Success stories are inspiring, aren’t they? They motivate us for action, so we are eager to hear/read more of them. This is just such kind of a story. But what’s even better, we will hear it from the source.

Would you like to know how not to get lost in the tough competition? Do you think there is still a chance to become a successful seller with a host of people joining this community?

There is no better way to clarify the situation than have a friendly conversation with one of the top-ranking sellers on ThemeForest – Henry Rise, the founder of ThemeRex.

OK, let’s start.

Hi Henry, thanks a bunch for taking your time to answer our questions. We will try to be brief. However, we can’t wait to explore your philosophy and process of becoming an Elite Seller on Themeforest as well as hear your advice on emerging trends for future sellers.

H. Hi everybody! It will be a pleasure for me to share some helpful insights with your audience.

Could you tell us a little about yourself and the company background?

H. You already know that my name is Henry and I live in Cyprus. Cyprus is amazing. The scenery, the sea, I love everything about the island. When you decide to pay a visit, just tell me and I will be happy to show you the best places.

I have been working with themes for more than 10 years now. I and my team started to work with WordPress 7 years ago. We were a part of another big template company at first. After several years of such experience, we decided that we are ready to run the business on our own. So we started our own company. We joined Envato with our first project, ThemeREX, in 2013. Then we launched 2 other projects, Ancora Themes and Axiom. All of them are quite successful right now.

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

H. Maybe it’s hard to believe, but I started to use WordPress nearly 5 years ago. I guess a rare person knows this fact. I was really surprised how the engine simplifies the things for me. BTW, it’s a kind of secret, so please don’t tell this to anyone, especially my workers. ;)

What product/website of yours are you most proud of and why?

H. You know, I love to create products that inspire other people. I like the thought that our products live their own lives and help people. Of course, it’s my strong belief that projects should bring not only pleasure but revenue. It’s amazing that you can affect the lives of people you’ve never met in person.

Speaking about my favorite project… I think it’s our first theme uploaded on ThemeForest. This is really funny.

We’ve uploaded several products on the first day, but you know how the process goes, some products are accepted quickly and some have to struggle their way through reviewers. You can never tell which one gets out first. So our first theme was a funeral bureau. It wasn’t our plan, it just happened.

Needless to say that some of our colleagues made fun of us. Can you imagine, that theme was the only one in our portfolio. :) We could not afford to be superstitious then and the theme is selling pretty good for a micro-niche template.

Beacon | Funeral Home WordPress Theme

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

H. You know, I prefer not to focus on fails. Everybody fails from time to time. Не that never climbed never fell.

I prefer to call them challenges. My major challenge is definitely repetitiveness. Hate the routine and try to diversify my projects, workflow, and free time as much as it’s possible.

The other factor I find rather frustrating at times is waiting for sales. These days the new items are not being actively pushed by Envato as they have once been and waiting for the first sales takes longer today.

Also, I can’t stand it when the market goes quiet for some reason or another. Sometimes, they are obvious, like the latest Easter sale, for example, but sometimes it is just hard if not impossible to explain the phenomenon.

In your opinion, is the premium themes/plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

H. Yes, you are right, the premium themes/plugins market is simply flooded with cool stuff. However, I believe that everyone has the chance. For instance, we have almost completely relied on what Envato gives and simply played by the rules. I recommend the newbie authors do the same because we are totally grateful for what Envato market has given us and we hope to grow further together.

What’s your advice to new theme/plugin authors?

H. I can advise them to be persistent, creative and never lose concentration. It takes only one wrong move to spoil everything you’ve been working for. It is all about the quality and honoring the principles of Envato and the WordPress community.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

H. Well, let’s not forget that WordPress itself is a growing trend and it grows very quickly nowadays, especially if we are talking about ThemeForest. Among all the products at ThemeForest, WP themes comprise only 25-30%, but they are generating about 86% of total ThemeForest income. That is a very big factor one should remember. WordPress is only going to grow, and the trends are changing very quickly.

WordPress is constantly upgrading. Now Gutenberg plugin is merged into trunk. In addition, the default themes are supposed to work well with the block editor and offer the Classic Editor plugin instead of the removed Gutenberg.

In fact, I am waiting for the WordPress 5.1 release and launching of features outside of the block editor.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

Yes, absolutely. A RESTful API breaks down a transaction to create a series of small modules. Each module addresses a particular underlying part of the transaction. This modularity provides developers with a lot of flexibility.

What’s your take on project Gutenberg?

H. It is mainly built to allow easy content blocks. At present, it allows theme developers to create easier paths for themes that support content blocks site. Unlike other visual editors, the Gutenberg Editor supports such layouts in a simple fashion. This reduces site load timing by eliminating bulky content blocks.

Furthermore, Gutenberg Editor encourages creative users who want to change themes. Themes that do not support content blocks are compatible with the Gutenberg editor without any changes. This means that a theme of your choice that doesn’t hold an option of a content builder now offers one without any third party installations.

The other benefit of Gutenberg is its compatibility with mobile devices. A lot of content block plugins don’t work well enough on devices. However, the Gutenberg editor throws an excellent technology for the desktop and devices. The same functionality and work are now supported on mobile devices as well.

What’s your current hardware/software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

H. I don’t want to advertise any particular brands. I think the list of hardware/software I use/can’t live without will be too long to read.

In short, I surely can’t live with my smartphone, smartwatch, tablet, laptop, computer, time management, planning, and team communication software. I also use a bunch of web design and development as well as marketing tools. This is not the full list, of course, but I believe that my set is similar to any manager’s toolkit.

What’s your typical day like?

H. The days are sometimes very similar to each other and that is where jogging and walking come in hand, especially if you have a good walking area around you.

