Andy Stratton –

Andy is a freelance WordPress developer, founding principal of WordPress agency Sizeable Interactive, and founder of WordPress maintenance and support service WP Maintainer.

When he’s not busy perfecting websites, Andy is often found exercising his dog, learning about fitness and training at the gym and enjoying animals, art, film, music and philosophy. He fancies peanut butter and jelly more than he should.

Interview with Andy:

Why do you use WordPress?

Its community. WordPress the most user, designer and developer-friendly piece of open source content management software I’ve ever worked with

What do you like best about WordCamps?
Learning. Speaking is great, but I love learning something new and useful; I especially love it if someone improves my process or thoughts with comments during my own sessions!

What is your favorite tip or resource for a new WordPress user?
Use the Codes and make friends at Meetups and WordCamps!

What is a common problem you see in WordPress sites, and how would you avoid it?
Feature bloat in themes leading to slow load times, confusing custom admin interfaces, etc. Don’t use them, support GPL-compliant themes that are built for singular purposes and save a site: Hire a Developer!

How do you stay up to date with new information about WordPress?
http://make.wordpress.org and email subscriptions. Niche blogs, Twitter and friends.

Share an example of a really great (creative, cool, unusual) use of WordPress you’ve seen recently.
My team at Sizeable recently build a job search aggregator using the LinkedIn API on WordPress for the AARP WorkReimagined partnership. This was pretty cool and we had a hand in building the site!

Do you have any advice for a person who’s building a business around WordPress design/development?
Become an expert in WordPress and specialize. Design, development, power user, etc. Don’t try to do everything for everyone and refrain from building franken-plugin sites!