Hi Milan and thank you for doing this interview.

Hello Lars. Thank you for the invitation.

Could you explain a little about yourself, your history and background?

I have started with Delphi some 10-11 years ago, for desktop development. In 2002 (I think) I needed to make a website, and I was looking for a technology to use, and found PHP. However, in the same time I have replaced Delphi for C# in first version of MS dot NET Framework.

For the last 7 years, I am both C# and PHP developer. In 2006, I have started working for ILUMNIS, Serbian-Canadian Company. They are working mostly with Microsoft development tools (C#, ASP.NET, MS SQL Server) and use mostly ExtJS for web applications front end.

In late 2007, I was creating new company website, and I needed a CMS platform only to handle news. I decided to use WordPress (2.3 was just released). In that time I was developing minor things for WordPress in my free time, but soon things changed, and I published first plugin (GD Pages Navigator). GD Star Rating followed in the summer last year.

For some 8 months, I was working two jobs, and with more WordPress projects, I decided to leave Ilumnis. From March 2009, I work as a freelancer.

You are probably most well-known for your GD Star Rating plugin, which is used extensively on a lot of WordPress blogs around the internet.

Yes, GD Star Rating is very successful plugin. When I started working on it more than a year ago, it was very simple plugin made for a friend. There are only few rating plugins for WP, and only one of them was actually good and regularly updated (Lester Chan’s WP-Post Ratings).

However, that plugin is very limited, and I needed much more control for everything including the comments ratings. Moreover, very early, many blogs started using it, and provided feedback, so the number of features grow over time, and it will continue to grow. I have plans for many new features that will lead to GD Star Rating 2.0 sometime next year.

You mentioned to me at some point that GD Star Rating is over a whooping 20.000 lines of code. How do you develop such as monster?

That number is now much higher. It has 39.000 lines (including CSS and HTML), with 25.000 lines of PHP. It is definitively a lot, but still manageable for only one developer. Plugin has some 500 files, and code split to small pieces so that is easier to find what goes where.

Moreover, I rely on the IDE to keep track of everything. Plugin size is a problem, and at least twice, so far I had to reorganize the code and make it more logical. When you take into account all the plugin features, this is not too big number of lines.

In addition, some of the plugins features have proven very complex to use, so I am also planning to add another feature, called Wizard, which will help in setting plugin using simple systematic setup procedure, like all the installation wizards do. In addition, I will add interesting new visualization of votes using Google Maps.

New Dev4Press Logo

You are the creator of other well-known plugins such as GD Press Tools, GD Simple Widgets, and many more. Which is your favorite? And why?

GD Press Tools is my favorite because it is very unusual plugin that has more than 50 tools built in, and I use it daily for debug purposes, for keeping the blog clean and much more. Pro version will be released soon and will offer much more, both new features and expansion of existing features.

I also like to mention plugin called GD Affiliate Center. This plugin is still under development, and it will be another month or so before the release. I had so much fun writing it and I experimented with many new things to create better and easier to use interface. Plugin is built for managing affiliates and their promo banners and links, offering easy to use means to add banners into the blog, track impressions and clicks, and more.

You have introduced Premium Support recently, where it is possible to hire you for an hourly rate (4 hours, 100 Euro minimum). What was your experience from launching this? And will you continue to offer this service?

Current premium support is mostly for GD Star Rating and I am doing at least one or two such premium customizations each week. Some things in GDSR are complicated, and some people find it much faster (and cheaper) to pay me to customize theme and integrate GDSR.

Most WordPress users are not developers, and some more complex features that require modifying theme are not always easy. I am working on a new website, and this website will offer a classic premium support for GDSR that will include premium users only forum, email support, video tutorials and more. Even with that, I will be available for more specific GDSR integrations.

The discussion of commercial businesses based around WordPress flares up once in a while. What is your position on this debate?

The debate around GPL and WordPress is still going on, but I do not see a point in that.

WordPress is GPL licensed, and there is nothing to be done anymore, so both designers and developers need to accept that and use it, or if they don’t like it, to move on to some other platform that is not under GPL license. Even with GPL, commercial business is still possible and alive, even with themes.

Many theme designers (Woothemes, StudioPress, ElegantThemes…) have embraced the GPL licensing and still are doing great because they are now selling the support for their products, and for users to know that the product they are paying for is supported and constantly in development is very important.