Of course, I work nearly 8 hours a day, but I am easily carried away by new ideas, so it often takes me much more than this. I enjoy discovering new things and picking up new ideas. That’s basically how I got interested in computers and the web. I like challenges. Making something that seemed impossible is really great. And when it is actually helping a number of people improve their business, thus improve their lives, it makes me a much happier person.

Thank you very much, Henry, for this interesting conversation. I am sure that the story of your success will help many entrepreneurs to finally make the decision of their lives, join one of the giant marketplaces, and start climbing its Elite Seller ladder.

H. It was a pleasure to share my experience with the community. OK, guys, bye, for now, focus on developing high-quality themes and providing professional support and hopefully soon I will read your success stories on the net.

The post Quick Interview with Henry Rise – ThemeRex appeared first on CSSIgniter.

My name is Jeffrey Carandang, also known as `phpbits` in the WordPress community. I am the creator of Widget Options, one of the top-rated WordPress plugins in the directory with more than 60k active install. I do have other awesome free plugins which you can see here: https://profiles.wordpress.org/phpbits#content-plugins I’ve been creating and supporting plugins full-time for more than 3 years now.

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

I discovered WordPress in 2010 when I was in college. Back then, I was freelancing at Odesk and saw a lot of WordPress job posts and decided to take a look at them. I’ve been working on WordPress since then.

What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

I’m very proud of Widget Options because it’s the best plugin I’ve created so far. Being able to get positive reviews from customers is one of the best rewards a developer/creator can get. It’s also one of the main reasons why I’ve become known in the community.

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

Yes for sure! Lots of us probably did. It’s the way to success! :) I have a lot of failed plugins and unfinished products. I created a travellers’ community website and blog site and spent a couple of months developing it, but it ended up as a failure. It’s fun being a creator, but sometimes there are challenges along the way and lessons to learn after each bump.

In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

There are lots of companies on the premium themes/plugins market now, and many individuals are emerging. We have to be creative in order to stand-out, think something new and outside the box. With Gutenberg on the way, there will be a lot of opportunities and competitions for sure.

What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

Just do it :) As long as you have the Minimum Viable Product, release it and just keep building. Value your customer’s feedbacks and suggestions; they’ll make your product better.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

If it wasn’t for Gutenberg, I might say better editor; but since it’s already on the way, it’s probably making sure that it’ll provide better on-boarding process for new users.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

Definitely! It’ll be one of the best decisions because it lets us, developers, build better products using WordPress.

What’s your take on project Gutenberg?

I’m sure I’m not the only one loving it. I’ve been active on the development since the early stages and I can say that I’m really happy with what it is now. I actually have already created a plugin for it called Block Options, which is available at the repository: http://wordpress.org/plugins/block-options/ Developing alongside with fast-paced core team is really tough and challenging, but it’s really rewarding. You’ll learn a lot of stuff and improve day by day.

What’s your current hardware / software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

I’m using the 13-inch Macbook Pro Retina – late 2013. I’m planning on getting a new one though. My favourite apps right now are Sublime Text for development and Local by Flywheel. I’m also a Trello lover.

What’s your typical day like?

Everyday is a productivity battle. I’m trying to focus on supporting my customers in the early part of the day, then improving products and coding in the afternoon. Still work in the evening, too, but it’s mostly marketing stuff and expanding connections. I’m also back to jogging and working out at the gym again just to have quality breaks from work.

The post Quick interview with Jeffrey Carandang (Phpbits Creative Studio) appeared first on CSSIgniter.

Hi! I am a wannabe game developer who fell into web design. I studied digital art at university, specialising in game art, but the course was broad and covered web design (and sound design, special effects, all sorts). After graduating I got a job at Miniclip.com as a game artist, but the company was small, and when they found out I knew more about web design than they did I moved over to doing more of that. Eventually I was promoted to director of web development. In 2005 I started using WordPress, in 2007 I partnered with Darren Hoyt to create a premium theme shop; ProThemeDesign.com. In 2015 I left Miniclip to set out on my own, working exclusively with WordPress.

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

In 2005 I wanted a better way to manage the content on my website. Previously I had made my own, poorly coded, content management system but it didn’t have any dynamic features. This was around the time when all the cool kids had a web dev blog so I thought I would try out the most popular software. I downloaded loads of them, and WordPress was the only one I could get running without jumping through hoops. I got hooked really quickly and soon had a new website and, shortly after, a free theme available to download.

What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

I imagine most theme developers say this but the last thing I made is the one I am proudest of. With every new project I try to do something new or different and so I always learn something new with each theme. The culmination of this is my starter theme called Granule; you can check it out on Github – https://github.com/BinaryMoon/granule. Granule takes a lot of cues from _s but it also includes a lot of default functionality that I like to use and _s doesn’t include.

Non-development wise; I have also partnered with Alex Denning to write a weekly WordPress newsletter called MasterWP (https://masterwp.co) and we’re really pleased with the reception that has had. We’re not yet a year old and already have over 1300 subscribers – with more joining each week – and our sponsorships are sold out into February next year.

Yes it’s saturated, but there can be opportunities for the right products. These days I think you need to find your niche, a micro niche, and target it with a laser focus.

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

TimThumb. Probably doesn’t need any introduction. It was used so so popular, and I believe inspired WordPress featured images. But it was also horrible when it was compromised. Thankfully the community has been really good about it. I have been a lot more careful about publishing things for others to use since then. These days I think a lot more about security when developing themes and plugins and I always try to get a second opinion (code review) to ensure things are as tight as can be.

In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

Yes it’s saturated, but there can be opportunities for the right products. These days I think you need to find your niche, a micro niche, and target it with a laser focus. Trying to make anything generic is a really hard sell now. I have an advantage in that I sell my themes on wordpress.com. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t be able to live on what I earn from prothemedesign.com. If you’re a small theme shop then I think you will really struggle unless you have a tightly defined audience.

