A long time supporter of WordPress Kansas City, Brian will be joining us to talk about bit about page builders. We know you’ve got questions, so we learned a little more about him below!
Q: How did you get started in your current field?
A: I worked as a print graphic designer as my first job in Manhattan, Kansas for an educational publishing company. Those seven years went very quickly and then I attended Graduate School at Kansas State. There, I started digging into code a little to learn more about the web. I set up my first WordPress site in 2005 (or so) and fell in love with it. Since then, I’ve been designing sites, some web-development, and using and reviewing premium products related to WordPress.
Q: Describe your ‘ah ha’ moment about WordPress?
A: My ah ha moment would have to be the first time I changed my theme but kept the database intact. After doing that, I just had a little resorting with the menu and post types order and the entire site was changed in a few hours.
At that time, “static” websites were all I knew, where your content was hard coded into each page… and changing a website design required starting over. WordPress changed the game.
Q: If you could go back to when you were getting started and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?
A: Don’t be too overwhelmed by the immense selection of plug-ins and themes available, both paid and free. Start simple with the basics instead of jumping into really complex backend UI products. Most websites are designed to do two things: get data and display data. Knowing what problem you are solving with a website will help you design everything around that premise. And of course, making it look good is easier than ever with really great theme options. I could keep going and going about the topic of “I wish I knew then what I know now”!
Q: Describe your talk in three sentences or less.
A: We will review, compare, and contrast several different page builders and compare them with popular theme builders to help all attendees decide for themselves which option best suits their design needs.
Q: Who should attend your talk (beginner developer, intermediate content provider, advanced designer, etc)?
A: Intermediate designer/ developers looking for ways to improve their front-end content development workflow.
This post is part of a multi-day series featuring speakers from WordCamp Kansas City 2015. Subscribe to have them delivered to your mailbox, or feel free to check back every day!