Kristina Parish
- Kristina J. Parish
- UX Designer at Athletics
- LinkedIn Profile
How were you first introduced to WordPress?
I started creating websites for friends and bands in the mid 2000’s. WordPress became my preferred platform after a friend introduced me to it.
What do you like about it?
Wordpress allows me to create something fully customized, from design through development, that also empowers/enables my clients to control and manage their content effectively. WordPress is a flexible tool, meaning you can make it as loose or as buttoned up as you desire. The more I continue to work with WordPress, the more I am able to abstract it and make it work for my purposes in a lean and intuitive way. It seems to grow with you, which is great.
What do you do with WP now?
Nearly every project I design and/or build is run on WordPress. My essential tool for fully customizing the experience (both from a front-end and admin perspective) is Advanced Custom Fields. At this point, this plugin goes hand-in-hand with every install.
How as the WP community helped you?
The internet community is obviously essential — I can’t even begin to imagine how many times a thread or forum on wordpress.org has helped me solve a problem. Furthermore, the local Nashville WP meetup group proved to be the launchpad into my current role with Athletics. Had I not attended the meetup last September. I would not have met these fine folks who happened to be speaking that day. Now I work with all of the tools they presented during that meetup and it’s great.
Did learning WP lead to any significant changes in your life?
Yes — it’s made me 100% self-sufficient through various stages of my career, either working as a freelancer or as a member of a team in an agency environment. It allows me to build what I design in a clean way, and it’s fun to collaborate with others who are also passionate about WordPress.
What would you tell a new user? A new developer?
Dip your toes in and don’t be afraid to break things…many things. It will get better with practice and experience, just like everything else in life.
Anything else we should know?
I once broke my leg in two places when I was 4 because I believed I was Wonder Woman.