From Classes to Contributor

What I’ve Been Up To

Since graduating Drexel University I have been working full time, as a web developer, out in West Chester for a company called Nobel Learning Communities. We are a network of more than 180+ private schools spread across the United States, ranging from pre-school up through high-school. Some of my main duties here involve the conversion of existing school sites over to the WordPress platform. I build custom themes on a per-school basis, and implement features and functionality based on the needs of the school. I am also responsible for making sure new sites are accessible (and look good) on mobile devices.

I have also been heavily invested in the WordPress community as of these past two months. I have been busy developing two separate plugin’s for the community. The first one that I have finalized and released in to the WordPress Repository is WordPress SVG Icons. This was a plugin I had created with no intention to release publicly but instead was just a tool that I used on client projects to speed up development time. When I shared the plugin with a friend for his site, he was very pleased with the amount of time it saved him, so he pushed me to release it for everyone to benefit from. So far I’ve been receiving positive reviews and the plugin is gaining popularity. I have also been developing a more in depth version of it, which I had originally planned to release as a paid upgrade ($5 one time fee). I’ve added some pretty cool features into this version such as some CSS animations, a slider to increase/decrease font size, a color selector to change the icons color, hover states, ability to make the icon a link to both internal or external sites and some other cool CSS3 text effects. I’ll be releasing this in the upcoming days, but still have yet to set a final price on it.

Codex/Core/Forums

When I started my career in to WordPress I wanted to get more involved in to the community, but just didn’t know where to begin. I started reviewing some of the sections about contributing on WordPress.org, and found the easiest and quickest way one can get involved is by contributing to sections of the codex that are lacking in sustenance. This is a huge contribution even tho it may not seem so. Every WordPress user, new or experienced, reference the Codex quite sooner or later. The codex provides us with the basics on how certain functions work and provides us with basic examples on how to use such functions. Without this section new users would have an extremely hard time beginning development with WordPress. The bar for entry would also not be set as low as it currently is. The more information that is added to the codex, the lower the bar goes.

After I had made a few contributions there, I started following along with WordPress Trac for Core. It’s here, where the hardcore WordPress users and contributors gather to discuss upcoming modifications, features and changes that the community (as a whole) want to see change with the platform. It was here where I was also able to finally see why the Open Source community is so great. Everyone is contributing for free, out of love of the community. No one is receiving payment, and no one is benefiting other than giving back and learning. It’s a wonderful community where every one wins. So far I have contributed 2 patches to the upcoming WordPress 3.8 release, specifically in regards to the new Twenty Fourteen(Theme Demo). My first patch was a basic bug fix regarding an issue with the responsive layout of Twenty Fourteen. This was a minor patch. My second patch was one that I submitted in regards to extending the post content in the event the main side bar is not active. This was a little more involved, and had me digging through the theme code, adjusting classes and css, and writing a custom function. The theme developer (Takashi Irie), my self and an ‘Automaticc‘ theme wrangler are working together to come up with a reasonable solution.

And finally, when I’m not contributing to core or writing for the Codex you will most certainly find me in the WordPress.org How-to and Troubleshooting forums helping other members out with any questions they may have. When I was new to WordPress I would always find my self in the forums looking for help from more experiences users. But more often than not I found it hard to reach out to others and found the answers I was receiving to be less than ideal (not to mention no one ever explained resolutions to me). So I take about an hour a day (during the week) of my time to give back to the newer WordPress users. I answer many questions and provide very specific code to users in need. I believe nurturing the newer users will help keep them around in the community, and ultimately make for an even better community down the road.

Moving Forward!

From here on out I’ll be contributing to the Core, the Codex and helping as many people as I can in the forums. I have found very few things in life to be as rewarding as teaching others. Just knowing where I once started and the little knowledge I once had, is enough of a boost to keep me helping others. I also intend to keep developing awesome plugins for the community, and even possibly a theme or two. As I gain more experience and skill, I eventually would like to give talks or lessons at web dev conferences (WordCamp comes to mind) I hope down the road I can be a very influential and large member of the WordPress community, as it has already taught me and given me more than I could have anticipated at the start.