Carl will be joining us for WPSession #2: Building a WordPress Busness on July 13th, 2013.

Where can we find you on the internet?

I do not currently have a personal site or blog as I do not currently blog. As far as social media goes I can be followed on Twitter as @carlhancock and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/carlhancock. You can find my company site at http://www.rocketgenius.com although our primary web site is the Gravity Forms site at http://www.gravityforms.com

When and how did you get started with WordPress?

I got started with WordPress in 2008. I primarily used it to build client web sites while I was doing custom web design and development for clients. We began development on Gravity Forms at the beginning of 2009 and launched it at the end of the summer in 2009.

What resources to you turn to when you want to learn something new about WordPress?

I keep up to date about what is new about WordPress a variety of ways.  Twitter is one huge resource.  Follow the right people on Twitter and you can gain a lot of knowledge even in as little as 140 characters.

I also browse great sites like wpdaily.co, wptavern.com (glad Jeff’s back up and running), wprealm.com, WPMU’s blog at wpmu.org, Brian Krogsgard’s poststat.us, and ManageWP’s fantastic blog.

What is your favorite WordPress feature/aspect?

Far and away it’s extensibility. The hooks and filters that allow you to mold WordPress and bend it to your will. It’s what allows companies such as ours to exist.

What is your favorite business-related book and why?

I don’t read a lot of business related books. Most of what I read is non-fiction, but not business related. However, a few business related books I did enjoy 37Signals REWORK, Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness, and Richard L. Brandt’s One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of Amazon.com.

You asked favorite, but i’m going to mention one business book that I don’t like. Tim Ferriss and his The 4-Hour Workweek. It’s great for getting you excited and pumped up to do something. But not so great at helping you figure out what that something is or how to successfully go about doing it. It was written specifically to sell books, hence the catchy title. I hate the ecosystem it has spawned with the legion of 4HWW devoted “lifestyle designers” and “digital nomads”. Building a REAL business is hard work. It’s not the vacation that The 4-Hour Workweek makes it out to be.

What advice do you have for others looking to become WordPress experts?

Be open to taking advice AND criticism from people within the WordPress community that are successful. They are successful for a reason. Don’t discount what they have to say, because they’ve been there and done that. I’ve seen a lot of that going on.

You need to be able to take negative criticism and learn from it instead of fight it. Some people seem to think they are already experts when they really don’t know a damn thing. Don’t just jump out there and think because you’ve built a theme or plugin or two that you are not a WordPress expert or that you are ready to sell themes or plugins commercially.

There are far too many people selling themes and plugins that have no business doing so and the code quality and problems they create are a testament to that. WordPress low barrier to entry is both a blessing and a curse in that regard.

Bonus Question: What is one interesting non-WordPress-related fact about yourself?

I used to work in the professional wrestling industry. Obviously not as a wrestler. Primarily internet related work, ringside photography, and at times helping with booking… or writing story lines. Although I did act as a referee for a few matches on one show and was involved in an angle at the ECW Arena, which any wrestling fan would know, which saw me dragged into the ring and basically used as a prop for the finish of the match.

I don’t miss the wrestling industry at all. It’s the worst industry you could ever work in. What they put their bodies through, including the drug use most inevitably succumb too is not worth the rewards they receive. Not to mention the politics and the constant worrying that a co-worker or friend may stab them in the back to move up the pecking order, which means more money. They usually end up broke, both physically and financially.

I was friends and acquaintances with many big names in the WCW, ECW and WWF during the late-90’s and the very early 00’s. Tragically that includes being close friends with Chris and Nancy Benoit.

The movie The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke was so accurate in it’s depiction of the industry that it could have been a documentary and not a fictional film. It really is exactly as it’s depicted in that movie.

Chris will be joining us for WPSession #2: Building a WordPress Busness on July 13th, 2013.

Where can we find you on the internet?

 Well, it’s pretty easy to find me if you know my name. I tweet using the handle @chrislema and I write a daily blog over at chrislema.com. So those are the two places to hear what I’m thinking on a regular basis. Of course you can also get my thoughts in your email (daily at 7 am PST) if you subscribe using this link.

When and how did you get started with WordPress?

I started using WordPress around 1.5 – when it introduced Pages. Once WordPress had pages and posts, it had everything I needed (at the time) to use it as more than a blog, but as a simple CMS for customers who needed quick sites that they could manage. Until that point, I’d been using a .NET open source product called DotNetNuke and it was painful. So I was glad to make the switch. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s been eight years, but it has.

What resources do you turn to when you want to learn something new?

My approach to learning is pretty specific. The first thing I do is try to do things on my own without any instruction whatsoever. I do this on purpose to fail. But what I’m actually doing is creating experiences that real knowledge can then hang on. Without it, the real info won’t have any way to “stick” in my brain. So from there, I move to online resources where people write tutorials. I’m able to better understand them because they’re showing me where my ways were wrong, and what I didn’t understand (contextually) the first time. As for the actual tutorials, I’ve read Smashing magazine and wptuts+, along with links I get from sites like wpdaily.co.

What is your favorite WordPress feature/aspect?

When done right, I think my favorite feature is the ability to easily change themes. I’ve not made substantial changes to my site in a year, but before that, for several years, I would change it at least once a year. I don’t love the feature for aesthetic reasons, so I love great design like anyone else. Instead, what I love about changing the theme is that you can adjust the interface as you increase the content. I now have 300 or 400 posts, which makes navigating thru them very different than when I had 30. I have several ebooks to sell, plus presentations and videos of my public speaking that ought to be easy to get to. So from an information architecture perspective, having an easy facility to adjust the interface as content and experiences need to change – without tons of additional migration work – is pretty amazing.

