{"id":779,"date":"2015-09-28T08:10:31","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T12:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2015.hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/?p=779"},"modified":"2015-09-28T11:23:24","modified_gmt":"2015-09-28T15:23:24","slug":"speaker-interview-jeff-matson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/speaker-interview-jeff-matson\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker Interview: Jeff Matson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tim: What’s your WordPress “orgin” story?<\/p>\n

I began using WordPress several years ago as an affiliate. Because of the ease of publishing new content, it allowed me to deploy site quite rapidly. Until a few years ago when I published WordPress Through The Ages, I was a mere casual user of WordPress. Fortunately, that article broke me into the community quite rapidly. I then founded a late night private hangout group called WP After Hours where I further developed various relationships, and soon began speaking at various WordCamps.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to today. I am now working at Rocketgenius, helping change the world with Gravity Forms and rapidly developing my WordPress knowledge.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tim: Whats your top 3 WordPress plugins? Why?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Gravity Forms – Besides paying the bills for me, it is built on a “”functionality first”” approach. It is built in a way that it makes the lives of developers much easier, and also is quite simple for a beginner to use. Everything from a simple contact form to the purchasing of an advanced product with various custom options can be completed with Gravity Forms.<\/li>\n
  2. Heartbeat Control – I’m a little fond of this one, mainly because I built it. It was initially created to serve a specific purpose in manipulation the WordPress heartbeat on a few edge cases, but is now used on over 10,000 active sites for both increased performance, as well as better code debugging.\n<\/li>\n
  3. SearchWP – Incredibly useful for better control of search functionality, especially with a large amount of content. Let’s face it, WordPress’ default search functionality sucks. SearchWP solves that problem with better algorithms and fine tuning.\n<\/li>\n
  4. Yeah, I know. You said 3. But, I have a new plugin coming soon that just might blow your mind. Ask me about it at the WordCamp and I’ll show you a demo. \ud83d\ude09\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/strong><\/p>\n

    Tim: Whats your most proud achievement around WordPress?<\/p>\n

    “Building a successful plugin. Heartbeat Control took off rather quickly and while I haven’t devoted as much time to it as I would like, has become quite a staple in many sites. Rapidly approaching 20k active installs, I feel great knowing that many people find my plugin useful.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Tim: What do you want our readers to know about you?<\/p>\n

    I’m that guy who will never approach you, but loves having conversations. Find me, chat with me, and teach me something.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Tim: Define yourself with one word.<\/p>\n

    onewordistooshorttodescribeme<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Jeff is dropping his knowledge on finding the right webhost<\/a> at 2pm. If you need to find a host, or want to know what to look for in one, you surely don’t want to miss him speaking. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Tim: What’s your WordPress “orgin” story? I began using WordPress several years ago as an affiliate. Because of the ease of publishing new content, it allowed me to deploy site quite rapidly. Until a few years ago when I published WordPress Through The Ages, I was a mere casual user of WordPress. Fortunately, that article … Continue reading Speaker Interview: Jeff Matson<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8399010,"featured_media":870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[259194],"tags":[418519,178,418517],"class_list":["post-779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speaker-interviews","tag-heartbeat-control-plugin","tag-hosting","tag-jeff-matson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/files\/2015\/09\/jeff-matson-speaker-profile-image-2.jpg?fit=1200%2C534&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4VWW2-cz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8399010"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hamptonroads.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}