This week, we’re chatting with Joel Goodman, Principle Designer and Chief Awesome Dude of Bravery Transmedia. Joel is one of the Austin designers who can be found working behind his Macbook, staring intently at his work through one of several pairs of Warby-Parkers. Joel is a hipster in the best way, and to know Joel is to love him. Just check out his portfolio to see how brilliant his design is. When he’s not designing, he’s probably strapped a guitar on and playing music, or hanging out with his family.
Joel moved to Austin with his wife to start his design business, and we met up in Capital Factory, where Joel gave me his amazing and self-designed Bravery Media business card. You know how some biz cards are super lame, and you immediately wish you could hand them right back rather than carry it around? Joel’s card was the opposite of that. It was so beautiful I sat there fawning over it for way longer than was socially acceptable. He’s the type of designer who puts effort into the tiniest details, and everything that he puts out is mind-blowingly good.
In Joel’s Own Words:
I love movement in life and that propels me to travel, to make new relationships with interesting people, and to never get complacent in one spot. In everything I do, I expect the best possible result from my self. I set high standards for myself and achieve them through hard work and impeccable taste.
Now, onto Joel’s Answers!
When was the first time that you really got excited about WordPress and at what point did you decide to make it your career?
My first “real job” after college was in Higher Education as a communication professional. I think it was in 2007 that I decided to try my hand at building a custom theme for a project I was working on. So I went and watched the CSS-Tricks WordPress screencasts that Chris Coyier did and was hooked. I turned out four themes that year, I think, for all kinds of projects including my first self-hosted WordPress blog.
Where do you go first to get your WP news, insights, and updates?
These days it’s mostly Twitter. I follow a lot of the well-known WP and Automattic people like Matt Mullenweg, @nacin, @justintadlock, @andrea_r… and a ton of others. So I’m always getting the official announcements and general banter in my stream. I also try to stay connected to specific people in the Austin WordPress community including you rad people at WP Engine. Having constant conversation around what’s happening with WordPress is the best way to keep a pulse on the latest and greatest.
What WP consultants deserve more love than they get? Who should we be paying attention to?
I think a lot of the WP consultants that are well-known are so for good reason and I tend to keep listening and conversing with them. But, I’ve got a lot of respect for some that are coming in the spotlight like @scribu. It’s also great to read the interviews WPE turns out. I love seeing names I don’t recognize and then realizing they’ve done some really amazing site on WP or written a killer plugin.
What performance tips would you give to other pros (as related to speed, scalability, security, plugins, backup, etc.)?
It’s been said in other interviews too… I’m a big fan of doing as much as I can myself. Unless you take the time to really look through the plugins and themes you pull of the web, you never really know what extra processes and requests are being run. I tend to have a few base plugins that I know are solid and lean and build my own functions into my theme or a custom plugin. I also tend to try and get to know more about the authors of the plugins I do use. It’s all about knowing exactly what’s running on your install and understanding what it’s doing to your load times, visitors’ experiences, etc.
Confess to us your biggest moment of WP fail?
One time, when I was still working for a university, I went to update our MU install of WordPress (pre- multisite being in core) and accidentally killed the entire install. That pesky little /wp-content directory… I was in a panic for a good 15 minutes. I lucked out, though, because our server admin had a backup and got it restored before many people found out about it.
If you were going to spend this weekend creating a plugin that doesn’t exist, what would it be?
I’ve been planning a client management plugin set built on Multisite. Basically, each client would get their own site and I’d be able to provide progress updates and live demos of their site or app, as well providing a payment/accounting page integrated with Stripe. I think there was something like this a few years ago that never got off the ground… plus it wouldn’t have done what I wanted it to.
Do you use Themes & Child Themes, Roll your own, or both?
99% of the time I roll my own. I have a base theme that has a general structure and a custom functions.php file. I’m constantly tweaking it and keeping it up to date, but it gives me a solid HTML5 starting point with all of the CSS resets I need.