The plugins market is different. I would still try to find a niche, but there’s more opportunity there. As long as your plugin is coded well, so that it works with all themes, then you can have a much wider audience. The hard part is coming up with that winning idea. It’s something I keep thinking about but I’ve yet to find something I think I could do better than anyone else.

What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

Find a niche and dominate it. Make the best thing you can. Get feedback from others, ideally people you don’t know or who will be honest. Build the simplest thing you can that will do what you want and see if people are interested in it. Don’t spend loads of time making something amazing without validating the idea in some way.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

I don’t really have any big wants. There’s a few smaller things I would like to see tweaked/ improved but in general, I’m pretty happy working with the things we have.

At a push – I’ve always felt a page builder that works ‘the WordPress way’ would be nice. I guess Gutenberg is going to be that and more. Live editing is also the future. There’s a lot of push back against the customiser but I think being able to edit the site directly, and not in an abstracted editor, would solve a lot of problems.

I’m really liking the incremental improvements and refinements that have happened over the last few WordPress releases. All the changes in WP 4.9 are great, especially those in the Customizer that are helping to polish WordPress to a shine.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

I was quite excited about the REST API initially but it doesn’t seem to have taken off. Personally, as a themer, I don’t think it’s that interesting, but for app and plugin developers I think it has a lot of potential.

I went to a few WordCamps around the time the REST API was being developed and every other talk was about the REST API – but since then it’s fallen a bit flat. I think it needs more documentation, or maybe just some marketing, to get people interested in it. One of the selling points of the API is that WordPress “haters” would be able to develop for WordPress without touching the codebase but as far as I know that hasn’t happened. I can only assume this is because nobody outside WordPress is aware of the potential – or maybe they just don’t care and are happy with what they have.

What’s your take on project Gutenberg?

Like the REST API I think Gutenberg also has a lot of potential, and it will clearly have wider use than the REST API. However I am worried that the motivation is coming from the needs of WordPress.com rather than the needs of the community. I know Matt has said this isn’t the case, but I think it would be very hard for him to not be influenced by his business even if it’s subconsciously. This doesn’t mean I think they’re doing the wrong thing. The project looks great, but I don’t think they have done a very good job of communicating with the community.

I think it’s great that Matt has stepped up and is leading WordPress from the front again. Before Gutenberg WordPress appeared aimless and was looking like it was going to stagnate; all the innovation was coming from plugins. This has turned around quite rapidly and WordPress is once again looking to the future.

As a theme developer I have some concerns with Gutenberg. The idea of everything being made in Gutenberg with users being given the freedom to design the site as they see fit. That’s a scary thing. It’s hard for a designer to relinquish control in this way. I have a vision of all sites being single column stacked boxes with garish colours and terrible font choices – the sort of thing thegrid.io makes :)

Gutenberg will also change a theme developers role considerably – but how exactly remains to be seen. My prediction is that the future of WordPress themes is CSS. PHP and Javascript will still be there, but they will be needed less and less. I’m probably worrying about nothing but as someone who earns their living from themes I think I have to consider these things.

What’s your current hardware / software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

I’ve recently purchased a new MacBook Pro. My previous MBP was a 2011 model and starting to show it’s age. When in my office my MBP sits on a Roost stand and I use a magic keyboard and trackpad to control it (I haven’t used a mouse in about 7 or 8 years). Software wise – I use Atom, Sketch, CodeKit, iTerm2, and Chrome. For photo editing I use Acorn. I try to keep quite lean and like to experiment with new software – I think the Serif apps looks really interesting. I’m not a fan of Adobes subscription model so haven’t tried their latest apps but their Sketch competitor looks nice – I hope Sketch is taking notes.

My current favourite application is unrelated to WordPress or web development. It’s a pixel art app called Aseprite (https://www.aseprite.org/). I make games on the side, and it’s just so much fun. If you want to try making retro game style art, then it’s well worth downloading.

What’s your typical day like?

I’m a father of a 2 year old, and I work from home, so there’s no typical day. Generally my son wakes me between 5 and 6 am (no alarm needed), and I then spend the day doing things with my wife and child. I try to get a couple of hours of work in while my son has a nap and when he goes to bed is when I start work properly. I’ve become a lot more focused & efficient since having a child. I don’t watch much tv, and casual internetting is a thing of the past. If it wasn’t for smartphones I probably wouldn’t be on Twitter or Facebook. It’s a challenge but I feel very fortunate that I am able to spend so much time with my family – I know many aren’t so lucky.

The post Quick interview with Ben Gillbanks (Pro Theme Design) appeared first on CSSIgniter.

Ana: Hi, thanks a lot for inviting us for the interview, it is a pleasure. Before we started with Anariel Design I had just finished Civil Engineering studies and moved to Germany. As I couldn’t find myself in Civil Engineering and wasn’t happy with the studies I finally decided to try something for myself, something I always wanted but didn’t have the opportunity to try, web design. Having Marko’s enormous support (I couldn’t manage this without him) I started to learn to HTML and CSS and then building WordPress themes.

Marko: Hi there, thank you for inviting us to do the interview. To put it short, in my case it is a typical story of a musician that discovered WordPress :). I don’t know if you noticed that connection, but I met so many people in the WordPress community that are or were musicians. It looks like a pattern :). Before that, I studied management, but didn’t find myself in it and wanted to try to make a living being a musician. So I quit the study just a few exams before the end and moved to Germany. Thirteen years later I’m still in Germany, but music is more like a hobby these days and WordPress themes are my main source of income. Let’s see what the future brings.

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

Ana: I think it was 2012. I started creating and selling HTML templates in 2011. Very soon I realized that WordPress is the thing and that I should switch to creating WordPress themes. It costed me some nerves and time to learn the ins and outs of theme development, but with support and motivation from Marko it seems like it worked :).



