Happy New year and welcome to the first WP Hacker Cast of 2018. Hopefully you enjoyed Episode 7, even though it was just my rambling voice. Fear not though, as we are back to the regular format.

Before I introduce my next guest I’d like to take this opportunity to perform the obligatory request for feedback. If you like this, or any of the other WP Hacker Casts, please take a minute to either leave a rating or review on iTunes, comment on this podcast itself, or use the feedback form on the website to send my your comments.

Without any further ado, let’s get onto this week’s episode. For the last recording of 2017 I was joined by Deborah Butler, a front end developer who specializes in WordPress. We dig deep into various topics, ranging from how Deborah went from sales to development to teaching, up to and including her thoughts on being a gay woman in the tech space.

I hope you enjoy this episode.

Show Notes:

Friends of Design

Cape Town Front-end Developers

Freelance Cape Town

The Startum Project

CodeSaloon

Franz

Deb on Twitter

Today I am joined by another Automattician based in Cape Town, Gareth Allison. Gareth works for the WooCommerce team as a marketing/designer/strategist (that’s his official title) and has a history of front end development, starting with static HTML pages and moving up to building websites with WordPress. He was hired at WooThemes some time later and finally joined Automattic as part of the WooCommerce acquisition.

Gareth is also one half of local Cape Town comedy duo Derick Watts and the Sunday Blues, who have MC’d WordCamp Cape Town since 2011. He also plays bass for local indie rock band, Veladraco.

We chatted about Gareth’s interesting journey to WordPress, the history of Derick Watts, how he manages his time between all the different projects in his life and his thoughts on how creative people are drawn to WordPress. This is the first time a podcast went over the 1 hour mark and, even though we had a few sounds issues, I felt like I could chat to Gareth for hours. So please enjoy my chat with Gareth Allison.

Show Notes:

Derick Watts & The Sunday Blues

Veladraco

CakePHP

Braai Day

Google calendar

Trello

Sublime Text

VVV

VVV Dashboard

Duplicator

Sketch

Dropbox

Sourcetree

Gareth on Twitter

Gareth on Instagram

Derick Watts on Twitter

Welcome to episode 4 of the WP Hacker Cast. Today I’m joined by WooCommerce Code Wrangler and WordCamp Speaker Dwain Maralack. Dwain is a fascinating chap to talk to and he has a wide range of both WordPress and development experience, both as a freelancer and an employee. He currently lives in Ceres, which is about 2 hours outside of Cape Town, with his wife and 8 month old son.

Dwain and I sat down and talked about his WordPress story, from studying a National Diploma in IT, transitioning to building websites for churches and small nonprofits, applying as a support ninja for WooThemes and his eventual move into a position as Code Wrangler at Automattic. We also got to talk about some non WordPressy things, like his thoughts on MLM’s, freelancing and computer science.

Show notes:

Cape Peninsula University of Technology

React todo app

The Go Programming Language

Scala

Vim

wp-local-docker

VVV

tmux

ngrok

Structure and interpretation of Computer Programs (LISP)

Proofs and Concepts

The Impostors Handbook

Confessions of an Advertising Man

@dwainm

dwain.blog

In this episode I’m talking to Anchen le Roux. Anchen is the owner of Simply Digital Design, a web design and digital marketing studio based in Pretoria. Before she got into WordPress development Anchen used to be a .Net developer so she has some pretty serious development chops. She is organiser of the Pretoria WordPress meetup, one of the organisers of WordCamp Johannesburg and a speaker at both WordCamp Johannesburg and WordCamp Cape Town.

Anchen was originally nervous to talk on the podcast, because lately her day to day work doesn’t really involve much coding, but what I soon found is that, like any good developer, Anchen has a pre made child theme that sets up her theme framework as a blank canvas, for her to build her next client project on. We spoke about her journey to WordPress from .Net, her love of travel, how joining a WordPress mastermind group changed her business and had quite a frank discussion about WordPress Page Builders.

I also learned that it is 100% possible to become a self taught digital marketing expert, something that I didn’t realise was possible.

Show Notes:

The Content Creation Strategy Guide

Dunning-Kruger Effect

WPElevation

Beaver Builder

Desktop Server

Better Proposals

Plutio

Post Cron

SystemHUB

Anchen on Twitter

Simply Digital Design

For episode 1 of the WP HackerCast I chatted with Seagyn Davis from FlickerLeap. Seagyn and I met at WordCamp Cape Town in 2016 and have had regular conversations regarding WordPress development in the WPSA slack ever since.

I sat with Seagyn to discuss his WordPress history (since 1.5!), how he became co owner of his own company and the current React vs Vue debate and his opinions on the decision.

Show notes:

Purist Coffee

Andrew Nacin – Challenging your WordPress Assumptions

Flicker Leap

WordCamp Johannesburg 2017

@seagyn on Twitter