So you want to build a blog
And share all kinds of things you know
Like how to knit and how to fish
And cooking things like escargot
Dr. Seuss Builds a Blog
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WP Weekly Spotlight – Tara Claeys
Tara Claeys of Design TLC, LLC is a seasoned website designer and developer with a marketing background going back over 20 years. She provides custom website and graphic design services, with a focus on creating effective, clean and personal communication platforms for small businesses. Tara listens to you, to learn what you have in mind for your identity, and takes care to create an image that fits your brand personality.
While there is an abundance of “Do-It-Yourself” website platforms, Tara’s extensive experience with WordPress websites allows you to focus on your business instead of spending hours creating a website that doesn’t end up looking or functioning like you want it to. Once created, Tara can keep your website updated, or train you to make your own edits, and is always available to help and answer questions.
Tara is the proud recipient of the Arlington Chamber of Commerce 2016 “Best Technology Business Award.”
When she’s not working, Tara enjoys cycling, running, watching movies and spending time with friends and family.
Michele: What do you do in the WordPress ecosystem?
Tara: I create websites for clients. I co-host the podcast Hallway Chats. I organize the WordPress Northern Virginia/DC Meetup
Michele: How did you get involved with WordPress?
Tara: I started using WordPress in 2010, and discovered the community at WordCamp Baltimore in 2014. I have been hooked ever since!
Michele: Please tell me one story of someone who has inspired you within the WordPress Community?
Tara: I have met and be inspired by so many amazing people in the WordPress community! Shay Bocks is an amazing, talented and kind person who has built a great business using WordPress. Dale Reardon is a blind man in Tazmania who built an online community for disabled people. Norma Miller has a captioning business which makes WordCamps accessible. I could go on and on! ????
Michele: What does the Open Source Community mean to you?
Tara: It means any idea can be accomplished with WordPress, and that people can make a living with WordPress.
Michele: Please name some of your favorite plugins.
Tara: Beaver Builder, Beaver Themer, Yoast
Michele: Do you have a favorite theme or framework you like to use?
Tara: I used to use Genesis but now have moved to Beaver Builder for almost everything.
Michele: If you could change one thing in WordPress, what would it be?
Tara: More racial diversity.
Michele: What is your most memorable WordPress moment?
Tara: My first WordCamp, when I had no idea about the WordPress community and sat at lunch with Chris Lema and Shay Bocks and it changed my life.
Michele: What is one piece of advice you would give to someone just getting started with WordPress?
Tara: Go to a WordCamp and a Meetup.
Michele: What do you think is in store for the future of WordPress?
Tara: More change! I think the community will broaden and grow with the changes in IA.
Michele: Just for fun, share one memory that makes you proud to be a part of the WordPress Community.
Tara: When some people I helped at a Meetup came back the next month and told me how much I helped them
You can find Tara Claeys at Design TLC and Hallway Chats.
If you find these interesting and would like to be spotlighted yourself, please see our interview form.
WP Weekly Spotlight – Jean-Francois Arseneault
I’ve been building websites for as long as I had a computer, which dates back to a 386SX-20Mhz, in the early 90’s. Starting with HTML, I moved up to site generators, then some of the PHP ancestors like Xoops and Joomla, to finally graduate to modern CMS’ like Drupal and WordPress. Yeah, I’ve been around 😉
In 2010, I started a Web Consulting business, and quickly decided to focus on WordPress. Since then, I’ve helped countless professionnals and businesses establish or improve their web presence.
Since 2017, I’m Managing Partner at S2B Solution (and SatelliteWP.com), where we work with corporate clients in building, managing and optimizing their Web + WordPress infrastructure, and maximize the ROI on their web investments.
And since 2011, I’ve enjoyed giving back to local communities by speaking and sponsoring WordCamps, Meetups and other WordPress-related events.
Michele: What do you do in the WordPress ecosystem?
Jean-Francois: I’m co-owner of a Web/WordPress Development & Maintenance Agency
Michele: How did you get involved with WordPress?
Jean-Francois: I started using WordPress as a hobby in 2005, building a site for myself and some side projects. I have blog entries that document how I would dabble with functions and templates in WordPress, discovering how it all worked together.
Michele: Please tell me one story of someone who has inspired you within the WordPress Community?
Jean-Francois: I wouldn’t say it’s a particular story or person, but more the realization, after reading up on the community in general, that it WAS possible to make a living from Open Source software… that I could help make a difference for local people and businesses, by sharing my knowledge which sits at the intersection of business and technology.
Michele: What does the Open Source Community mean to you?
Jean-Francois: To me, participaing in the Open Source community means the possibility to give back on a large scale, to help people use software and realize they can also “pay it forward” by helping in their way, for the benefit of the community.
Michele: Please name some of your favorite plugins.
Jean-Francois: Toolset, Redirection, Gravity Forms, Beaver Builder.
Michele: Do you have a favorite theme or framework you like to use?
Jean-Francois: We like the Beaver Builder theme and Storefront by WooCommerce.
Michele: If you could change one thing in WordPress, what would it be?
Jean-Francois: I would make the ability to run a multilingual site part of the core of WordPress, to reduce the technical challenge it is for many countries to offer more than one dialect, locale or language at the same time on a given site.
Michele: What is your most memorable WordPress moment?
Jean-Francois: I would have to say the first time I attended a WordCamp in Montreal, in 2010, and realized there was a whole community of geeks in my city who lived and breathed WordPress!
Michele: What is one piece of advice you would give to someone just getting started with WordPress?
Jean-Francois: Install it, press buttons and see what everything does, try to change some pieces of code in themes, break the site and learn from it… “there’s no substitute for experience” 🙂
Michele: What do you think is in store for the future of WordPress?