Marko: My role in this was like: “You know I think this WordPress thing is worth learning, so why don’t you try and learn it. It can’t be rocket science.” :)

What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

Ana: I’d say that at the time I finish working on a new theme that theme is the one I’m most proud of. Looking back, the themes I’m most proud of are our charity WordPress themes as they were all inspired by a real-life story, real organizations and people.
 If I’d need to pick one I’d pick Maisha charity WordPress theme. Beside charity WordPress themes we develop blogging themes and there I’d pick Didi fashion WordPress theme.

Marko: I’d agree with themes Ana picked and the reasons why. What I’d add is the theme Zeko that is our latest nonprofit WordPress theme. I like that one a lot.

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

Marko: Hmm yes, I got married:)))). Just kidding, for me the epic fail was to study something I was not really interested in and for the reasons I still don’t understand.

Ana: I guess we share the same fail, it’s not getting married though:). I studied civil engineering that I was not interested in and would never pick that study if I’d have to pick now. However, that was then, we learn from our mistakes and now I’m happy to do what I do and glad I never needed to work as a Civil Engineer.

In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

Ana: It definitely is far more saturated than it was when we started. There are still opportunities, but it’s getting harder especially for themes as more and more theme developers compete for the same piece of the pie.

Marko: Agree completely. I also think there are more opportunities for plugin developers right now. However, everything is changing very fast all the time. Our job is to try to keep up and we’ll see what awaits around the corner.

What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

Marko: Give up before it’s too late:)). No, don’t give up, that’s always the last option. I would say that finding a niche and specializing is important in a saturated market like this one. 
There needs to be something that sets a product outside of the “me too” category. For me “why” is important in everything I do and from my experience as a musician “money” can’t be the only answer.



Ana: I second that:). Do what you love, give 100% and in the end, it will pay off.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

Marko: It would be a way to create rows and columns in posts and pages without using a 3rd party plugin.

Ana: That’s a tough one! It would be great to see Gutenberg as a kind of a “page builder”. It’d be much easier for users to build pages using different blocks inside the editor instead of thinking about what is a widget, a sidebar… or installing a page builder plugin. There is one more thing I would like to see, a better way of importing data.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

Marko: I’m probably not the best-informed person regarding the whole REST API thing. From what I know it is definitely a move in the right direction as it opens a whole new world of possibilities. We, however, still have to see in practice how this is gonna affect theme and plugin development.

Ana: Yep, it’s a good thing. I’m excited to see where it goes in the future.

What’s your take on project Gutenberg?

Marko: I think the idea behind it is good and I welcome adding that kind of functionality to WordPress. It is definitely a step in the right direction. It would also add the feature I mentioned above, which is nice:). 
However, there seems to be a lot of disagreements and misunderstandings related to the project and many people don’t seem to be very happy with it. I’m quite confident that the team behind the project will sort all these issues before it is included in WP 5.0. This is a big step forward, but if not done properly it can be quite a big step back.

Ana: I agree:). It would be great to see Gutenberg as a better visual editor in the future. It will solve so many problems for the users who are just starting with WordPress.

What’s your current hardware/software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

Marko: I use a Windows PC with 27″ LG screen and a Mac Book Air when on the road. On a daily basis I mainly do support, so what I need the most is the browser and Chrome is my browser of choice. I use Filezilla FTP client and Brackets code editor.
I don’t think there is an app that I couldn’t live without, everything is replaceable these days.

Ana: I am using an iMac, MacBook Air and LG phone. Essential for me are Adobe products (like Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver), Versions, Slack. I can’t live without Twitter ;)

What’s your typical day like?

Ana: I usually do everything themes related in the morning. Working on a new theme or doing theme updates and so on. After that, I take some time to cook a lunch and then I do socials. Later on, I do some fitness and after I spend time learning new skills. I just started learning to draw ;). I also like to go walking with Marko and Bubi whenever the weather allows us to do so. Sometimes I sleep ;).

Marko: Wake up…work…go to sleep…repeat. Luckily, I have a lot of non-typical days:).

The post Quick interview with Ana & Marko – Anariel Design appeared first on CSSIgniter.

I’m a non tech guy who graduated from Dauphine, in Economics. Then I started my career in Finance, in merger and acquisition advisory. After 3 years, I thought I was not learning enough anymore, so I decided to try starting a company. But I had no specific and no partners. That’s when I met Rémy Berda (co-founder of Weglot), who had an idea, a first user and a strong background as an engineer and entrepreneur. It was the first step of the Weglot journey :).

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

At the very beginning of Weglot, Rémy and I did not know anything about WordPress. Actually, the first time I heard about WordPress, was from a user asking us if we had a plugin to add Weglot to their website. Then, another user and another one kept asking us if we had a plugin available. We created the plugin and started discovering this amazing technology and community.

What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

The only one that came to my mind is Weglot :). Rémy brilliantly describes our very beginnings in this post as well as our first success here. To summarize, we started from a single and simple idea: adding multiple languages to a website shouldn’t be complicated. From this idea, we built a service used by more than 20k+ websites in less than 2 years. We developed an obsession for feedbacks and efficiency to try to develop the idea as quickly as possible with very limited ressources.

Now the thing that makes us very proud, is the Weglot team. We’re now 6 people, and we’re looking for additional expansion in the short/mid term.

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

Every entrepreneur have epic fails :). Failing is learning.

I can share 2 epic fails. The first one is my very first weeks/months on Weglot, I was in charge of finding new users. I tried cold emailing/calling potential leads. I thought that the startup employees/founders was a good niche to start with, totally wrong. First I needed to convince them multilingual was something they needed (you loose 80-90% of your leads), then I needed to get in touch with the guy in charge of the website (most of the time a freelance, overall only 1% of conversion). So a lot of energy for very little results, and a business model that could never be profitable.

The second one, is our first pricing structure. The very first weeks, we had a plan without any limits. Never do that. When you’re a service, you cannot sell it without limits. We experienced some innapropriate behaviors from users trying to take advantage of that, hopefully we understood our mistake very quickly and changed our pricing structure.

