Finely Tuned Consultant: Jonathan Wold

Check out this week’s Finely Tuned Consultant, Jonathan Wold.  Jonathan is a contributor to Smashing Mag, a WordPress consultant, and a developer evangelist for Pigeon.  He’s also got a wonderful family with his wife and son.

Jonathan specializes in building media sites, and wrote about this in detail in Smashing Mag.  Jonathan is also a developer on Newsroom, a paywall for newspapers.  That’s a project I’m particularly interested in. Finding a good solution for newspapers to make money would save journalism from the decline it is in.  Jonathan also has a great beard. It’s the ideal mix of “I’m a man with a beard,” and “I’m super professional and trustworthy to do business with.”  Congratulations on your beard, Jonathan.

In Jonathan’s own words:

I’m a learner. I work really hard building three different businesses and thoroughly enjoy life in Northern Idaho with my wife and two-year-old son. I’m working with some of my closest friends to tackle paywalls in the newspaper industry. Along with my freelance business on the side I’m pouring my energy into a guide I’m writing to teach beginners how to start a web development business on WordPress.

Now, Jonathan and his beard will answer the questions.

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 started working with WordPress back in 2006. I wasn’t a programmer back then and I was thrilled with what I could accomplish. I continued to build websites and WordPress was simply the most natural choice. I wrote WordPress tutorials to share what I learned and people began asking me to do work. Out of that I started a business and I haven’t looked back since.

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

I keep an eye on the stories that come through WordPress dashboard. I also watch Twitter. WP Tuts posts some high quality tutorials targeted towards both beginners and advanced and I’ve found some gems in there. Also, Smashing Magazine’s WordPress section is a great resource.

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

Carl Hancock (of Gravity Forms fame) is a great developer with an excellent product. Jason Bobich makes some great WordPress themes. Mikko Saari maintains a great search plugin. Dimas Begunoff has done great work on the WP Alchemy project, my favorite way to create metaboxes.

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

Unless you’re passionate about speed, security, and backups – don’t mess with it yourself. I’ve done it for a long time and I’ve been very happy to discover the joys of managed hosting. From first hand experience, I’m becoming a big fan of WPEngine. I host my highest traffic site with you folks, plan to move over more, and I continue to recommend you others. ED: There are lots of good entrants in the Managed Hosting field, but we are proud of our hosting 🙂

Confess to us your biggest moment of WP fail?

I was migrating a WordPress database from one version of MySQL to a lesser version on another server. In that process (which was, unfortunately, irreversible), the special characters on hundreds of pages became corrupt and created a whole lot of extra work.

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

I use both. I build themes from scratch or customize existing, depending on the needs of the project.

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

I can’t say I have a favorite.. I just bought a copy of Standard Theme for my personal site and have been thoroughly pleased with it so far. I am all about the attention to detail and I like a theme where the developers have gone the extra mile. I’ve experimented with frameworks and, so far, have just not been sold on incorporating any of them permanently into my workflow.

Favorite plugin?

Gravity Forms, hands down : ).

Least favorite plugin?

Any “Me Too!” plugin (there’s a lot of them) that doesn’t really do anything better. How many plugins do we need to integrate with Twitter or help us make custom post types?

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

Hard to say.. I thoroughly enjoy working with them. A fun recent project was a few hours spent collaborating on a digital library to preserve information about the Gingerbread Castle in Hamburg, New Jersey. It was a really simple project with a simple style customization of Twenty Eleven.

What do you think is the biggest challenge that WP consultants will face in 2012?

Continuing their education, staying up-to-date with best practices, and continuing to make themselves relevant to their clients in an environment that is changing very quickly.

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

A better plugin repository that balances helping new developers get noticed for their hard work while also helping folks sift through all the noise.

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

I see the theme community getting even stronger, with more high-end contributions to the marketplace. I see more high quality plugins being released as more developers build their businesses around WordPress. I also see a large influx of new developers into the community and a strong need to provide best practice training and ensure that they get off to the right start, without picking up bad habits. And, as far as WordPress itself, I think it’s in good hands. I’m looking forward to seeing the results of the WordPress 2012 Survey.

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

For most of my client experience, there hasn’t been any resistance to using WordPress. I’ve explained what it is, why it’s worth using, I show them how to use it, and they’re happy! The resistance usually comes in from developers or clients with developer experience used to using “other” CMS systems or building their own. In that vein, security has been a big issue and I explain that security usually boils down to plugins and making sure that WordPress stays up-to-date. Nowadays, I just recommend that they go with managed WordPress hosting.

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

I would want to know what he (or she) has written about WordPress, both articles and tutorials. If he doesn’t consider himself a writer (I don’t think there is any excuse for not writing, but I can cut some slack), I’d want to know what plugins he built. If neither of those, I’d want to watch over his shoulder while he migrated a site over from another CMS to WordPress.

Thanks Jonathan! 

You can visit Sabramedia.com to see what Jonathan’s awesome work looks like. If you’re a newspaper struggling to set up an effective paywall, check out Newsroom to see if it works for you!