{"id":2718,"date":"2013-05-17T11:12:42","date_gmt":"2013-05-17T16:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/?p=2718"},"modified":"2024-06-06T09:47:39","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T14:47:39","slug":"alex-vasquez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wpengine.com\/resources\/alex-vasquez\/","title":{"rendered":"Finely Tuned Consultant – Alex Vasquez"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Alex<\/a>Today, I’m talking with Alex Vasquez<\/a>, who is one of the awesome folks in the Orange County WordPress meetup group. That’s one of the most active groups on Facebook, in terms of supporting each other’s work, etc, and Alex is a cultural leader of the local community. Alex is doing the lion’s share of his work with higher ed, helping those institutions do online employee training, online courses, and publishing content. His company, DigiSavvy<\/a> is a full service, boutique agency, based in Orange County, and serving clients all over.<\/p>\n

Alex is a Pacific Northwest-born dude, who has made his way down to the OC<\/a> to get out of the rain. He literally picked up and moved away from Oregon 2 weeks after graduating high school. WordPress came into his life, at first as side gigs, but then gradually allowed him to pay all his bills, and then some.<\/p>\n

In Alex’s Own Words:<\/b><\/p>\n

The things that have made me happiest in life were the things that I knew I \u201cbelonged\u201d to. Something that I could take ownership of in some way and do good. Community is what I\u2019m talking about. The WordPress community just blows my mind nearly every day with the number of people taking to it, forging their own path and really just supporting one another. Having worked in tech for over a decade, I\u2019ve never seen a community its equal. I\u2019m proud to be a part of this WordPress thingy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, onto Alex’s Answers!<\/b><\/p>\n

When was the first time that you really got excited about WordPress and at what point did you decide to make it your career?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t know that I was so much excited as I had an \u201coh shit\u201d moment. \u201cWhat are you going to do, Alex?\u201d<\/em> Is what I\u2019d asked myself. You see, I\u2019d been laid off at the time. I had only just moved in with my girlfriend, and there was also a baby coming. I panicked and I was stressed… I hated what I did, as a Storage Engineer. It made my mind go numb and my eyes bleed. It truly was soul sucking work.<\/p>\n

I did WordPress stuff on the side, never fulltime… Then it slowly began to creep into my entire work day; before I knew it I was able to pay actual bills doing what I was doing… Freelancing. I was making a living. On MY terms. When I realized that, I truly began to appreciate WordPress not only as a development platform, but also something changed my life.<\/p>\n

Where do you go first to get your WP news, insights, and updates?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Torque<\/a> is a pretty indispensable resource; make.wordpress.org<\/a> and any number of the topics there from theme\/plugin dev to core discussions. It\u2019s the place to go to stay up to date on the WP ecosystem. Also, chatting with the folks at the Orange County WordPress Facebook Group<\/a> \u00a0– The people there are up on their stuff, always willing to lend a hand and are pretty damn cool.\u00a0(Ed: The OC Facebook group is one of the most active forums we’re part of.)<\/em><\/p>\n

What WordPress Consultants deserve more love than they get?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Without a doubt, Jeffrey Zinn<\/a> and Brandon Dove<\/a> at PixelJar<\/a>. I want to be like them when I grow up. They not only work with some awesome clients, and give back to the community, while also making awesome products like AdSanity<\/a>, but they\u2019re just stand up guys. I truly look up to what they do. They really do inspire me to do more in the community and also to improve my skills.<\/p>\n

What performance tips would you give to other pros (as related to speed, scalability, security, plugins, backup, etc.)?<\/b><\/p>\n

Be aware of what your plugins are doing. A prime example are the plugins that bundle a number of shortcodes together. Often these plugins produce calls to scripts you\u2019re not using, such as a jquery slider (Nivo Slider<\/a>, for one), and other such things that can cause your site to load just a bit slower.<\/p>\n

Get familiar with testing your site\u2019s load times on sites like WebPageTest.org<\/a>\u00a0and be willing to refine, refine, refine. Optimize them images losslessly.\u00a0Enigma64<\/a> is a new tool I recently added to my toolbox. It\u2019s ridiculous how much it optimizes assets within PSD files; the designs I work with primarily are in Photoshop format in the first place.<\/p>\n

Confess to us your biggest moment of WP fail.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I pushed an update to a functionality plugin I made for a University and managed to take out all the links on the home page. Each time a link was clicked, it just redirected users to the home page… It sat like that for almost a day. The plugin was responsible for a large number of custom post types. Yeah, I forgot to re-activate it. =-\/<\/p>\n

If you were going to spend this weekend creating a plugin that doesn’t exist, what would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like BIG ideas. Since education is something I work closely with these days, I\u2019d want to create a plugin suite that manages parent\/student information, provides a method of class progress and manages input of student scores\/grades… You know. All in a day\u2019s work. =0<\/p>\n

Do you use Themes & Child Themes, Roll your own, or both?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For long time, I was a big Genesis Framework user. I still love it, but I\u2019ve been rolling the Underscores Starter theme for my most recent projects. It\u2019s made me more of a control freak. I kinda like it. It\u2019s easy to create a solid base to start from.<\/p>\n