In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

I might not be the best guy to answer this question, as I’m relatively new to WordPress. However, Weglot is a good example that there is still room for new entrants. I think that WordPress is gradually going upmarket, offering opportunities to new solutions matching this type of needs and usage. In other words, premium solutions with a focus on user experience and simplicity.

What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

Be user/customers focus and do not waste any time in trying to develop the most perfect solution/product, such product does not exist. Put all your energy in offering a first product that solve an existing problem, then iterate as quickly as possible to improve it.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

I’d love to be able to browse page codes (HTML/CSS included) the same way it’s done in Shopify.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

Yes, nowadays, it seems to be one of the standard for web app builders.

What’s your take on project Gutenberg?

It’s a good and complicated question. From my non tech perspectives, I have the feeling that Automattic tried to bring a very new approach to further compete other web app builders. Again I’m not a tech guy, so it feels like it’s not something designed for .org web developers but more for .com web users.

What’s your current hardware / software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

I have a MacBook Air 13″, and there with one App I love, Inkscape for creating and editing svg media.

What’s your typical day like?

A typical day starts between 8:30 and 9:00am at the office. After a first email review/check, I start by trying to structure my day into big tasks. Then, during 10-11hours it’s all about having things done ;).

Once every 2 weeks, we have a team drink. Otherwise, I play sports or spend time with friends and family.

The post Quick interview with Augustin Prot (weglot.com) appeared first on CSSIgniter.

I have a background in the banking industry, but since a few years I’m mainly involved in online marketing, SEO and web development. I’m the founder and CEO of Array Internet which is a media company based in Frankfurt am Main (Germany). Our most successful project is MH Themes, which is an established and popular brand providing premium WordPress themes for online magazines, news websites and advanced blogs.

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

Years ago I started a few online magazines to experiment with online marketing and SEO. That was when I learned about WordPress the first time and it quickly became my first choice for running my online magazines. It’s very impressive how WordPress has evolved over the years, now running more than 28% of the web.

What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

I’m definitely most proud of MH Themes. It has been an incredible journey so far and when I launched this brand back in 2012 I would never have imagined that we one day would have more than 20,000 customers from around the world. It’s awesome and very rewarding to see what great websites our customers build with their themes day by day. You can find some nice examples in the MH Themes Showcase.

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

I think any entrepreneur who’s long enough around can tell about many small mistakes during his/her journey. I made mistakes as well and in the past I launched various projects that didn’t work out at all. For example once I started a gaming site which was an epic fail and a huge waste of time and money. I think I should have done more research before going into the quite saturated gaming niche. The world usually doesn’t need another gaming site that doesn’t do anything special or unique.

I also spent a lot of money on marketing and advertising in the early phase of our WordPress theme business, many of these investments didn’t pay off. However, I think that’s part of a learning process and after a while you’ll get to know what works well and what not. Today my marketing decisions are much more thought out and I also learned over the years to do thorough research before making any investments.

Select an interesting niche and build the best possible product for that particular target audience. Launching just another multipurpose theme or dozens of different themes without a solid strategy usually doesn’t work anymore (unless you spend thousands of dollars on marketing).

In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

Yes, I think the market for WordPress themes (not plugins) is not only saturated, we also see that WordPress evolves into a direction where themes may not play such a big role anymore (Gutenberg). I think the times where you could just launch plenty of WordPress themes and see what sticks are over. There are thousands of themes available and many of them look similar and do the same thing. Of course there are exceptions, but overall the market environment for small or medium theme shops has become more difficult.

Also more and more companies are serving pre-selected themes to their customers, which creates kind of a bubble for these customers and they may not look for other themes anymore. Automattic now is offering themes via Jetpack, GoDaddy offers their own collection of themes to their customers and Bluehost has integrated Mojo Marketplace to offer themes to their customers as well. All of these business decisions absolutely make sense for the particular companies, however, it also creates a situation where independent theme developers may have a hard time to stand out from the crowd. If more hosting companies or major players go this route, then the times where customers use Google or other venues to look for WordPress themes may be over.

What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

My most important advice would be to focus as much as possible. Select an interesting niche and build the best possible product for that particular target audience. Launching just another multipurpose theme or dozens of different themes without a solid strategy usually doesn’t work anymore (unless you spend thousands of dollars on marketing). Also, don’t launch a theme that looks the same like everything else or does the same thing. The market is too saturated for those kind of WordPress themes and you’ll very likely have a hard time to stand out from the crowd.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

I definitely would like to see a standardized way of importing data in WordPress core. Yes, the WordPress Importer has been around for years, but as we all know, there are quite some hiccups and it doesn’t support importing of options, widget placements or else. It’s quite a bummer that users need to rely on an armada of plugins to import things like settings or widgets. Having this supported in core out of the box would make life for millions of users so much easier.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

It depends on what WordPress wants to be. If WordPress wants to be a highly flexible CMS which is also suitable for developing 3rd party applications and be the “operation system of the web”, then having the REST API in core is a huge step into the right direction.

What’s your take on project Gutenberg?

As we all know, Gutenberg is quite a controversial topic in the WordPress community. I think the Gutenberg team has made a huge mistake by not being clear from the start about what this is going to be. They released a plugin which was far away from being usable as beta software and the communication was quite a PR disaster, in my opinion. There should have been much more communication from the start and a clear roadmap so that developers and companies that rely on WordPress know exactly what’s coming so that they can plan ahead.

Initially Gutenberg has been introduced as a replacement for the editor, which in general is a good idea. But then piece by piece people have been informed that the overall goal of Gutenberg actually is to completely redesign the way how WordPress works and what kind of functionality is supported. That obviously was quite shocking for many plugin and theme developers who have established their WordPress businesses over the years.

