WP Hacker Cast

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