The OSTraining Podcast: Recent Episodes
OSTraining
Join us as we chat with open source experts, leaders, and entrepreneurs from around the world — each episode offers news, inspiring stories, and plenty of pro tips.
In this episode, we will be talking to Dan Maby, Director at Blue 37 a Wordpress design firm and CEO of WPandUp, a non-profit designed to support & promote positive mental health within the WordPress community. Dan shares with us more about the origin story and services of WPandUP, as well as, the online event they are hosting on Giving Tuesday called DoSummitGood.
In this first episode of season 2, we're happy to welcome Miguel Balparda of Nexcess to talk about Magento 2.
Miguel is a globe trotting ambassador for Magento and for Nexcess. If you've been to a Magento event, there's at least a 50/50 chance that you've run into Miguel. He lives in Argentina, but is on an airplane traveling the world for Magento most of the year.
We kicked off the podcast by asking Miguel about the changes that he's seen in the Magento community since the purchase by Adobe and - spoiler alert: There've been a lot! And then we talk about some of the work he does working with the Adobe team to keep Magento going and particularly to develop some of the front facing headless JavaScript based features that are increasingly common with more high profile and more difficult website builds.
In this week's episode, I'm delighted to welcome April Sides.
April is a Drupal developer who works for Lullabot, one of the biggest and most reputable Drupal agencies. She's worked on all sorts of fascinating projects, and at the moment she's helping Georgia.gov (the state of Georgia), move many of their Drupal sites over to Drupal 8.
We talk about what she's been doing in the Drupal world, about DrupalCon Seattle, which happened the previous week. And, what it's like to be part of such a massive government project, helping people out, by making government websites easier to use and easier to search.
In this week's episode, I'm delighted to welcome back Zac Gordon. If you spend any time in the WordPress world, you've probably come across Zac. He's a really enthusiastic and charming teacher who specializes in JavaScript for WordPress. He's done video classes, online conferences, live talks, podcasts, video casts, you name it. He's been out there trying to teach people how to use JavaScript, particularly in the WordPress context. For the first time, he's written a book, and he did it with OSTraining. React Explained is available now, and it teaches you how to use the React framework, which is increasingly popular in WordPress, but also Drupal, Magento, and other platforms. We talk with Zac about his background, his love of yoga, and also about why he decided to focus on React for his first book.
This episode features Jason Coleman, who runs Paid Memberships Pro, one of the most successful plugins for running a membership site in WordPress.
Not only does Jason have his own membership site to sell extra features and support for Paid Memberships Pro, but he's also spent years looking at the membership sites of his customers. So Jason has all sorts of fascinating tips and tricks that he's picked up from his customers and applied to his own site. Hopefully, you'll be able to get some useful advice for running your own membership site.
In this episode, we welcome Ben Pines, the Chief Marketing Officer at Elementor.
Elementor is a page builder which is technically in the same space as Gutenberg, but does approximately 1,001 extra things.
Ben is doing pretty well at his job, because Elementor is probably the fastest growing WordPress plugin around. In the last two and a half years, Elementor has grown from zero installs to close to two million, and Ben has led many of the efforts to get the word out about Elementor and its growth.
In this episode, we welcome Amanda and Karlyanna from the DrupalCon team. DrupalCon is probably the biggest open-source event that happens in North America every year. And for about the last 10 years, it's been pretty much the same event with pretty much about the same number of attendees. It's been about 3.000 people every year, moving around to different cities. This year, the DrupalCon team are taking a different approach. It's in Seattle in April, but they're changing up the format adding all sorts of new twists and interesting changes to it. So I sat down with the team to talk about what's new with DrupalCon.
In this episode, I'm talking with Randy Fay. He has been a longtime member of the Drupal community. He's written about 1,001 modules and has worked with whole bunch of leading Drupal companies. After a while, he got burned out from excessive commitment to Drupal. We talk about some of his crazier adventures such as cycling from the northern tip of Canada, all the way down to Argentina over the course of several years.