In the end Gutenberg is quite a business risk for many established WordPress companies, in my opinion (page builders, etc…). Sure, if you completely want to reinvent your business and recode your products, then Gutenberg is also a chance for further growth. But that should be a decision made by business owners and the community, not by WordPress core developers (Automattic) trying to achieve their own vision or agenda with a sledgehammer.

However, I also see that the communication by the Gutenberg team has been improved recently and the current development also goes more into the right direction by finally trying to support WordPress core functionality which millions of sites are relying on (e.g. custom meta fields). Though, there still are some crucial aspects of Gutenberg that need to be ironed out and some in the community do not feel that their concerns are being heard. For example I highly recommend reading this post: What’s so bad about HTML Comments as structure?

What’s your current hardware / software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

I used to work on a 27“ iMac, but I recently switched to the new MacBook Pro in order to work with my full environment while travelling. My development environment is setup with MAMP and I’m using Coda as editor as well as the Versions app for SVN.

What’s your typical day like?

There’s not really a typical day. I usually get up early, take care of emails and other requests and then I start working on getting rid of my monstrous to do list. The list contains basically everything, starting with marketing activities, working on new ventures, coding theme updates, or else. However, it quite often happens that unexpected tasks are popping up which need attention and then I’m not moving as fast with planned activities as I would love to. I tend to work 7 days a week and my working days usually end after 10-12 hours (at least during the week). After that I try to relax a bit, doing some physical exercise and spend time with my wife and daughter.

The post Quick interview with Michael Hebenstreit (mhthemes.com) appeared first on CSSIgniter.

I have a software engineer background, however a bad one, I have learned along the way that I have other passions and skills, so I have used my freelancing income as a developer to build what is today Codeinwp.com and ThemeIsle.com, where I am leading a team of 15+ people.

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

I think it was on my first encounter with entrepreneurship as well, I have used WordPress to launch a poker blog. Later on I got more serious into it and started Codeinwp, from keyword research, I thought “psd to WordPress” is a specific and not hard to rank for keyword, so this how Codeinwp was born :).

What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

I rarely feel proud and when I do it is very short, there are always better things to do. I feel most proud about the company/culture and the team that we have built, because I would not have imagined before that it would be possible, product wise I am most proud about our free themes, both because they are great and that we can offer them for free.

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

I had a lot, my working process is quite chaotic and one of the things that I do sometimes are impulse purchases, I hope I am doing this less and less nowadays, however it still happens, it started few years back with a $80 tweet which brought 0 clicks or so, while $80 was what I would have make in few days, then continued with others that I would better not remind myself about :).

In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

It depends a lot on what you understand by saturated, for the theme market probably is, there is way more power in the hands of “affiliates” than of “product creators”, for plugins due to the much bigger and complex eco-system there are still lots of opportunities as product developer as well. I see however both themes/plugins as a good starting point in your entrepreneurship career or as your first product, however if you are serious about your business I won’t focus just on that, I would go either into content, SaaS, website builders etc.

What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

The most basic one is to build something that is much better than everything that currently exists in the market, if you cannot do it, better look for something else. Thinking about this further, I cannot see how you can easily do this with themes, due to different constrains, so I would rather recommend better start off with a plugin, if you got skills.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

Business sites are nowadays what people build the most with WordPress, so I would add some sort of standard components in the new editor, it should change a lot what themes will be, they would be able to act more as a “theme” rather than a solution.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

I think it was, the adoption takes time, however it forced the community to look for opportunities to challenge themselves and learn JS.

What’s your current hardware / software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

I am using a MacBook since I am moving a lot, however recently I got an iMac, since I plan to work more from home, otherwise nothing fancy, I worked a lot in coffee shops, so I got used to work with what I can :). For apps I am trying to keep things really simple, I use Notes & Reminders from OSX and teamclerk.com for idea management.

What’s your typical day like?

There is no typical day for me, most of the time knowing that I have a fixed schedule makes me extremely stressed, I’ve managed to build some routines, but they last around 2-3 months maximum. No early morning rise, no medication, nothing zen :).

The post A quick interview with Ionut Neagu (Themeisle) appeared first on CSSIgniter.

My name is Shawn Hesketh, and I’m the creator of the WordPress 101 video tutorial series for beginners. Before I launched WP101.com, I was a freelance designer for 26 years, creating identity systems and branding strategies for my clients in and around the Houston area.

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

I started designing websites in 1994, using designer-friendly tools like Adobe PageMill. As my skills and the complexity of my clients’ sites increased, I began using Dreamweaver and coding sites in PHP. But by the mid-2000s, clients began to request the ability to edit their own content without hiring a ‘webmaster’ for every tiny change. I explored all the popular content management solutions at the time, but they were clunky and quite difficult to use. So I was overjoyed when I finally discovered WordPress 2.0 in June 2006. Compared to Joomla, Drupal, and Expression Engine, I found the WordPress UI to be super-intuitive, and thankfully, so did my clients. So I began recommending WordPress for nearly all my web design projects, and have never looked back.

What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

When I recorded my first series of WordPress 101 tutorial videos in 2008, I had no idea that they would go on to help more than a million beginners learn how to create their own website using WordPress. And I’m extremely proud of our partnerships with GoDaddy, Media Temple, and more than 300 other WordPress companies that have put our WordPress tutorial videos to work for their customers. That speaks volumes about the quality of our videos and the training we provide. Since that first set of videos, I’ve updated and re-recorded the WordPress 101 video series with every major release — a total of 21 times!

If you begin with a people-first approach, asking questions and learning what pain points your audience struggles with on a daily basis, you’ll be in the best place to create meaningful solutions to those problems.

