Speaker Highlight: Dan Pastori

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

The people I follow on Twitter usually post the most up-to-date news and updates.

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

Gilbert has a lot of quick tutorials on not only PHP/MySQL but also WordPress development. He made the Nivo slider which is famous, but I never heard of Gilbert until I ran into his blog.

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

Use WP cache in a live environment ALWAYS and when developing themes, make sure all resources are included correctly.

Confess to us your biggest moment of WP fail?

Hardcoding the AJAX url into my plugin and making my own AJAX handler which completely broke my OOP structure. Never thought that WordPress would be awesome enough to handle these requests by itself and make life easy 😉

If you were going to spend this weekend creating a plugin that doesn’t exist, what would it be?
Make a plugin that creates articles out of bullet point notes so I don’t have to waste time with filler. Kind of sci fi, but with a smart enough algorithm, possible.

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

Always custom.

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

I like the 2013 theme that comes with WP 3.6 (the beta version). It’s responsive and slick.

Favorite plugin or least favorite plugin?

“Favorite plugin: WP Super Cache
Least Favorite Plugin: WP Super Cache

I guess it depends if it’s on the machine I’m developing on or a live site. It can be the smoothest plugin or the most frustrating.”

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

Nothing too spectacular. On a custom home slider, I combined custom post types while extending them with meta boxes which is pretty common I guess.

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

How to handle all the custom developments and plugin/theme combinations.

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

A setting to change the terminology if using WP for a site compared to a blog. Post could be Article and Taxonomy could be category or something else of that sort depending on use.

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

I see WordPress staying about the same, but adding more functionality for plugins and theme development to make it feel more towards a Website CMS.

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

We were transferring a WPMU network and ended up not fixing one of the database fields where the new domain would be. All we had to do was adjust the URL and we were good to go.

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

Trying to explain when to use a Post or a Page. To clear it up I try to explain it in an order of a hierarchy.

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

How did you learn WordPress development? If they answer by reading the Codex and going to the forums, I will respect them way more than if they took a class and claim to know the content.

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

I first got excited about WordPress when I made my first plugin. It was a few years ago and that’s when I saw the potential to make WordPress more than just a blogging engine.