Then we get to the meat of the conversation, which is his work now with a project called DDev-Local. Recently, we released a book at OSTraining all about DDev-Local, and how it can give you a much more modern development environment based on Docker containers. We talk with Randy, who's the lead developer for DDev, and explain why, if you're using MAMP or WAMP, you should consider using DDev instead, as it will greatly speed up your development and make it much more reliable if you're working on multiple projects.
In this episode, I talk with Robby McCullough from Beaver Builder. Robby is from Silicon Valley originally, and with his two co-founders he started the Beaver Builder plugin, which has half a million installs now and is one of the best-loved page builders in WordPress.
In this first episode of 2019, I talk with Josh Strebel from Pagely about his new project, NorthStack. Whereas Pagely was the very first "Managed WordPress" service, NorthStack is best described as a "Managed AWS" service. I talk with Josh about NorthStack and what it tells us about the future of WordPress.
I apologize for my audio on this epsiode. I'm a little embarrased at the quality - I should have tested my new microphone more carefully.
Daniel has played a key role in Gutenberg, the WP REST API, the WP-CLI project, Co-Authors Plus, Edit Flow, Jetpack, Post Meta Inspector, Publishing Checklist, Rewrite Rules and the list goes on and on.
In this episode, Daniel explains how he accidentally stumbled into such a key role in the WordPress world. We spend time talking about how Daniel balances all these duties, including how he moves on when his time is up in a role.
Andy McIlwain is in charge of the WordPress area at The GoDaddy Garage - the official blog for one of the world's biggest hosting companies. Andy explains the tools and strategies he uses to keep such a popular blog running. He also talks how how GoDaddy plans to deal with the rollout of Gutenberg.
Dusty Davidson is the co-founder and CEO of Flywheel. Flywheel is a fast-growing WordPress hosting company, Yes, they're in a crowded market, but Flywheel stands out in at least two key ways. First, they're based in Omaha, Nebraska. Second, Flywheel has a unique, colorful and whimsical culture.
Dwayne is a developer evangelist for Pantheon. He's also into improv comedy, karaoke, vegan food, crochet and most importantly ... doing all those things with other people. Dwayne's passion in life is collaborating with people. Follow Dwayne on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mcdwayne.
This week's sponsor is http://PublishPress.com. PublishPress offers professional publishing tools for WordPress, including an editorial calendar, pre-publishing checklists, and collaboration tools.
5 years ago, Alex opened a web design agency in Poland. This summer, Perfect Dashboard, his SaaS company, was accepted to Berkeley SkyDeck, one of the most presitigious start-up accelerators in the world. How did Alex travel so far so fast?
Jason is the founder and CTO of WPEngine. Jason and his team recently celebrated WPEngine's inclusion on the Gartner Magic Quadrant for the first time. If you don't know what Magic Quadrants are, this is the episode for you! If you do know about Magic Quadrants, you'll still learn a lot! Jason explains why WPEngine deserves to be listed alongside Adobe and Oracle and why WordPress should be pushing into the enterprise world.
Some people have scanned a few blog posts about the GDPR. Very few people have researched it deeply and really know what they're talking about. Beka Rice is firmly in the latter group. She works for SkyVerge, who develop WooCommerce and Shopify plugins, plus Jilt, which helps stores to recover abandoned carts. I spoke with Beka on the day that the GDPR law launched.
When we scheduled this podcast, I planned to talk about the history of Magento. Jerry works for Nexcess, a hosting company that is famous for their Magento services. They've been there since Day 1. When the original Magento team were getting started, they needed hosting help with their first clients ... they called Nexcess.
But, just 2 days before this podcast, the news broke that Adobe was purchasing Magento. The Magento community was in shock.
In this episode, we try and digest the Adobe news. We talk about the history of Magento and try to figure out if that helps us understand what comes next for Magento.
Jen Kramer describes herself as a "Web Design Teacher" but that barely scratches the surface of what she does. She is a speaker, a teacher, a writer, a video trainer, and much more besides. In this episode, I talk with Jen about teaching web design at Harvard and her upcoming videos for OSTraining. Jen is creating a video series and book all about Bootstrap 4.
