• Alex Patin
• WordPressing since 2010
• WP Level: Developer, WordCamp Nashville 2013 speaker
• Website: Alex Patin http://alexpatin.com

If you want another example of how WordPress can enable you to be master of your own destiny, look no further than Alex Patin. Alex has been working with WordPress since version 2.9-ish, in 2010. He started as a user, and has been developing full-time for two years and is now a freelancer full-time.

He was introduced to WordPress after a friend convinced him it was better than Joomla, another open source publishing platform.

“I do a lot more development than design now. Back when I first started I had limited coding skills. Finding WordPress and great open source themes was a way to put my work up on the Internet immediately. I instantly thought, ‘Yes, this is awesome.’”

Learning WordPress itself that pushed Alex to beef up his development skills. “I wouldn’t be working in web development right now if it wasn’t for WordPress. I’m a person who’s very passionate about learning new things and developing new skills, and the fact that WordPress exists is why I’m able to do what I do. It’s involved in everything I do.”

While the WordPress platform pushes Alex to keep learning and growing, the community that surrounds it is what has made the work a stable, successful and fulfilling career choice. If he gets too busy, he refers projects on to friends.

“I knew that when I left my last job, I would still be able to feed myself, because I got work from my friends because they’re too busy. I’m to the point now that I pass on work to other people. The people in the WordPress community just pay it forward.”

WordCamps are a big part of Alex’s involvement, starting with WordCamp Birmingham in 2012. He was a speaker on the WordPress Themes panel in Nashville 2013 and has been part of the design team for this year’s camp in Music City.

“I learned so much there and had a great weekend.. Since then, I’ve been going to as many different WordCamps as I can. There is so much to be learned from other people, and I like to experience what other people are doing with WordPress in different places.”

• Beth Downey
• WordPressing since 2012
• WP Level: Developer
• www.bethdowney.com

Beth Downey, a self-taught front-end WordPress developer with sprclldr, started her career in graphic design but later decided to transition to web development.

“As wonderful as design is, the subjectivity of it can be frustrating. Code is like math, it either works or it doesn’t. It’s like baking versus cooking.”

She started web development by teaching herself HTML to code MySpace pages—”stupid-easy” work that got her interested. After taking a CSS course tailored for print designers, she knew she wanted more. In 2012, she started working with WordPress and hasn’t looked back.

“Once I got a little taste of the magic happening, PHP got slipped in on me,” she says. “I like to say that web development is like Fraggle Rock. HTML and CSS are the Fraggles, that’s what everyone is looking at. Meanwhile, the Doozers underneath are doing all the work but no one knows. That’s PHP.”

Her origin as a graphic designer gives her a unique perspective on the development process. At Sprclldr, she and founder Kenneth White work with designers and small agencies to create custom themes.

Understanding the design aspect lets them stay true to the visuals, while WordPress makes all that “Doozer” work of site functionality easy.

“Because WordPress is so malleable, it’s different than other platforms, in my experience. You have so many different ways to do something,” she says. “But someone can walk into it and figure it out if they have just a modicum of experience with the internet.”

The openness of the WordPress community supports Beth’s drive to figure things out on her own. At MeetUps she found the opportunities to learn were abundant. “People are extremely generous with knowledge,” she says. “You almost don’t even have to ask. You can show up and learn. People want to make it easier for others.”

Her advice to anyone interested in learning more is to do exactly what she did – go to meetups and be open to what others have to offer.

“Attend as many WordPress meetups and Wordcamps as you can,” Beth says. “There is knowledge being distributed for free in the WordPress community. It’s yours for the taking. Everyone is still learning and everyone has something valuable to share.”

As part of the build-up to WordCamp Nashville 2014 Faces of WordPress will highlight members of Middle Tennessee’s great – and growing – WordPress community. We will feature WP users at all levels, newbies to advanced developers. And mark your calendar. This year’s Big Event is May 3, 2014.

Like many in the WordPress community, Barry is a self-proclaimed Jack of All Trades. At any give time, you can find him working on projects involving branding, design, animation or development.

When it comes to web development projects, though, WordPress is his platform of choice.

His first introduction to WordPress came in 2007, with version 2.2. The relationship did not flourish and Barry, for a time, moved on.

“It was so clunky back then that I tried it for a couple websites that I dropped it for a couple of years. I came back around WordPress 2.7 or 2.8, in 2009, when image uploads were really beefed up, and that’s when I fell in love with it,” Barry says. “I’ve been using it pretty religiously ever since. There are very few constraints to what it can do.”

Barry’s use of WordPress was all client-driven.

“I needed a content management system better than what I was using… I had been doing my own PHP/MySQL stuff. WordPress in comparison is so easy to get up and going, and allows for such great flexibility for the end user. Not having to go through HTML editing with each client – I love that.”

Working with a platform that is accessible and flexible is important for Barry, whose web development projects typically involve basic business and informational sites. The platform’s continual evolution keeps him coming back.

“I already enjoyed working with PHP, but when WordPress added the featured image option, that got me excited as a developer because of what I could do with it. Meta boxes and custom post-types have made my sites flourish, whereas before I was using categories. Custom post types have been a huge deal to me, and, of course, the ability to write plugins and widgets. It’s those steps forward that keeps me excited for WordPress.”

“The natural progression of WordPress is really cool.”

You can find Barry on twitter at @barrycantrell

As part of the build-up to WordCamp Nashville 2014 Faces of WordPress will highlight members of Middle Tennessee’s great – and growing – WordPress community. We will feature WP users at all levels, newbies to advanced developers. And mark your calendar. This year’s Big Event is May 3, 2014.

For James Ashenhurst, WordPress is most definitely his bread and butter, though he is not a developer.

He’s pulled off what many WordPress users dream of – monetizing his knowledge and expertise. James now runs a full-time membership site devoted to teaching organic chemistry, offering study guides, exam tips and other material.

After earning his PhD in Organic Chemistry from McGill and doing a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT, James struggled to find a job as a professor. So, in 2010, he started a blog on WordPress.com to teach anyway. As the project grew so, too, did his relationship with WordPress.

“WordPress is essential to my business but I am not particularly technically skilled with it,” says James.

The thing about WordPress, though, is that regardless of skill level, the help available on the Internet and from the Nashville WordPress community make it much less intimidating than other platforms.

“There’s a huge community of users that you can fall back on to help you solve pretty much any problem you encounter,” says James. “I never feel like I’m dealing with a problem nobody has seen before.”

What WordPress has allowed James to do is both easily share his content and earn money from it, essentially becoming a paid professor with none of the constraints of time or place – freedom most professors never imagine.

James got involved with the Nashville WordPress MeetUp in 2011 for support as he continued to build his site and spoke at WordCamp Nashville 2013. He wasn’t sure he had enough to talk about at first, but because he knew the audience would be friendly and supportive, he took the plunge. His story definitely caught the interest of the Nashville WordPress community – you can hear James tell his story on MaAnna Stephenson’s BlogAid Podcast.

For those on the fence about speaking, James can relate. “I wasn’t sure if I had a ‘good enough’ story to tell,” says James, “but the talk went over very well. It was a perfect environment for telling my blog’s story before actively seeking out things like online interviews.”

As part of the build-up to WordCamp Nashville 2014 Faces of WordPress will highlight members of Middle Tennessee’s great – and growing – WordPress community. We will feature WP users at all levels, newbies to advanced developers. And mark your calendar. This year’s Big Event is May 3, 2014.