{"id":110,"date":"2015-03-09T07:49:38","date_gmt":"2015-03-09T12:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2015.nashville.wordcamp.org\/?p=110"},"modified":"2015-03-04T20:55:13","modified_gmt":"2015-03-05T02:55:13","slug":"wordpress-brett-shumaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wordpress-brett-shumaker\/","title":{"rendered":"Faces of WordPress: Brett Shumaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 300px;float: right;clear: right;padding-left: 1em\">\n<div id=\"attachment_112\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-112\" class=\"wp-image-112 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/2015.nashville.wordcamp.org\/files\/2015\/03\/brett-shumaker-wcn-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Brett Shumaker\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/files\/2015\/03\/brett-shumaker-wcn.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/files\/2015\/03\/brett-shumaker-wcn-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-112\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Brett Shumaker<\/p><\/div>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;clear: left\">\n<li>Brett Shumaker<\/li>\n<li>WordPressing since 2008<\/li>\n<li>WordPress Developer<\/li>\n<li>Website: <a title=\"Brett Shumaker - Nashville WordPress Developer\" href=\"http:\/\/brettshumaker.com\" target=\"_blank\">brettshumaker.com<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/bshumaker\" target=\"_blank\">@bshumaker<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p><strong>How were you first introduced to WordPress?<\/strong><br \/>\nI first got into WordPress in 2008 just after I graduated from Austin Peay State University. I had a B.F.A. in graphic design and no design job. I was connected with a local freelance designer who wanted to start building websites for her clients. We looked at Joomla, Drupal, and even (I think) a very early iteration of LightCMS before landing on WordPress.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do you like about it?<\/strong><br \/>\nI love the community aspect of WordPress. I&#8217;m a self-taught developer so it was very helpful early on that there was a place I could go to ask questions and get feedback. It really helped me understand what was going on with my code so I could start to move beyond just copy\/pasting code into my projects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do you do with WP now?<\/strong><br \/>\nI&#8217;m currently the lead developer with Ah So Designs here in town. I&#8217;m responsible for building all custom functionality our clients need. This can be anything from integrating with third party services like Instagram or Placester to setting up e-commerce and custom post types. In my freelance work, I&#8217;ve been focusing on custom plugin projects.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How as the WP community helped you?<\/strong><br \/>\nLocally, it&#8217;s allowed me to meet and work with other developers. Being self-taught and working for small companies, I was always the only dev in the building so I never had anyone to bounce ideas off of to know if I was &#8220;doing it right.&#8221; I&#8217;ve also gotten connected with clients, and I got my current job through the local community.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Did learning WP lead to any significant changes in your life?<\/strong><br \/>\nDefinitely. WordPress has opened up a ton of career opportunities for me. Having a design background along with the ability to code some fairly complex functionality allowed me to go full-time freelance for a time. Knowing that I can fulfill both design and development tasks for a web project made that transition a *little* less scary.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What would you tell a new developer?<\/strong><br \/>\nUse the codex, be ready to level-up your Google skills, and GO TO YOUR LOCAL MEETUP. And when you get to that meetup, don&#8217;t be afraid to ask questions. Anybody who knows more about development than you has been at your level before, so they know how it feels.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anything else we should know?<\/strong><br \/>\nLove dogs and have three: Lyla (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel), Ellie (English Bulldog), Molly (Italian Greyhound, Lab, Pit mix). From Ohio but have lived in Tennessee since 2003. Huge Ohio State fan&#8230;deal with it.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a title=\"faces-of-wordpress\" href=\"http:\/\/wpnashville.com\/community\/form-faces-of-wordpress\/\" target=\"_blank\">BECOME A FACE OF WORDPRESS<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Brett Shumaker WordPressing since 2008 WordPress Developer Website: brettshumaker.com Twitter: @bshumaker How were you first introduced to WordPress? I first got into WordPress in 2008 just after I graduated from Austin Peay State University. I had a B.F.A. in graphic design and no design job. I was connected with a local freelance designer who wanted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11776381,"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_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[268672],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faces-of-wordpress"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JKij-1M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11776381"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2015\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}