Jean-Francois: My personal view is that there’s still plenty of growth for self-hosted WordPress to be had in the CMS space, in the absence of true competition in terms of ease-of-use, but especially extensibility. But I also think that some functionality, and maybe eve major architectural changes, will need to happen in order for WordPress to truly compete more the enterprise space.
Michele: Just for fun, share one memory that makes you proud to be a part of the WordPress Community.
Jean-Francois: I’m particularly pour whenever I hear of initiatives like “Girls/Ladies Learning Code” which can improve women’s accces to STEM fields, or do_action Hackathon that provide non-profit organizations with a new site, over a single week-end.
You can find Jean-Francois online at Satellite WP.
If you find these interesting and would like to be spotlighted yourself, please see our interview form.
The Importance of Staging
Anytime you work on your site, especially if you are working on the files, running updates, or adding new features, you should never do it on the live site first. Bad things can happen. You should always test on a staging or development site before making the changes live.
Having a staging site is essential for testing updates, adding new plugins, or trying a new theme. It is like the “try it before you buy it” approach for your site.
First, find out if your hosting company has the ability to provide you with a staging site. If so, that is great! I know Flywheel, Pantheon, and WP Engine have the option for at minimum one staging site per live site. Flywheel and WP Engine will give you one staging instance. Pantheon can give you up to 10 multi-dev instances.
If your hosting company does not offer a staging site built within their system, never fear as there are other options you can use. They are simple or no configuration needed to get a staging site setup.
Plugins like WP Staging can offer you a temporary staging site built within your install. It offers a easy, no-configuration way of having a temporary staging site.
You can also setup a subdomain on your site to handle your staging needs in cPanel. You will go into your cPanel and find the Subdomains option. Name your new subdomain as staging (or whatever you would like). Then create a FTP account for your subdomain. This will help you to keep your sites separate. You can then upload WordPress to the staging site. You can then use a migration plugin to make a copy of your live site to move to the staging. You can use something like All-In-One WP Migration or Duplicator to move the site.
There are also local options you can use as well. Local instances go onto your computer and saved “locally”. One option is to use Desktop Server. Their paid version has Direct Deploy where you can push from your local instance to your live site. This is a great option for if you do not want to try to make the staging site on a cPanel.
Whichever you choose to do, it is always a great idea to test before you push live. Also remember to make a backup before running updates. Taking precautionary steps first, always ensures that if something breaks, it is not permanent.
WP Weekly Spotlight – Kimberly Lipari
I live outside of New Orleans, Louisiana with my husband and 3 daughters. I spend most of my time doing things with my family (translate: shuttling kids around and being wife/mom). I really enjoy watching my children grow and experience new things, it’s my main hobby in life right now.
My favorite place to be is outside somewhere. Even if it’s just weeding my flowerbeds or garden. I like good food and find cooking it very therapeutic. Finding new flavors and food combinations are exciting. I squeeze in the rare murder mystery novel when I travel, I love Agatha Christie and the Scarpetta series.
Michele: What do you do in the WordPress ecosystem?
Kimberly: I am the CoFounder of a Professional Website Management company. My job is less WordPress these days, my title is CEO so I spend a lot of time doing stuff surrounding the company and personnel needs.
Michele: How did you get involved with WordPress?
Kimberly: What feels like a bazillion years ago, I applied to work product support at WPMUDEV. I had no clue what I was doing, only my own WordPress site that I had crashed a dozen times. I cited that as my ‘real world’ experience and Mason unwittingly hired me.
Michele: Please tell me one story of someone who has inspired you within the WordPress Community?
Kimberly: My most vivid memory of getting hooked on the community is less inspirational and more warm fuzzy feels. My first WordCamp was in Miami. I was in awe that whole trip. I remember towards the end of the camp I heard Pippin talk. The overarching theme was about helping each other helps the community at large. It was such a warm message at a tech conference and I thought “this is really the nicest largest group of people ever, I’m not leaving it”.
Michele: What does the Open Source Community mean to you?
Kimberly: I knew nothing about Open Source when I found WordPress. Open Source and GPL were new terms I’d never heard of. My investment in these communities is the time I’ve spent working among the people and learning the ecosystem surrounding Open Source. It’s an amazing source of opportunity and attracts some incredibly interesting
Michele: Please name some of your favorite plugins.
Kimberly: Any plugin that is coded with best practice and well supported with frequent updates.
Michele: Do you have a favorite theme or framework you like to use?
Kimberly: Genesis has always been kind to me, I’m not a developer.
Michele: If you could change one thing in WordPress, what would it be?
Kimberly: Tough, because if you change anything you change the nature of the community and its essence. But if I had to pick I’d like to see more of a global community focus on customer service. I believe that exceptional support from all corners and types of WordPress businesses could really create a name for WordPress in higher and larger spaces.
Michele: What is your most memorable WordPress moment?
Kimberly: The first kids camp I helped with. Those are all my favorite memories.
Michele: What is one piece of advice you would give to someone just getting started with WordPress?
Kimberly: Try stuff. Break shit. Ask questions. That’s three, sorry…
Michele: What do you think is in store for the future of WordPress?
Kimberly: I think this depends on the community’s ability to think big and adopt change. The market in WordPress is moving upwards on a curve that is leading away from commoditizing and the DIY blogger stereotypes. More commerce, higher pay, a general shift in the outside world’s view of WordPress is on the horizon.
Michele: Just for fun, share one memory that makes you proud to be a part of the WordPress Community.
Kimberly: What I do for a living is a mystery to many folks in my life. Being able to talk about my experiences outside of the traditional office setting, the people I meet from across the globe, and the team we have built at Valet makes me incredibly proud.
You can find Kimberly Lipari online at Valet.
If you find these interesting and would like to be spotlighted yourself, please see our interview form.