016. I wish I had started going to them a lot sooner now. For me the greatest part of WordCamp is just meeting other people who do this thing. As a freelancer working in my home office, it can be terribly isolating, and WordCamp was a very liberating experience in that respect.

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?


DANE MORGAN: Get messy, break things (on the development server) and have fun!

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

DANE MORGAN: The hooks and filters API. Really my favorite feature is the infinity capacity for changing the features, while still being WordPress.

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

DANE MORGAN: Carbon Fields, Yoast SEO and WooCommerce.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

DANE MORGAN: I really like Theme hybrid, Genesis and Underscores and I use all three a lot. I’m leaning toward Underscores though because I’ve finally gotten on board with Sass and i can go grab a Sassified copy of it with all the slugs filled in for the new site in less than two minutes.

If you’d love to meet Dane or hear his talk, you should go buy a ticket and come out to see him on March 18th.

WCSTL Speaker Interview: Bruce Chamoff

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Bruce Chamoff will be speaking on Making Plugin Development easy. Bruce is a designer and developer from the greater New York City area. He’s also an Udemy instructor and you can find his website at WebDesignerMall.com.

Here’s our interview with him so you can get to know a little bit about him:

NILE FLORES: What was it about WordPress that got you to start using it?
BRUCE CHAMOFF: I started blogging in the early days and since WordPress was the most popular solution for blogging, I started using it after considering Typepad and Blogger. WordPress also had the most attractive interface at the time. I started using it as a web design tool for regular websites after using both Drupal and Joomla for years and experimented with WordPress as a web design tool. Eventually, I started using It exclusively.

NILE FLORES: What motivates you to give back to WordPress and its community?

BRUCE CHAMOFF: Teaching is one of my biggest passions and no matter what the subject is, I love sharing my experience and expertise with others to watch them succeed. I like combining the personal attention that WordCamps offer speakers. I have several WordPress courses on Udemy.com and some of my students actually attend the WordCamps just to meet me in person, so WordCamps allow the speaker to directly interact with others who need their assistance in a certain topic. They make a perfect way to allow anyone with experience in WordPress to give back to the community.

NILE FLORES: How many WordCamps have you been to, and what was your best 1 or 2 experiences that you had when attending WordCamp?

BRUCE CHAMOFF: WordCamp St. Louis is the fourth one where I have attended and spoken. My best experience at a WordCamp so far occurred last year in New York City where I spoke at the United Nations. Just the thought of a WordCamp being held at this great world landmark was mind-blowing where I spoke in front of 300 people. Also, the WordCamps give me a good reason to travel around the country and see cities that I have never thought of visiting like Cincinnati and Jacksonville.

NILE FLORES: What is your number 1 tip for WordPress users?

BRUCE CHAMOFF: My number one tip is just delve in and start using it. WordPress can be very overwhelming and intimidating to newbies, because there are so many things to do like installing themes to adding blog posts. Use everything you can to get familiar with it. The most important tip I can offer is to be patient with it. It does take time to get comfortable.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite feature in WordPress?

BRUCE CHAMOFF: I love experimenting with different plugins and of course the fact that it is open source. Plugins are the one thing that makes every site different and allows web designers to be unique. The open source feature allows web developers to create any type of website they want and can envision for their clients.

NILE FLORES: What are your 3 most favorite WordPress plugins?

BRUCE CHAMOFF: Admin Columns, Advanced Custom Fields, and Shortcodes Ultimate.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite WordPress theme?

BRUCE CHAMOFF: Divi3

Want to meet Bruce or hear his talk, buy a ticket and come on out to WordCamp St. Louis, on March 18th, at Washington University.