Andrew is the founder and CTO of Concrete5, an open source CMS that's comparable to WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and others.
Concrete5 has been around for over a decade and has introduced some innovations that other projects still haven't managed to equal. For example, for a long time now, Concrete5 users have been able to click on any part of the site to edit items, right there on the page.
I talk with Andrew about what it's like to run a large project for many years. He describes the ups-and-downs, including a major release that broke backwards compatability and frustrated some community members. Andrew also talks how he found a second wind, 10 years into building his project!
If you spend any time in the WordPress world, you've probably come across Zac Gordon.
Zac is an enthusiastic and charming teacher who focuses on Javascript in WordPress. He borrowed the phrase "Learn Javascript Deeply" from Matt Mullenweg and he made it into his personal slogan. For the last several years, Zac has produced video classes, online conferences, live talks, and podcasts that focus on teaching you how to use Javascript in WordPress.
I'm delighted to say we're working with Zac on a book, "React Explained".
In this episode, Zac gives you a introduction to React.
Why is it the Javascript framework of choice for WordPress, Drupal, Magento and other big platforms?
Follow Zac on Twitter: https://twitter.com/zgordon
Rod Martin has just published a new video class at OSTraining. This class is all about using Mautic, the open source platform for marketing automation: https://www.ostraining.com/class/mautic/
In a world where marketing automation tools often cost over $1,000 per month even to get started, why not look at open source alternatives?
In this podcast, Rod introduces you to Mautic, and why you should consider adding it to your toolkit.
Follow Rod on Twitter at http://twitter.com/imrodmartin and via his site at http://navigatetomorrow.com
Patrick Rauland has just published the "WooCommerce Explained" book with us. You could say that he's a WooCommerce fan. He's used it as a customer, worked for WooCommerce support, developed core functionality, and led three releases as the official Product Manager for WooCommerce. Patrick now helps plan their yearly conference, WooConf.
Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BFTrick or via his website https://www.speakinginbytes.com.
Nick Croft has just published the "Genesis Explained" book which is a developers guide to the most popular theme framework in WordPress. Nick worked as a full-time support person for Genesis, before moving on to work as a developer on the framework. He later became a SaaS architect for the Rainmaker Platform, built on Genesis. Even before he literally wrote the book, he wrote the figurative book on Genesis. Nick is also a core contributor to Genesis and has multiple, popular Genesis plugins. Check out Nick's "Genesis Explained" book: https://www.ostraining.com/books/genesis
Pippin Williamson runs one of the most successful businesses in the WordPress world. But instead of looking to sell, he's buying a park. And opening a brewery. And looking to build a company that will last a lifetime.
If you want to hear about Pippin's story, check out this interview: http://bit.ly/2E0Bwm8. If you want to hear about his life outside of business, this is the podcast for you.
My apologies for the audio on this episode - Pippin lives out in the countryside and the internet was glitchy.
Sometimes I invite people on the podcast because we've been friends for years. Other times, I invite people because we love their products. Pressbooks falls squarely into the second category. At the beginning of 2017, I'd never heard of Pressbooks. We now use them to write, edit and publish ALL our books. Pressbooks is a WordPress-based platform that actually makes book publishing fun. Find out more at http://pressbooks.com.
Rod is responsible for many of the most popular videos in OSTraining history, including the Drupal 8 class that has around 2 million views. In this episode, I grill Rod for the techniques, tools and tips he uses to create great video tutorials. Follow Rod on Twitter at @imrodmartin and on his site at http://imrodmartin.com.
Consider this episode to be the busy person's guide to Drupal 8. If you haven't had time to keep up with what's new in the Drupal world, Mike is here to help you catch up.
No-one in the Drupal world is better connected than Mike, who has been in the community for over a decade. Mike is a trainer, developer, volunteer, camp organizer, podcaster. He's seen and done it all in Drupal.
Follow Mike on Twitter at @ultimike and via his site at http://drupaleasy.com.