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

My biggest fail to date continues to haunt me to this day. When we released the WP101 Plugin in 2011, we integrated it with Cart66 Pro to handle the subscription payments. Sadly, that product only supports subscriptions via PayPal. Fast forward to present day, and we’re stuck using PayPal, since all of our recurring subscriptions are tied to the original PayPal IPN. Replacing the underlying subscription platform without affecting our current customer base will be a tricky, drawn-out process. So, learn from my mistake, and carefully consider your payment gateway before launching your product. If I were rebuilding it today, we’d integrate with Stripe instead of PayPal.

In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

If you’re just getting started building a WordPress site today, you could find yourself shopping thousands of plugins and themes. How do you know which ones are reputable? Which ones will continue to offer support a couple of years down the road? And one of the most popular questions we receive is, “How do I make my WordPress site look like the gorgeous theme demo I was shown when I bought the theme?” It’s a confusing mess. And that’s why I believe the biggest opportunity might be found not in themes — but in ‘site builder’ solutions that enable the site owner to create their own website from the ground up via a simple and intuitive GUI. I love the work being done by the Beaver Builder team, and I think they’re uniquely positioned to serve this growing need.

Check out the entire library of 98 WordPress tutorials to start learning WordPress today

What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

Stop answering questions that aren’t being asked. Every day, I receive emails from new plugin or theme authors, asking me to give feedback on their hot new product. That’s the exact opposite approach they should be taking. “Build it and they will come,” only works in the movies. If you begin with a people-first approach, asking questions and learning what pain points your audience struggles with on a daily basis, you’ll be in the best place to create meaningful solutions to those problems. Remember, “Advertising is the price companies pay for being unoriginal.” Create a solution that solves real-world problems, and you won’t have to work hard at all to spread the word.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

One of the first concepts we have to teach new WordPress users is this idea that you have to edit your content in one place, then preview those changes in another. The Customizer has gone a long way toward minimizing this confusion, but it doesn’t work for everything a site owners sees in the Preview. So now we highlight the items they can edit in the Customizer, leaving them to figure out when and how to edit the rest. Front-end, in-place editing (like Squarespace) would offer a more intuitive, WYSIWYG approach that would all but eliminate the biggest area of confusion for new WordPress users.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

Sure. The REST API could pave the way for more intuitive interfaces for site owners like custom dashboards and more. It seems to be very much in its infancy, so I’m excited to see where it goes in the coming months and years.

What’s your current hardware / software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

I use a 27-inch iMac with a 5k Retina display, with a second 27-inch display, which is invaluable for recording screencasts. Audio quality is one of the biggest differentiators when creating high-quality training videos. So I’m currently using a Rode Procaster XLR mic, a Grace Design M101 pre-amp, ART Voice Channel vocal pre-processor, and a Duet D/A converter by Apogee. This chain helps me record very clean voiceovers. And of course, I couldn’t live without ScreenFlow for recording screencasts. Love that app!

What’s your typical day like?

I start most days with a 30-minute ‘Zen run,’ which really helps set the tone for the rest of my day. I spend most of my day answering WordPress questions and planning new courses for WP101 members. I participate in several mastermind groups, which really helps me stay connected to others in our community and overcome that sense of isolation that can easily happen when you work as a ‘solopreneur.’ When I’m not in front of the computer, you can usually find me playing with our three kids and our new beagle puppy. Or on the back porch, enjoying a nice cigar and a glass of whiskey. Slàinte!

The post A quick interview with Shawn Hesketh (WP101) appeared first on CSSIgniter.

Hi could you tell us a little about yourself and background?

I grew up in Alabama and am now currently living here. I earned a B.A. in English from Auburn University with primary concentration in creative writing and a secondary concentration in journalism. I’ve worked all sorts of jobs like grocery store stockboy, field hand who picked watermelons and baled hay, English teacher in Korea, and all kinds of other things.

My interests are far and wide. I garden and hope to run my own farm one day. I plan to publish at least one best-selling novel. I’m currently relearning how to write using the Spencerian Cursive method. I’m also just starting to use fountain pens, which are a joy to write with (no idea why ballpoints ever became more popular).

When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

I first started using WordPress in 2005. I had given it a try once before that. Primarily, I was looking for something easy to use for blogging. As someone hoping to be a writer, I needed a useful tool to do that online. WordPress worked better than anything else I tried.

What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

I don’t generally think of things in terms like that for whole projects. I generally take more pride in the tiny, reusable bits of code that gets used in many projects. Or, simple ideas that I’ve had over the years that many other developers are using today in themes/plugins on millions of sites.

From a non-coding standpoint, I’m proud of the book, Professional WordPress Plugin Development, that Brad Williams, Ozh Richard, and I wrote. Being able to publish a book was a life-long dream. WordPress gave me the opportunity to make that happen.

Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

Probably the most epic fail I had was a free memberships program at Theme Hybrid. I thought I could bring in a lot of members for free and upsell them to a larger membership plan. That didn’t work out. My monthly revenue was only about a 1/4 of what it was.

In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

It’s only saturated if you don’t have a specific niche. You’ve got to find your angle, your little slice of the pie, and focus on that. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. I think the plugin market is more wide open than the theme market though. There’s more room to be innovative.

What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

I mostly covered that in the previous answer, but here’s another, more important piece of advice. Be passionate about your work. People always ask me, “How to make money online?” I always tell them to find something that they’d do, regardless if they ever made a single dime. I enjoy making themes and plugins. Some of them make me money. Some really don’t. Of course, there are things that I do in order to put food on the table. But, most of my work, that’s me doing things that I’m passionate about.

If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

Most of the big features I’ve wanted over the years are now in core, so my list is getting smaller. From a developer standpoint, the feature I want to see most is the post status API fleshed out.

Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

I’m sure it’s a good thing. The greatest thing about having the REST API is that it will bring developers with other backgrounds to the community. The huge developer community is what has made WordPress great over the years and will continue doing so for years to come.

What’s your current hardware / software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

I’m using a Sony Vaio laptop I got 4 or 5 years ago. It’s been the best laptop I’ve ever had in terms of longevity. I used to go through a new laptop every year. I’m in the market for something new at the moment.

