Employment: Director, Customer Experience Operations at WP Engine
Your primary website: wpengine.com/blog
Twitter handle:
@dustinmeza
How were you first introduced to WordPress? I first started using WordPress when I started for WP Engine over 3 years ago. Before that I hadn’t used it so I was definitely playing catch up to the rest of the experts at WP Engine. Thankfully it’s a great CMS and I found it easy to pick up the basics, and fun to deep dive on certain areas of knowledge!
What do you like about it? I love that it’s free, the great equalizer, being free allows WordPress to go against every other CMS and say, let’s just look at features, which one is better? Because of that, the barrier to entry for someone wanting to play around with it or an Enterprise company is the same, not a lot of products out there can say that!
What do you do with WP now? I work for WP Engine, the world’s largest Managed WordPress Platform. We use it internally for all sorts of cool things, but specifically my team owns the WordPress Upgrade Process for WP Engine, meaning we are in charge of ensuring all 45,000+ customers are kept up to date and secure!
How has the WP community (local and beyond) helped you? Being new to Nashville the local community has already been great, being a part of the WordCamp organizing team has exposed me to more parts of the community, more opportunities to give back, and more great people! Outside of my local community I’ve spoke at 10 different WordCamp’s and met so many community members, this has allowed me to hear feedback from real WordPress users and make changes at WP Engine to give them the best WordPress experience possible.
Did learning WP lead to any significant professional, personal, creative changes in your life? Tell us how! Definitely, like I stated before, I didn’t know WordPress before I started at WP Engine, now that I’ve learned more, I’ve been able to travel all around the country speaking at WordCamps and sharing my expertise with the community.
What would you tell a brand new user? Keeping your plugins, themes, and WordPress core up to date is the single most important thing you can do to keeping your site secure. Also, when you’re ready to build a site that is critical to you, make sure you host it with a Managed host, the peace of mind they offer goes a long way to giving you valuable time back to focus on what you do best!
Anything else we should we know? I love sports, quickly falling in love with how much Middle Tennessee loves their sports!
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