Tell us a bit about yourself:
I’m a freelance WordPress developer from Baltimore, MD. I co-founded Sizeable Spaces, a coworking space in South Baltimore’s Federal Hill and I’m the principal of a web studio called Sizeable Interactive. I’m a Zend Certified PHP Engineer and also specialize in HTML(5), CSS(3) and do a fair amount of Javascript, favoring jQuery.
I’m currently becoming obsessed with the JFDI and coworking movements and can’t wait to see where the next year takes me and my friends/partners.
When it comes to WordPress, I’m kind of a purist and loud proponent of NOT replacing or corrupting core WordPress behavior. I strongly believe you should respect the principles of development that the WordPress core team and community have tried to instill as well as respect the work of other professionals in the WP community by creating themes and plugins that play nice with other themes, plugins and use the as many of the built-in API’s as possible.
Sizeable is the formal arm of my freelancing career. It’s a cooperative of like-minded professionals that rival traditional web design agencies. We’ve all been working with WordPress for over 5 years and each have at least 8-10 years of experience building websites.
We’re fun, passionate and dedicated to our work. We love kicking ass for our clients.
Right now, it’s a tie between Gravity Forms and the Debug Bar/Debug Bar Console. I guess let’s say those are my current favorite premium and free plugins.
My latest WordPress project was to build a highly customized theme for Bike New York (www.bikenewyork.org). I implemented their design agency’s front-end code into a fresh WP theme and customized with tons of custom post types to support the many content types they need to manage.
Their staff was extremely non-technical but had some pretty complex functional requirements (like, dynamic sidebar content managed on a per-page basis; per-page and per-section custom sub-navigation that did not follow section page hierarchies, and more). Using WordPress, they are able to edit almost every aspect of their site, including setting custom pagination limits on archive sections, photo galleries, user stories, and more.
Share one WP tip:
Learn and use nonce’s.
What inspires you?
Mark Jaquith ripping apart my (and @sivel’s) Page Restrict plugin at WC Miami. It inspired me to never stop learning about both development best practices and WP best practices. You’re never done learning and you can always do better. Aim high.
Just starting with WP? Play around, setup a local development environment (MAMP is a great way to get started), duplicate TwentyEleven or another plugin, and start auditing and editing them to see how they work. Check out tutorials at
I’m going to say @sivel (Matt Martz). He’s a good friend, great presenter and extremely knowledgable about most things tech. He’s great at coming up with ideas and proof of concept work and a core contributor. He’s one of my first real life WP friends, too, even though we were friends before working on WP projects together.
What is your motto?
“It’s your job to kick ass.” — though, it’s quickly turning into JFDI (Just F*cking Do It), but that’s shared by many now.
“We don’t really know fingerprints are unique, so obey the law.” — @theandystratton
I don’t find it funny, but interesting: at SXSW 2009 I partied too hard, rode a mechanical bull, and wound up with a 2-month long arm injury. Never drink and ride.
Who is the most interesting person you have met through social media?
Jennifer Finch, a WordPress designer/dev from LA. She’s an awesome chick and has an awesome back story and knows/knew some of my favorite artists. I also quoted a project for a guy who was on True Blood once, it fell through and I had no idea who he was, but did recognize him from his role in Temors 2 and his BlackBerry commercial.
What is your favorite restaurant or club in Chicago?
Hub/Sub 51. And anywhere with tots.
What is your idea of success?
Loving your day and the people in it.
Why did you choose your topic for WC Chicago?
I’m very, very passionate about it and it was a topic that received rave reviews from most attendees at
What do you hope the attendees will get out of going to your session?
A better understanding of issues with marketplace themes, a demystification about why themes that tout (or that have a sub-community) touting their SEO benefits are not required for great rankings, and a better understanding of using context to build quality WordPress sites.
Contact info:
http://twitter.com/theandystratton
http://linkedin.com/in/theandystratton