What’s your favorite theme or theme framework? Why?
I’m a fan of the _s (Underscores) theme… but I don’t think I’ll ever end up using it for anything. It’s a great starting place for anyone wanting to see how a well-organized theme is setup. It just has too much markup for me… I’m kind of obsessed with lean markup.
Favorite plugin?
Lately, Posts 2 Posts by scribu. Just, so many things you can do with it.
Least favorite plugin?
Right now I hate Gravity Forms. Main reason? The UX sucks. There’s some prime territory there for a plugin dev with a good eye for user experience. I love that so many plugin devs are using the WordPress UI hooks… so much so that it kills me when I see something ugly like Gravity Forms totally throwing that off.
What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done with Custom Post Types?
Last year I built a site for an artist management company where we were using CPTs for artist, office, project, and service all connected with Posts 2 Posts. It was crazy complicated at first, but turned out to be an awesome site where everything was connected.
What do you think is the biggest challenge that WP consultants will face in 2013?
Biggest challenge: Too much work! Seriously. So many people are moving to WordPress for the first time on top of everyone else who continues to need WordPress consulting services. What a great challenge to have though, right?
If you could change one thing today about WP, what would it be?
As easy as the admin UX is right now, I’d love to see easier ways to simplify it for the n00b. A lot of my clients still find it confusing and it can be cumbersome to use the left navigation.
Where do you see WordPress going in the next 2-3 years?
I love seeing the new ways the Automattic team is pushing WP. I think we’ll see a lot of streamlining in the ways we can get at content. Integrating the JSON API into the Jetpack plugin was a great move and I hope we see those kinds of API endpoints get into core. And I think we’ll see it come to maturity as a viable platform to build on. It’s kind of gone from basic publishing to CMS and now to application platform. I’m excited about the ways we’ll see people building on top of WP.
Tell us a story where you saved the WP day for yourself or on a client project. What made the difference for you?
One of our more recent projects ended up going from concept to a WordPress Multisite project because as I was listening to requirements, MU made the most sense. Basically it lets this client rapidly roll out small marketing sites for their clients, and integrates with their core application. It’s pretty cool and ended up being a lot more cost effective for them. For me, the fact that I can crank out a site or network so much more speedily than I would building from scratch makes all the difference.
What’s the biggest misconception you encounter about WordPress, and how do you clear it up for your clients?
People just still don’t realize how flexible WordPress is. It can really do anything you throw at it and there is still so much potential for new uses. A lot of clients say to me at the end of a project, “You know, I didn’t realize WordPress could do all of this stuff.” They’re always happy with the end result and I love working with WP so much that I’ve had a good time on their project. The term ‘blog’ has had gained such a stigma, but WP is more than blogging software – it’s a full publishing platform and content management system.
If you were interviewing another WordPress developer for a job, what is the first question you would ask and why?
The first question from me is always, “Do you love WordPress?” Being active in a fairly diverse tech community here in Austin, I hear programmers and devs talking both sides about WordPress. If you’re going to be working with me on WP development, I want to know that you love it as much as I do. I think a passion for WP manifests itself in clean and efficient code, and an adoption of all of the WP coding and visual standards. Plus, I think that passion means you’re constantly thinking of interesting things to do with WordPress, new projects and plugins and cool uses. And that’s what I think is the most fun part of working within the WP ecosystem – overcoming challenges with the range of tools WP gives you.
What did I miss? Here’s your chance to fill in the blanks and add something you want people to know about you!
I’m always looking to do cool things with WordPress and would love to chat with any of your readers that share that interest. I can found on Twitter @joelgoodman and my business can be found @braverymedia. And if any of your readers are ever in Austin, look me up. We’ll grab some tacos!
Thanks Joel!
Please do mosey on over to Bravery Transmedia, or check out the design of Joel’s Blog to get a sense of the sort of work he puts out. It’s all pretty amazing. You should work with him!
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