What’s your favorite theme or theme framework? Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even though I use it very little, Headway<\/a> is pretty amazing in terms of what it can do. It\u2019s about as powerful and intuitive of a drag and drop framework I\u2019ve ever seen. Not that I\u2019ve seen many, but it is, in my opinion, tops that category. Also, as I said, Genesis is tops, too. It\u2019s solid; I don\u2019t feel it suffers from \u2018bloat\u2019 and is really easy to customize for any type of project<\/p>\n

What’s your favorite WordPress plugin and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

DB Migrate Pro<\/a>. I love this plugin because it makes db migration as simple as clicking a couple buttons and kaboom. You just pushed from local to stage; or pulled from prod. to your local dev. It’s amazing. It’s a great example of doing one thing really super well. Backupbuddy is a great tool that I’ve used on a number of sites, had very few problems with it, but it’s a really more than what I need most times. WB DB Migrate pro is just awesome at the thing it does: Migrate Databases. If you’re a dev and you’re not using this plugin, you’re losing time.<\/p>\n

What’s your least favorite plugin?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Up until Jetpack rolled out their Enhanced Distribution feature<\/a>, I used the Ultimate Facebook Plugin from WPMUDev<\/a>. I like what it does when it works, but I\u2019ve had so many issues with that plugin. I\u2019d rather play with a sharp stick to the eye.<\/p>\n

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done with Custom Post Types?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I recently did a project where we created a rolled out a Simple LMS solution for online course managment and test taking. We had posts for tests, courses and the course learming materials. When students passed a test, it updated their progress in the course as to what they had taken already and what still needed to be taken and what their previous scores were. All of this was visible to the course admin. The test meta was handled through custom fields.<\/p>\n

What do you think is the biggest challenge that WordPress consultants will face in 2013?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Balance. While true balance doesn\u2019t exist, we need to work harder at it. I talk to many of my fellow consultants and they\u2019re working their asses off, myself included. Day\/Night and very little time off for our own things. On one hand it\u2019s a good sign, on the other hand people are going to get burned out. I think them\u2019s the brass tacks of freelancing\/running your WordPress biz today.<\/p>\n

If you could change one thing today about WordPress, what would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Create installation profiles. WordPress can do so much out of the box. It\u2019s friendly to use, but, man, it can be overwhelming for new users. I\u2019d like to see profiles that really trim out unnecessary items from the Admin and really provide a streamlined experience for people to get \u201cjust what they want\u201d and nothing they don\u2019t…<\/p>\n

Where do you see WordPress going in the next 2-3 years?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I see no signs of slowing down. I really see the platform becoming more adept at providing a mobile integrated solution for publishers. I think we\u2019re going to see a major overhaul in the WordPress mobile strategy. I also hope to see some innovation come from John O\u2019Nolan\u2019s<\/a> Ghost project<\/a> surrounding a better Admin UI.<\/p>\n

Tell us a story where you saved the WP day for yourself or on a client project. What made the difference for you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I worked with a client that had a static website with declining visits and business to their site. Everything they did was over the phone; they relied on ads and online traffic to get calls.<\/p>\n

I switched them over to WordPress, did some basics, such as set them up with WordPress SEO by Yoast, got them blogging their newsletter content and literally within two months, their traffic quadrupled for their keywords and their business slowly began to pickup.<\/p>\n

That I could take an open source tool and essentially \u201csave\u201d someone\u2019s business in less than 90 days is pretty f*cking amazing. Suck it Joomla!<\/p>\n

What’s the biggest misconception you encounter about WordPress, and how do you clear it up for your clients?<\/strong><\/p>\n

People that know \u201cenough\u201d about WordPress often complain that all WordPress sites look alike. I often tell people that the look and feel of a WordPress site is up their own imagination and the skill of their designer and developer<\/p>\n

If you were interviewing another WordPress developer for a job, what is the first question you would ask and why?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019d ask them what WordPress means to them. It\u2019s important for me to know that the community part matters to them. Code standards are the next bit I’d ask about. I don\u2019t expect anyone to be an expert; but I do expect you to know enough to know that you could find different ways to accomplish things, and seek alternate answers or means of doing something.<\/p>\n

I think the other thing I\u2019d ask would be to ask them about how they\u2019d solve a particular problem; something that would be particularly difficult to answer right off the bat. I get this from Chris (Don\u2019t call me BrOprah) Lema<\/a>. Knowing how people approach problems and how they troubleshoot them is also critical.<\/p>\n

What did I miss? Here’s your chance to fill in the blanks and add something you want people to know about you!<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s this thing we\u2019re working on in the OCWP group. It\u2019s kind of a big idea. It\u2019s called WordPress For Good. We\u2019re getting the wheels spun up on this project. We\u2019re looking to pull from the community designers, developers, marketers, project managers and more to help local charities, non-profits be more effective in their communities by providing them a robust online presence.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still in the infancy stage here, but this is something near and dear to me. The quote \u201cNobody can do everything, but everybody can do something\u201d is one of the things that instantly makes me think of the WordPress community. It\u2019s built upon doers, thinkers, creatives, leaders, followers and people with big hearts. It\u2019s inspiring and I want to get people excited about taking WordPress and doing real actual good in the community. Stay tuned, y\u2019all.<\/p>\n

Thanks Alex!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Higher education folks should take a look at Alex’s portfolio, DigiSavvy<\/a>. He’s doing some great work with institutions of higher ed, amongst a few other places. You should definitely work with him.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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