Darren will be joining us as a speaker for WordCamp DFW with his talk entitled “Beginning WordPress Plugin Development” on our Developer track.
Why do you use WordPress?
I use WordPress for two reasons:
1. I love to work with it. My favorite thing is to create cool functionality. I usually find a third party plugin in the WordPress plugin directory and then realize it does not meet my customer’s needs, so I end up build them a custom one. Thus you can say I am more of a plugin developer than a theme developer.
2. I know my customers will love to work with it also. I have worked with MANY different Content Management Systems and I know from experience that a non-technical user will learn WordPress quicker than any other CMS.
When and how did you get started using WordPress?
I started out as a Microsoft .NET developer. My first job was a webmaster at a small community college and I was the only person. So I had to learn design and PHP as the website was a combination of PHP and .NET code. After working with PHP, I knew then that was the language I wanted to pursue. After a couple of attempts working with Joomla and Drupal, I found WordPress and have never looked back.
Why did I like WordPress so much? First, it was written using PHP, it had a large community, tons of documentation, one of the most popular and used Content Management Systems, and not super complicated to learn. Plus, when you hand over a website to a non-technical user, WordPress is very easy to learn and easy to create content.
How do you stay informed about WordPress news, tips, etc.?
I stayed informed about WordPress news from reading daily/weekly newsletters and WordPress news blogs. Some of my favorites are: WPMU DEV Blog, The Whip, WP Engine Weekly Digest, iThemes Blog, Torque, WordPress Tavern, WordPress News and wpMail.me
What do you like most about WordCamps? (and which have you attended?)
Three things: 1. Learning new things; 2. Meeting new people who also love WordPress; 3. Did you say ‘Swag’.