Finely Tuned Consultant: Justin Sainton

This week, I’m talking with Justin Sainton of Zao Web Design. Justin is one of those guys who dropped out of school (in 2004) to start building his own business. His entrepreneurial spirit won out, and Zao Web Design has been growing ever since Justin’s guidance counselor told him to come back in 10 years with promises of a steak dinner if he had been successful. I’ll look forward to that blog post in 2014.

When was the first time that you really got excited about WordPress and at what point did you decide to make it your career?  

I actually started using WordPress long before I was excited about it 🙂 When I started using it, it was around Ella (2.1) – definitely still “just blogging software”. Even dating back that far, I never used it as a blog, always as a CMS – but it was hard. I think I really got excited about WordPress around 2.9 and 3.0 – with the MU merge and custom post types. For me, those choices were the turning points for WordPress. It was much earlier than that, back in the Ella days, that I realized I wanted to build my career on WordPress. You couldn’t objectively say the code was better than the alternatives (Drupal, pMachine/EE, etc.) – but you could say the community was. By far. And ultimately, code is meaningless without community. Haven’t looked back since then.

Where do you go first to get your WP news, insights, and updates?

It seems like everyone says this – but Twitter. Aside from that, I get the Trac firehose mailing list that I stay on top of pretty well. To me, I consider what happens on Trac/SVN more important than what happens on the latest podcast or “news” site.

What WP consultants deserve more love than they get? Who should we be paying attention to?

Such a great question – there are so many ridiculously talented developers out there that get zero attention. Conversely, quite a few that get a lot of attention that perhaps shouldn’t :). I have to say, the other core developer for WP E-Commerce, Gary Cao (garyc40 on Trac), is one of the most brilliant developers I know. He’s up there with Mark Jaquith, Nacin and Westi for me. Smart, smart dude. That said, he’s not really a consultant – just an unsung hero in the WordPress world.

What performance tips would you give to other pros (as related to speed, scalability, security, plugins, backup, etc.)?

People tend to forget that WordPress is actually pretty awesome out of the box. Where speed and scalability issues come into play is generally hosting, plugins and themes. The first and perhaps most important thing is to ensure you’re hosting with the right people. *Insert WP Engine plug here*. Seriously though, WPEngine is a new breed of managed WordPress hosting. Beyond that, make sure the plugins or themes you use are built by reputable people who know what they’re doing. As far as backups go – I personally like VaultPress. If you have content worth backing up, then it’s probably worth $15-$40/month to have them do it. There are other systems out there, but for me, they’re not quite up to par.

Confess to us your biggest moment of WP fail?

I’ll spare you the alphabetical list. The main one that comes to mind is early on – one of the first WP projects I did, I built a theme for it. This was before the child theming days. I decided I’d just build out the theme in the /default folder. It turns out that this was actually a bad idea, for the same reason child theming is a good idea – if you upgrade WordPress, it’s going to upgrade the /default folder. While Kubrick was a great theme in its day, it wasn’t what my client was expecting for their website to look like when they updated WordPress.

If you were going to spend this weekend creating a plugin that doesn’t exist, what would it be?

I’ve got about half a dozen plugins on that exact list, right now 🙂 They’ll all end up on GitHub or the WP repo before too long, mostly e-commerce related stuff.

Do you use Themes & Child Themes, Roll your own, or both?

These days, neither. I rarely do front-end development of any kind any more. But when I do, I’ll generally roll my own. People tend to have the misconception that every theme should be a child theme. I think as a community, we could do better on education regarding child theming. The difference in purpose between Underscores and 2012 could be a great tool in that educational process.

What’s your favorite theme or theme framework? Why?

I know a lot of folks like Genesis – but frankly, I’m not generally a fan of theme frameworks. I think they meet a need for a growing market – obviously. But as a developer, I struggle with the idea of creating a completely separate and distinct API around an already sufficient theming API in WordPress. But if I was going to work with a framework, it’d likely be Genesis. As far as themes in general go, I think most stuff Jason at Press75 puts out is top notch.

Favorite plugin?

WP E-Commerce 🙂

Least favorite plugin?

WP E-Commerce 🙂

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done with Custom Post Types?

We built a really interesting e-commerce plugin a couple years ago – the idea was to allow people to roll their own Groupon website. It’s all done with custom post types, taxonomies, rewrite rules, etc. One site that has done quite well with it is called ChippedN.

What do you think is the biggest challenge that WP consultants will face in 2013?

I think for most consultants, focus is probably the biggest challenge. There are simply so many possible directions to go with WordPress – blogs/CMS, products/services, apps/Sass – you can do anything. The peril of the ability to do anything is that you can become paralyzed into doing nothing. The most successful consultants in 2013 will be those who find their niche and learn how to execute well.

If you could change one thing today about WP, what would it be?

One thing? That’s hard. If I had to pick just one thing, though, it’d probably be re-imagining the taxonomy API so things like this and this were not still issues, years later.

Where do you see WordPress going in the next 2-3 years?

Better mobile (touch), more apps/services and outpacing the growth rate of the competition. I think there will be a greater acceptance of it over options like Drupal in the government world, as well as a greater shift towards WP over things like SharePoint in the corporate world. The ability for it to be anything will continue to grow with the evolution and maturation of things like the XML-RPC API and other related APIs.

Tell us a story where you saved the WP day for yourself or on a client project.  What made the difference for you?

This will sound like brown-nosing in some ways, but I’ve ‘saved the day’ for clients by being able to recommend the right resources for them – this means security through companies like Securi, hosting through companies like WPEngine and backups through companies like VaultPress. I rarely tend to be in crisis mode because of partnering with the right companies.

What’s the biggest misconception you encounter about WordPress, and how do you clear it up for your clients?

To be honest, most of my client base is fairly well-educated on the benefits of WordPress – I rarely have to sell it over another option, simply because of how ubiquitous it has become. In terms of common misconceptions – I think the more common ones are in regards to security (My WordPress got hacked!) and capability (Isn’t that just a blog?) – but I think the community at large has done a fine job in dispelling those myths.

If you were interviewing another WordPress developer for a job, what is the first question you would ask and why?

I’d probably ask them how they’d build a very specific type of plugin, from the ground up. I’d be looking for their familiarity with important APIs – like the HTTP API, object caching API, etc. I’d see how extensible they made the plugin through actions/filters. I’d see how their mind works in regards to architecting in general. Stuff like that is super helpful for me in determining what a person is or is not capable of. Beyond that, I’d buy them lunch and see if they were a person I’d actually enjoy working with 🙂

What did I miss?  Here’s your chance to fill in the blanks and add something you want people to know about you!

You nailed it all – great questions! We’re always looking for great clients and great developers to work with – if anyone fits either bill, contact us!

Thanks Justin!

Y’all mosey on over to Zao Web Design to check out their work and to get in touch with them!