Speaker Interview: Ben Bond

Tim: What’s your WordPress “orgin” story?

I have been a php developer for over 10 years and have tried multiple CMS. I was a huge fan of Joomla for many year until I gave WordPress a serious chance. I have now been working with WordPress for about 6 years now and have worked on some really amazing project with the awesome tool. Fast forward to today and I now feel that WordPress is in a league of it’s own.

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?

  1. Jetpack – Jetpack is a powerful plugin that does a lot. Using jetpack also keeps my plugin count down since it has so many features.
  2. JSON API – Unlocks the power of WordPress and makes it extendable.
  3. Advanced Custom Fields – A great plugin for multiple use cases and allows you to really customize WordPress with minimal coding changes. The king of custom meta box plugins

Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?

My most proud achievement in WordPress would have to be my development of a mobile game engine within WordPress. I pride myself in using WordPress in unusual use cases and a mobile game engine is definitely one of those.

With that achievement under my belt I have now focused my work on mobile development powered by WordPress.

Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?

The main thing I want readers to know about me is that I’m not to far removed from being a novice in WordPress. If you’re just getting started in WordPress don’t get discouraged by all of the technical topics being thrown around. There’s a place for every skill level in the WordPress community so stay the course and find your place.

Tim: Define yourself with one word.

Experimenter

Ben is giving his talk on using WordPress as a mobile game engine at 9am on Oct. 17th. You won’t want to miss it!