What is your favorite business-related book and why?

Roger L. Martin is an incredible individual who writes and currently is the dean of the Rotman school of management. He’s single-handedly trying to change how MBA programs are run. His book, The Opposable Mind, is one of my all-time favorites because it challenges how we think. I don’t mean it challenges us to change our position. Instead, it challenges the approach we take when thinking about competing tensions. It’s an introduction to integrative thinking that I think everyone should read.

What advice do you have for others looking to become WordPress experts?

First, I think if someone seriously wants to become an expert at anything, they ought to be very clear that it will take time, discipline and energy. To be a student of anything is neither simple nor quick. So I’d tell them to prepare themselves.

Now, with that said, I find that a lot of people don’t want to become WordPress experts, but instead simply want to leverage WordPress to earn a living. That’s a very, very different thing. You can do that in a matter of weeks or months, I suspect.

In that case, what I recommend is simply this:
If you want to learn WordPress well enough to make a living, look to those who are already doing it. Find ways to engage them and learn from them – be it reading their blogs, buying and reviewing their products, or helping them out.

Bonus Question: What is one interesting non-WordPress-related fact about yourself?

I was born in 1970. In those days, a child born three months early was given little chance to live. I was one of those children and I was lucky – because we happened to be living near a research university that had the equipment to keep me alive. I spent the first several years of my life going to a doctor weekly to see if I was brain-damaged, which they predicted and prepped my parents for. I didn’t fully grasp all of it then, but I sensed I was being evaluated. I have lived an entire life with the “impostor syndrome” and for the most part, it’s worked out for me. So I’ve worked hard every day. Proving to myself (before anyone else) that I could learn, work, and deliver. I still work hard, though I take time to play hard too.

Pippin will be joining us for WPSession #1: Building WordPress Plugins on June 22nd, 2013.

Where can we find you online?

My personal tutorial site at PippinsPlugins.com and on twitter as @pippinsplugins

When and how did you get started with WordPress?

I started working with WordPress around version 2.7. Unlike many, WordPress wasn’t something I instantly fell into favor with. I actually strongly disliked it when I first started working with the platform. My brother was running his personal website on WordPress and wanted me to learn it so I could modify some of his theme template files for him. It was a real struggle for me to force myself to dig into the code and figure out how everything worked. Tweaking the site header was pretty far beyond me. I don’t know exactly when the shift happened, but at some point after working on my brother’s site I realized that I loved WordPress and just wanted to learn more, and more, and more.

What resources to you turn to when you want to learn something new?

WordPress core itself is my number one source. There is so much you can learn about the inner workings of WordPress (some of which you wish you could unlearn even) by just exploring the source code. Looking at the source code of well-built plugins is also just as valuable. Tutorials are great, but no tutorial will ever teach you to truly understand how something works. Start with tutorials to get a grasp of the concept, then dig into the source for real understanding.

What is your favorite WordPress feature/aspect?

Custom post types by far, followed perhaps by the $wpdb class. Following closely in third is probably the rewrite system for building custom URLs.

What is your favorite WordPress plugin and why?

Post 2 Post. There is no single plugin that can be applied to so many different scenarios and handle every single one of them beautifully. I’ve used it for building education course systems, related post widgets, even connecting product pages to their appropriate support forums.

What advice do you have for others looking to become WordPress experts?

Explore the core source code and the source code of successful plugins. Discover how they did things that worked really well and also how they did things that failed. Learning how not to do something is just as important or more as learning how to do it right.

Bonus Question: What is one interesting non-WordPress-related fact about yourself?

I have mad skills on the pottery wheel.

Daniel will be joining us for WPSession #1: Building WordPress Plugins on June 22nd, 2013.

Where can we find you online?

My personal website is DanielEspinoza.me and on twitter as @d_espi

When and how did you get started with WordPress?

I started freelancing five years ago after leaving a job in a bank IT department. My first projects were building ecommerce sites using Magento. A WordPress blog was usually an add-on for the projects I worked on so my first experience with WordPress was building themes to match the stores. Then a few years later I started building plugins for fun and profit.

What resources to you turn to when you want to learn something new?

For non-WordPress related stuff I’ll go through a Tuts+ tutorial as time allows for things that look interesting. Most of my learning with regards to WordPress is task or project related. I’ll learn something new in the process of solving a problem for a plugin idea I’m trying to flesh out. This will usually involve reading through the codex, WordPress Answers on Stack Exchange or working with existing plugins from respected developers to see how they do things.

What is your favorite WordPress feature/aspect?

Does the WordPress community count? 🙂 I really love the group of people that I’ve had the chance to meet and interact with through the WordPress community.

If I can’t count the community then I’m going with the famous 5 Minute Install.

What is your favorite WordPress plugin and why?

I’m a big fan of WooCommerce since I spend most of my waking hours building plugins for it and supporting users. And yes, I was a fan before hiring on as a WooNinja.

What advice do you have for others looking to become WordPress experts?

I’d suggest to read, write and repeat:

• Read code of plugins and themes. Write your own plugins and themes using the techniques you’ve observed.
• Read through tutorials and the codex. Write code using what you learned to solve real problems.
• Read support questions on WordPress.org. Write helpful answers to the questions.
• Read through open issues of projects on GitHub. Write code that fixes the issues and offer pull requests.

Bonus Question: What is one interesting non-WordPress-related fact about yourself?

I’ve eaten a live scorpion on purpose without being dared to do so. I would not suggest doing it. Frequently asked questions: No, I didn’t get stung. It didn’t have any flavor other than dirt.