WordPress development | WordCamp Salt Lake City 2012

Mike is a junior partner and Development Director at Punchline Advertising where he builds custom CMSs for his clients based on WordPress using custom post types and fields. He also spends time as a WordPress consultant, helping companies and individuals better understand how to utilize open source projects for long term scalable platforms.

Mike got his start on WordPress 2.6 while in high school at the Academy of Information Technology. When he first started web developing, he was coding every page by hand in HTML/CSS. “I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the career path until I started using PHP to make my sites more dynamic, and understanding how to move sections of the site into templated files. Suddenly everything became way easier! WordPress cranks that ease of use and excitement to 11!”

His favorite part of WordPress is the community of developers and users. “With so many people continuously looking for easier ways to make a free piece of software do what they want, it is becoming easier and easier to find solutions that used to be impossible.” One of his recent projects that he’s proud of is Salt City Glass. “I built that site from the ground up. I took product photography, built out the ecommerce solutions, developed the site branding and feel, and helped the client to understand how to easily input new products and zone in on SEO friendly content.”

Mike’s presentation topic is the Psychology of Web Design. “I’ve always been intrigued by the psychology of interaction. Salesmen learn basic psychologic techniques to persuade customers into not only buying from them, but upselling them toward more expensive products. Your website is your best — and sometimes only — salesman. By understanding your visitors intentions you can funnel them to specific content, persuade them into believing, wanting, and buying.”

When Mike isn’t working on WordPress, he loves robots, motorcycles and video games. He recently built an arcade cabinet from scratch with his brother, wiring the controls to a computer from which they can play thousands of emulated arcade games from one machine. His favorite jazz musician is Miles Davis, though he doesn’t listen to jazz most frequently.

By day Patrick is a UI developer for an enterprise event management software company, Active Network, where he customizes and brands mobile applications. By night (instead of sleeping) he spends his time working on freelance, consulting and personal web projects.

Patrick started working with WordPress in 2009 with WordPress 2.7. “I really just found WordPress online from design and development blogs. Everybody was talking about it and so I figured I’d give it a shot.” He started with a WordPress.com blog before discovering the power of WordPress.org. Before using WordPress he worked mostly with Drupal but dropped everything altogether with the release of Custom Post Types. He says his favorite part of WP is the simplicity and scalability of it. “It’s really only as complicated as you want to make it…A non-coding designer can easily build a very professional and functional website or a hard core developer can use it right out of the box without losing any power of flexibility.”

When Patrick isn’t coding or writing about coding, he enjoys spending time with his family and doing things outdoors like mountain biking, playing golf (horribly) and snowboarding, “all of it performed to a punk rock soundtrack” (though he admits to appreciating Frank Sinatra — if Sinatra can be considered jazz). He also loves pizza.

Patrick will be talking about tools that you can and should be using in WordPress development. “When I first started out I really didn’t know the best tools to use. I sort of discovered them over time through other developers or blogs.” He hopes that people can learn about some new ideas or resources that will help people develop more efficiently and effectively.