{"id":367249,"date":"2014-03-29T14:39:25","date_gmt":"2014-03-29T19:39:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2014.nashville.wordcamp.org\/?p=367249"},"modified":"2014-03-29T14:39:25","modified_gmt":"2014-03-29T19:39:25","slug":"beth-downey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/beth-downey\/","title":{"rendered":"FACES OF WORDPRESS: Beth Downey"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 300px;float: right;clear: right;padding-left: 1em\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" alt=\"Beth Downey\" src=\"https:\/\/2014.nashville.wordcamp.org\/files\/2014\/03\/bd.jpg\" width=\"127\" height=\"178\" \/><\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;clear:left\">\n<li>Beth Downey<\/li>\n<li>WordPressing since 2012<\/li>\n<li>WP Level: Developer<\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Beth Downey's website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bethdowney.com\">www.bethdowney.com<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;As wonderful as design is, the subjectivity of it can be frustrating. Code is like math, it either works or it doesn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s like baking versus cooking.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She started web development by teaching herself HTML to code MySpace pages\u2014&#8221;stupid-easy&#8221; 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&#8217;t looked back.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Once I got a little taste of the magic happening, PHP got slipped in on me,&#8221; she says. &#8220;I like to say that web development is like Fraggle Rock. HTML and CSS are the Fraggles, that&#8217;s what everyone is looking at. Meanwhile, the Doozers underneath are doing all the work but no one knows. That&#8217;s PHP.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Understanding the design aspect lets them stay true to the visuals, while WordPress makes all that &#8220;Doozer&#8221; work of site functionality easy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Because WordPress is so malleable, it&#8217;s different than other platforms, in my experience. You have so many different ways to do something,&#8221; she says. &#8220;But someone can walk into it and figure it out if they have just a modicum of experience with the internet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The openness of the WordPress community supports Beth&#8217;s drive to figure things out on her own. At MeetUps she found the opportunities to learn were abundant. &#8220;People are extremely generous with knowledge,&#8221; she says. &#8220;You almost don&#8217;t even have to ask. You can show up and learn. People want to make it easier for others.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Her advice to anyone interested in learning more is to do exactly what she did &#8211; go to meetups and be open to what others have to offer.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Attend as many WordPress meetups and Wordcamps as you can,&#8221; Beth says. &#8220;There is knowledge being distributed for free in the WordPress community. It\u2019s yours for the taking. Everyone is still learning and everyone has something valuable to share.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>As part of the build-up to WordCamp Nashville 2014 Faces of WordPress will highlight members of Middle Tennessee\u2019s great &#8211; and growing &#8211; WordPress community. We will feature WP users at all levels, newbies to advanced developers. And mark your calendar. This year\u2019s Big Event is May 3, 2014.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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. &#8220;As wonderful as design is, the subjectivity of it can be frustrating. Code is like math, it either works or it doesn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11151031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[268672],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faces-of-wordpress"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11151031"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367249"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":437608,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367249\/revisions\/437608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2014\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}