We’ve started this Interview Series with some of the most interesting and knowledgeable people in the sphere of WordPress to share their work with us, motivate us to show up and be seen. The aim of the project is to inspire those who consider WordPress as the way to start their online presence but something still keeps them off the “Go” button. It is also aimed at those who have already started their journey with WordPress and are searching some practical piece of advice on the subject.
Today we meet one of those people – Dustin Hartzler, an Engineer at Automatic and a weekly podcast at YourWebsiteEngineer.com. His passion is to teach others how to use WordPress. Enjoy the interview and feel free to leave your name in the comments section.
1. WordPress has risen up as the dominant platform. What makes it stand from the other CMSs?
WordPress has become the dominant CMS for two reasons. The first is that it’s very user friendly and easy to use on any device. I think it’s also a powerful solution because it can be customized to do anything you want and inexpensive to do so with great plugins.
2. You help people create websites with WordPress by themselves. Apart from saving them a fortune how can users benefit from building their sites with WordPress?
The big benefit is that they can make changes / edits to their site whenever they want. Gone are the days of building a website that won’t change for months. A website is ever changing and if you have to wait for a developer to make a change, it might take too long.
3. Providing migration service, we witness that more and more people are currently leaving other platforms in favor of WordPress. Have you ever faced the problem of migration?
WordPress is awesome in the fact that you can migrate almost any type of content into it. That’s by design. The developers want the barrier to entry to be low, so if someone already has a blog with years of posts, we want them to be able to easily add it to a new WordPress blog and get up and running quickly.
4. What would you recommend to those who wish to make a switch, but something keeps them off the “Go” button?
Go for it. Since everything is digital, it can easily be changed or deleted. You can start a development site with a WordPress installation and never tell anyone about it to try and play with the software. If you like it, design something awesome, if not, delete the site and move on.
5. Your web project aims to inspire users do amazing things with WordPress without hiring a web guru. What type of feedback do you receive from your clients when they have their WordPress websites designed by themselves?
Most business owners who try to tackle creating their website themselves will spend way too many hours customizing things. I think WordPress is best for someone to hire out the design / development of the site, then take it over. But, if you’ve got the time, go for it. There’s a huge community of people using WordPress that are always willing to help out.
6. How did you come up with the idea of starting a web project like this? What is the philosophy of this project?
I wanted to be able to give back to the WordPress community in some way. I’m not to a point where I can contribute to the core code, but I love teaching others how to use WordPress, so that’s why I started YourWebsiteEngineer.com. I also knew that if I gave a lot of free actionable advice away, there would be plenty of people who would pay me to work on their sites 🙂
7. Is WordPress your first recommendation to a client or is there any other platform you prefer more than WordPress? Imagine WordPress doesn’t exist. What CMS would you prefer using? Why?
I only recommend WordPress, because that’s the only other CMS I have experience with. Yes, I’ve used Joomla and Drupal, but years ago, so I’d feel uncomfortable recommending them to others. If WordPress wasn’t around, I’d probably use Drupal. I’ve got some developer friends who only use Drupal and they’ve shown off some of the features before and it looks intriguing.
8. What would be your piece of advice to those who want to become a part of WordPress glory, but are at the very beginning of this path?
Find a local meetup group, whether on meetup.com or a local WordCamp, found at wordcamp.org. These are great places to start meeting other cool WordPress folks and learning about what WordPress can do. I’d also recommend spending time on http://wordpress.tv to watch past WordCamp sessions.
A million thanks to Dustin Hartzler for sharing his experience with us.
P.S. Feeling inspired to become a piece of WordPress glory? Have a go with aisite automated migration service to perform the conversion from your current platform to WordPress as seamless and stress-free as possible. Find more detailed information here and try your Demo Migration without any delay.
