We have had a chat with Edmund Turbin from our sponsor WP Engine about what they do, what’s good about WordPress and how they contribute to the WordPress community.
What does your organization do?
WP Engine provides a Digital Experience Platform around WordPress. The WP Engine platform allows customers to use WordPress without having deep knowledge of servers, security and optimization that one would need to be a WordPress expert.
How do you help support WordPress enthusiasts and professionals?
I have had an amazing experience traveling through Europe representing WP Engine as an evangelist and technical expert. I have had the honor of speaking at many WordCamp events and I have attended contributor days to learn and share with other folks in the WordPress community.
What kind of client would be a good fit for you, and who wouldn’t?
I enjoy working with complex solutions and it is always a pleasure to figure out how something can be done that initially looks like it’s a challenge. Turning a “no” into a “yes” is an awesome reward and can be a great achievement.
How does your organization contribute to WordPress and the WordPress community?
WP Engine sponsors many WordPress events and several of our employees are regular contributors to WordPress. In addition, we also publish a leading resource for the WordPress community, Torque. An award-winning publication, Torque is dedicated to providing new and advanced WordPress users with expert insights and information to help them create, grow and optimize their WordPress sites.
What’s your best WordPress tip or trick?
It can be easy to build a WordPress site, but difficult to optimize and make it run efficiently. Using performance monitoring tools like New Relic to understand bottlenecks make your user experience better by improving speed and performance.
What’s your biggest pain with WordPress, and how would you change it?
One common issue that comes up frequently is excessive use of plugins, which can decrease performance. It’s easy to add a plugin, but resisting the temptation and actually coding can be a great learning experience and with massive benefit to the performance of your digital experiences. You can build exactly what you need to meet your requirements rather than use something that has some of what you want and other things that don’t get used.
How do you see the future of WordPress?
It’s amazing to see the rapid growth of WordPress to nearly 30% of all sites on the web. I’m positive that number will continue to grow and there will be an increase of applications that integrate with WordPress via API. The REST API opens up doors to other applications and systems that take advantage of what WordPress can do and display it in a different format.
Anything else you would like to tell the Norwegian WordPress community?
Norway is one of my favorite places to visit and I really enjoy meeting the community. I’m looking forward to seeing you all this year!