“Be Careful About the Plugins…” – Interview with Àngel Ayach

What makes a good expert? We’ve always thought that a good web developer it’s a person who got a solid background, knows the masters of his craft, but also has an eye on tomorrow, following the latest innovations and getting involved with the latest trends. This is how we envision Angel Ayach, a new talent we had the pleasure to talk to.

Angel Ayach is a successful founder of the ActualApp, WordPress developer, a programmer at Artesans. We hope you find his experience inspirational for your own designing and development efforts! As always, we invite you to join in with your comments at the end of this post. Enjoy 🙂

Thanks for joining us today, Angel. Please, tell us a bit more about your background, how long have you been working with WordPress and about your current ventures.

Hello thanks for inviting me. Back in 2003 I was 13 years old and I was living in Cassà de la Selva (Girona), my hometown. That’s when I created my first web with HTML using Dreamweaver. I published the website in a free hosting and I discovered how much I like making websites. Since then I have been studying by my own to become a web developer. In 2009 I also began Certificate of Higher Education in applications programming. In 2012 when I finished my studies I started working as a web developer in a company in Barcelona. That was when WordPress and I met and we have been together since then ☺. Nowadays I am working at “Artesans by Omitsis” creating websites using WordPress and giving advisory to our clients. I have been there since March 2015, and actually that year has been very important for me because I also founded ActualApp.com, my own company, at the beginning of 2015.

When was the first time that you really got excited about WordPress and at what point did you decide to make it your career?

When I began using WordPress in 2012, I saw that it is an amazing tool for web development and I decided that I wanted to learn more about it.

What performance tips would you give to beginners (as related to speed, scalability, security, plugins, backup, etc.)?

Hiring a good hosting service is a primary issue. There are a lot of hosting services, some of them are good, but some others are very bad. So, it’s important to ask for advice and research a little about users opinions. I recommend OVH and Siteground. Also, remember not to install too many plugins, if you do so, it will affect WordPress performance. Besides, don’t forget to be careful about the plugins you want to install and its source. You have to check if you have the latest biggerversión, otherwise it will cause you security issues. Finally, be sure of installing backup plugins, so you can set up automatic backup copies. (UpdraftPlus – Backup/Restore).

Confess to us your biggest moment of WP fail?

I deleted 100 articles from a blog because I thought they were on testing mode. I was lucky though, I could restore them quickly thanks to the habit of making backup copies.

You’re the founder of Actual App. Can you share with us how the app was created and how you went about promoting it?

Well, ActualApp is not exactly an app. It is a website made with WordPress where we share news and reviews of apps and technology in general. We are now over 200k monthly visits and 80% of our traffic is organic.

What’s the coolest project you’ve ever worked on with WordPress?

Well, I think the project I like the most is definitely ActualApp because I have spent a lot of time and efforts on it and is my beloved project.

What do you think is the biggest challenge for WP development to face in 2016?

This year versions 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 will be available. It is hard to guess which new features they will bring, but I’m pretty sure it will be a revolution since this is the final stage of the REST API integration.

If you could change one thing about WordPress today, what would it be?

I think WordPress has a pending business with the multilingual issue. There are some plugins for that matter (eg WPML) but they have limitations. Even when WPML is great plugin, it is not stable.

What new features would you like to see in upcoming versions of WordPress?

I believe this will be a great year because the REST API will entail a lot of progress since it will allow the use of many others frameworks and mobile apps for working with our WordPress data.

If you were interviewing a WordPress developer for a job, what question would you ask first and why?

I’d analyze his/her adaptabilIty for working with the REST API since it is the future of WordPress development.

Have you ever faced the problem of website migration? If so, how did you manage to resolve it: by converting your website data manually or via an automated tool?

I have had to migrate plenty of websites, most of them because something was working wrong. So I prefer doing the migration manually to be sure everything is going correctly. I think that is the best way to solve all of that WordPress issues.

Tell us a bit about your working setup (hardware + software). 

I work with a MacBook Pro of 13” and usually connect an additional screen. Speaking of softwares, I mostly use Google Chrome for browsing, Coda and Sublime for developing.

Finally, have we missed anything? Here’s your chance to fill in the blanks and add something you want people to know about you!

Haven’t much left to say. I think it’s been already said what I think about WordPress and my personal experience with it ☺ If you want to know more about me and my work with WordPress I invite you to visit my web page (in spanish).

We want to thank Angel and wish him all of the best of luck and inspiration 🙂  

If you guys, likewise Angel, want to be amazed as to how cool and extendible WordPress is, make sure to test your website on this CMS.