{"id":1042,"date":"2016-09-21T10:04:25","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T15:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2016.dfw.wordcamp.org\/?p=1042"},"modified":"2016-09-22T19:35:45","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T00:35:45","slug":"our-qa-with-darren-ladner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/our-qa-with-darren-ladner\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Q&A with Darren Ladner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Darren\u00a0will be joining us as a speaker for WordCamp DFW with his\u00a0talk entitled “Beginning WordPress Plugin Development<\/a>” on our Developer\u00a0track.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Why do you use WordPress?<\/em><\/p>\n

I use WordPress for two reasons:<\/p>\n

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 \u00a0I am more of a plugin developer than a theme developer.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

When and how did you get started using WordPress?<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

How do you stay informed about WordPress news, tips, etc.?<\/em><\/p>\n

I stayed informed about WordPress news from reading daily\/weekly newsletters and WordPress news blogs. Some of my favorites are:\u00a0WPMU DEV Blog, The Whip, WP Engine Weekly Digest, iThemes Blog, Torque, WordPress Tavern, WordPress News and wpMail.me<\/p>\n

What do you like most about WordCamps? (and which have you attended?)<\/em><\/p>\n

Three things: 1. Learning new things; 2. Meeting new people who also love WordPress; 3. Did you say \u2018Swag\u2019.<\/p>\n

Darren\u00a0will be speaking at WordCamp DFW 2016. His\u00a0talk is entitled “Beginning WordPress Plugin Development<\/a><\/span>“! Until then, find\u00a0Darren<\/span>\u00a0online at\u00a0hyperdrivedesigns.com<\/a>\u00a0or tweet him\u00a0@HyperdriveD<\/a>.<\/span><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Darren\u00a0will be joining us as a speaker for WordCamp DFW with his\u00a0talk entitled “Beginning WordPress Plugin Development” on our Developer\u00a0track.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15031404,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speakers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7pEJ2-gO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15031404"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1042"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1048,"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1042\/revisions\/1048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}