Interview with Jean Galea – WordPress Expert & Founder of WPMayor.com

Today we have Jean Galea with us. Jean is Web professional in Malta, Europe. Focusing on building visually stunning websites that are easy to maintain, usually using WordPress as the CMS. Web developing since 1995, loving WordPress for more than 5 years. Jean blogs about WordPress at WPMayor.com.

You should definitely follow Jean on Twitter @jeangalea & his site at jeangalea.com

Let’s learn from his experience and start the interview.

 

1. For the people who don’t know about you, Can you tell us a little about yourself and business or websites that you run?

I’m an online entrepreneur and WordPress developer hailing from the sunny island of Malta, bang right in the middle of the Mediterranean sea.

Having finished university studies, I dived right into freelancing and WordPress development. This was around 6 years ago when WordPress was still considered a pure blogging system.

Nowadays I run WPMayor.com, a WordPress resource site which I started around 2 years ago, and continue to build themes and plugins.

2. When and How did you introduced to WordPress?

I came across WordPress while searching for an alternative to Joomla in 2006. I had grown tired of the complex interface and decided to find something that would make it easier for me to customise, as well as being more presentable to my clients. I found these features in WordPress and haven’t looked back since.

3. Every website has a story behind it. Tell us story of WPMayor.com. What was the motivation behind starting the website?

I run a web development business in Malta, Isle Creative (islecreative.com). Together with my team, we were using WordPress on a daily basis, and I needed a place where I could share our experiences.

I decided to create WPMayor.com for this purpose. It was and still is an important resource for us internally, however there is now a bigger focus on it being a community resource, rather than just an internal knowledgebase.

Many times a team member would ask me what plugin to use for a particular purpose, and I would just refer him to a review I had written on WPMayor. This helped us cut down on development times, as it’s a pretty intensive process to go through several plugins and decide which one is best.

4. Has Google panda impacted and how did u overcome?

Google Panda hasn’t had any major effects on WPMayor.com, probably because we were not using any techniques which got targeted. I actually don’t really use any SEO tricks on WPMayor, instead relying on the strength of the content and inbound links/social media mentions from our readers.

5. What networking do you do that you feel helps your online business?

Commenting on other blogs and participating in forums is a great way to mingle with other talented developers and users. Of course WordCamps are the best place to network when it comes to WordPress.

6. What’s next for you, are you working on any projects or products we should be looking forward to? Give us the behind the scenes exclusive – something you haven’t announced yet anywhere else!

I can reveal that WPMayor will be at WordCamp in Seville, looking forward to that event as I also love Spain and its culture.

With regards to the WPMayor website, we are finishing up a new responsive design and a change in the logo. I believe this will be a major step ahead for the site, as we will finally get the chance to brand it properly.

I would also love to have more contributors on the site, so if anyone is reading this interview and would like to share his WordPress knowledge on WPMayor, do get in touch!

7. If there was one thing that you wish you knew before you started the site, what would that be?

The site evolved as I learnt more about blogging and WordPress itself. If I knew what features I would end up implementing on the site, I would have probably spent more time building the architecture and focusing more on the design beforehand.

However, I’m happy I just went ahead and launched it without spending too much time on development or design. This helped me get the website out fast and concentrate on the content itself. When starting a new website or project, I like this agile approach of completing the most essential features and releasing.

Once the product is out, release quick updates to respond to users’ requests and new ideas. Sometimes spending too much time planning and building can make you miss the boat and lose a good opportunity.

8. Where do you see WordPress Five years from now.

I see it being the de facto CMS for the majority of web developers. I also hope that the codebase will be refined further and it will be easier than ever to extend and build upon.

9. Tell us few apps/services that you are using these days. (for example: Mailchimp, GetClicky, Buysellads, Magazine3, etc,.)

I use BuySellAds for banner adverts, and ManageWP for managing all my WordPress sites from one dashboard. It’s a tremendous time saver.

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You should definitely checkout WpMayor.com follow Jean Galea on Twitter @jeangalea & his site at jeangalea.com