As for software, I use the following tools on a daily basis.

• Notepad++
• Atom (for writing rather than coding)
• Chrome
• Slack
• Photoshop

What’s your typical day like?

I’m on my winter schedule now, so this will change when it’s time to start gardening again and I get more daylight hours. I keep to a fairly strict schedule every day so that I stay on track.

• 6:00 – Wake up, piddle around, check email.
• 8:00 – Work.
• 12:00 – Lunch.
• 1:00 – Work.
• 4:00 – Exercise, yard work, etc.
• 5:00 – Final work-related stuff like email.
• 6:00 – Dinner.
• 7:00 – Activities like reading, watching some TV, etc.
• 11:00 – Bedtime (though I’m often an hour behind).

The post A quick interview with Justin Tadlock (Theme Hybrid) appeared first on CSSIgniter.

1. Hi Mario, could you tell us a little about yourself and background?

My name is Mario Peshev, I’m the founder of DevriX – a distributed WordPress company with a team of 25 working on high-end and high-traffic projects for enterprises and fast-paced startups. We do provide tech and business retainer services for clients and partners around the world, and build some innovative ventures such as My Store Locator Plus and DX Sales CRM.

My background is in enterprise software engineering and technical training, and over the past few years I’ve been dealing with a lot of management and business strategy, among other things.

2. When did you first stumble upon WordPress?

Back in 2005-2006 as the media agency I was working for was building a blogging platform. I helped with R&D and found WordPress, which I’d noticed before during research while administering a couple of forums.

The first WordPress site I built was in 2007 and required a lot of custom development, which allowed me to get acquainted with the platform before some goodies were introduced in WordPress 3.0.

3. What product / website of yours are you most proud of and why?

We’ve built plenty of challenging projects over the years, and solved performance-related problems through business process automation for different industries (including a couple of banks, one of the leading automotive manufacturers, the aviation industry).

Right now the two main products we’re focusing on are MySLP – a WordPress-based Software as a Service platform providing flexible and extensible locator services in any web platform, and DX Sales CRM – our freemium CRM solution for SMB owners. We have spent thousands of hours for each of those projects, and the reason I love them is that they solve problems for a large percentage of the population – as compared to niche and specific solutions.

4. Have you had any epic fails so far that you’d like to share with us?

Of course – failures are a part of the learning process for each entrepreneur.
A while ago I tried to start a business building a Java-based CMS for my clients (I am Java certified and built a prototype as a course project first). Soon thereafter I did the math and realized that development will be way slower, far more expensive, servers are hard to find and 10 times the cost of a shared PHP one.

With DevriX there was a lot of crash and burn at first with hiring, poor project management and communication, inefficient marketing planning and so on. This has allowed us to learn from our mistakes and improve our processes as we go.

Solve actual business problems and focus on usability. Make sure that there’s a target market for your solution and tailor your UI, documentation, and workflow around your potential customers.

5. In your opinion, is the premium themes / plugins market saturated? Are there any opportunities out there?

There is a huge demand for high quality and niche premium themes. Most solutions on the market do embed 5 different sliders loaded on every page, custom visual builders, plenty of shortcodes that impact the stability and speed of the website. Focusing more on niche themes solving specific problems and lighter themes in general would allow for good and affordable design with a stable base.

Plugins are in a certain spot between WordPress.org which doesn’t allow premium solutions, and no high-traffic alternatives other than Code Canyon which doesn’t comply with GPL. The expectation of very low prices for both plugins and themes prevents the majority of the professional developers from spending time and money in high-quality solutions.

I’m certain that both markets will continue shifting for the next 2-3 years.

A fully-fledged CRM system built for small and medium-sized business owners looking for a professional sales solution integrated with their WordPress website.

6. What’s your advice to new theme / plugin authors?

Solve actual business problems and focus on usability. Make sure that there’s a target market for your solution and tailor your UI, documentation, and workflow around your potential customers.

From a technical standpoint follow the WordPress coding standards, turn on all debugging/profiling tools and test with a ton of data and traffic whenever possible. Even the worst plugin or theme will work flawlessly with 5 visitors per month or 5 pages on the site, but would that be the same with 10,000 users and 500,000 posts and pages?

7. If you had the chance to add a single feature in WordPress core, what would it be?

Instead of adding, I would decouple the Core as much as possible. Ideally I would love for the Core to be a pure framework, and components such as Comments, Media, multilingual support become add-ons.

8. Is the inclusion of the REST API a decision in the right direction and why?

Yes, it will allow for building non-WordPress applications interacting with a WP-based platform (including mobile and SPA), as well as aggregators and other networks pulling and storing data between a large number of websites.

9. What’s your current hardware / software setup. Any apps you can’t live without?

I use a ThinkPad T460p, 6th gen i7 quadcore CPU, 16GB of RAM, SSD drive, Nvidia GF 940MX 2GB running Fedora Core 24 Linux – battery lasts for 8-9 hours and the 14” size is both portable, and large enough for work. Due to commute and travels I use actively LG G3 (with a massive battery) and G5 for work, plus a smart watch for notifications.

At work we can use whatever works best for each team member, but the few mandatory apps are Asana for project management, HipChat for team communication and Google Docs for collaboration.

10. What’s your typical day like?

I wake up around 10am, catch up on urgent emails and pending chats and quickly check with the team in case of emergencies or in case I need to spend more time assisting someone for the day. Then I walk out our dog and grab a coffee, then head to the office or a hookah bar for cofficing for a few hours. I head back home or stick around at the office, skipping traffic.

In the evening I usually have calls or email convos with clients, or clean up some pending tech or marketing tasks. My daily activities vary quite a lot as I wear many hats and focus on whatever is being a priority for the week.

The post A quick interview with Mario Peshev (DevriX) appeared first on CSSIgniter.