Magento is one of the 2 most popular e-commerce platforms in the world. In this episode, we talk with Ray Bogman, who's been working with Magento for 10 years. If you're new to Magento, this episode is a perfect introduction. We talk about the history, current state, and future of Magento. Ray also explains why 2017 is such a great time to be in e-commerce. Follow Ray on Twitter at https://twitter.com/raybogman. In case you missed it, we have now have Magento video training and a Magento book available for OSTraining members.
Brian Hogg is a WordPress developer who writes plugins, but also creates super-helpful content for other developers.
He launches new WordPress plugins and writes about his efforts to build a business around those plugins.
Follow Brian on Twitter at https://twitter.com/brianhogg. You can also find his plugins, blog posts and training classes at https://brianhogg.com.
Wix, Weebly, Squarespace and other hosted services are an increasingly big threat to open source platforms.
We discuss whether open source projects should be nervous. This episode's guests are Mike Demo from http://BoldGrid.com, and Aleksander Kuczek from http://PerfectDashboard.com.
Follow Mike on Twitter at https://twitter.com/mpmike/ and Aleksander at https://twitter.com/A_Kuczek.
If you've been to a WordCamp over the last few years, there's a good chance you've met Mendel Kurland. Mendel works for GoDaddy where he's played a central role in improving that company's reputation. In this episode, Mendel tells his story: a journey from early start-up success in Iowa to a key role inside GoDaddy. Mendel is also starting a new project called Camp Press which encourages tech workers to get switch off and get outdoors.
Follow Mendel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ifyouwillit
Find our more about Camp Press: https://camp.press/
In this week's episode, I talk with Aleksander Kuczek and Brad Morrison about WordPress site maintenance.
Alex runs a SaaS service (PerfectDashboard.com) and Brad runs a WordPress support services (GoWP.com). We discussed all about the ups-and-downs of maintaining thousands of sites. Which plugins break the most sites? How to make sure nothing goes wrong when running thousands of updates?
Towards the end of the podcast, Aleksander and Brad share what they've learned about the platforms competing with WordPress. Aleksander runs a scanner to find out where people go when they leave his service? Do you they go to Drupal, Squarespace, Wix, or somewhere else?
Andy Miller has a long and storied history as web developer and businessman. Andy started as the first webmaster at ExxonMobile, before starting Rockettheme, the company that created the commercial theme industry. One of the founders of Joomla, he's now also the founder of Grav, a new and exciting flat-file CMS.
In this episode, Andy talks about his background, and also explains his philosophy for the right way to grown an open source software project.
Find out more at http://rockettheme.com and https://getgrav.org.
Alan is the lead engineer at Mautic, a marketing automation platform that's 100% open source: https://www.mautic.org. Alan started his career as a nurse and led a fascinating life in the medical world before becoming a developer. Follow Alan on Twitter at https://twitter.com/alanhartless
Tessa is a developer advocate for Cisco. She also organizes some of the largest open source conferences on the US West Coast. She also runs local meetup groups. She helps to get open source taught in local school and colleges. And those are just the first couple of lines on her resume.
Tessa's an inspiring person. She has a relentless energy that she uses to help herself and others get better. Find out more at https://tessamero.com.
Chris Wiegman was an airline pilot in Hawaii, before developing iThemes Security - one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time. Chris is one of world's leading WordPress security experts.
Find Chris on Twitter @ChrisWiegman and visit him at https://chriswiegman.com.
In this episode, I talk with Olivier Karfis who runs FrenchToday.com, a successful business teaching people how to speak French. He uses WooCommerce as a platform for digital downloads, and increasingly for mobile and desktop apps, based on the WordPress API.
Justin started painting houses and is now the lead developer behind CMB2, the framework with powers hundreds of successful WordPress plugins. We chat with Justin about his career and why you should use CMB2 for your WordPress development.
In this episode, I chat with Matt Medeiros who has built his WordPress career and being friendly, helpful and social. He shares everything he learns and as a result has carved out an enviable niche for himself. We talk about how he started working in a car dealership, and slowly transitioned into tech.
In this first episode, we talk with David Bisset who runs one of the most popular WordCamps in the world. WordCamp Miami is going into it's 10th year and attracts over 800 attendees.