On the other hand, commercial plugins for WordPress are rare, but the same principle can be applied to them. Since I plan to release few such premium plugins soon, and you have premium plugins, it would be nice for WordPress.org to recognize that as they did with the themes.

How do you see the future of WordPress as a whole?

I think that WordPress is going in the right direction (for the most part). Core is developed with the help and feedback from community, and that is very important. Merging WP and WPMU projects announced few months back is also a good thing and will make easier to make and maintain more complex websites. With number of users growing each day, WordPress is now fastest growing CMS platform.

How do you see the future for WordPress Authors and Theme Developers?

Good thing is that WordPress core will remain simple, and that many features (some even requested as a standard core features) will be left to plugin authors. Always growing number of designers and new companies working on WordPress themes is also a great sign.

Do you see a future for WordPress Authors and WordPress Template designers in a commercial sense? Could people make a living from working with WordPress?

Definitively. I am a freelancer, and I a work only with and for WordPress, and I do not intend to switch to any other platform. I get more offers for projects than I can handle. Many companies are switching to WordPress, they always need some special and custom things done, plugins, expanding theme or something else and there is a lot of work that is ideal for freelancing model. Making free plugins and themes are great ways to start and to build the reputation that will in the end get you paying jobs and projects.

For the past year and a half, I have created some 20 plugins for various clients, and some of those plugins were very complex and expensive. Commercially, WordPress is a great platform.

You are an experienced WordPress Author, what do you think could be improved? Both from a practical/day-to-day sense, but also from a developers perspective?

It is too late now for WordPress 2.9, but WordPress 3.0 must have new management and interface for posts/tags/categories/taxonomies. Current interface is good for smaller blogs, but try managing blog with 10.000 posts with 20.000 tags and 500 categories. Reassigning posts to categories is painful with current interface. There are some plugins for this, but I am sorry to say, none of them is good. This must be solved within the WordPress core. From the developer point of view, WordPress 3.0 should not support PHP4. I recently had problems with GD Star Rating and PHP older than 4.4.9, and it is very hard to test with such outdated and no longer supported software.

Also, it would be nice if WordPress developers create a easy to use set of controls for building the administration side for plugins (for grids, settings and more). Right now, you need to strip things from WordPress default panels.

Your colleague, Vladimir Prelovac, was so kind to share some tricks in Interview with Vladimir Prelovac, do you have some tricks for WordPress Authors you would like to share?

Always write plugins using PHP classes. Even with the simplest tasks, it is much easier to control the code. If your plugins starts to grow, there is no way to keep the functions in place, and classes are the way to go. Try to document the code as much as you can. I use DoxyGate program that can search through the source code and generate HTML (or PDF, CHM) files with your documentation. DoxyGate can be integrated in NetBeans for easier use.

I include such HTML files with all my plugins. It is easier for end-users to figure out how to use plugin, if they have functions documented in an easy to read file. Also, use SVN or some other versioning system. And make regular backups of everything you do.

What kind of software do you use for development? Are you working on PC/Mac? What kind of software do you use? Notepad?

I have desktop and laptop PC’s, both with Windows, and I work mostly on laptop (Lenovo SL500). I use NETBeans IDE 6.8. It is great for PHP, HTML and CSS. Also, WordPress projects work great and NETBeans maps all functions and classes from WordPress and that is very important for development speed and comfort.

I use HeidiSQL and phpMyAdmin for database access, Tortoise for SVN access (NETBeans also has SVN support built in), Notepad++ and WinMerge for various tasks. In addition, I keep all my projects on SVN.

Do you have a template system when you develop plugins, or do you start from “scratch” so to speak?

I have a few plugin template systems I use, depending on the plugin I develop. More complex are based mostly on GD Star Rating structure. I have a library of same basic classes and functions I use in every project (DB installation, debug, functions for every need, image upload and manipulation). It is painful to start from scratch every time, and many elements are repeating in each project, so having a startup project is necessary.

Last year I started developing GD Plugin Core, that was a base for plugin that even included a wizard capable to generate a fully working plugin: you set name for the plugin and few other things, and plugin generates folder with all needed files, all extending basic Core class. However, this plugin is not maintained anymore. Maybe someday I will resume that work.

How do you feel WordPress is in terms of ease for development? Its advantages and disadvantages?

Compared to Joomla or Drupal, it is much easier to develop for WordPress. However, many things are not so good from the developer’s point of view. Unfortunately WordPress motto: Code Is Poetry cannot be applied to WordPress as a whole.

WordPress has too many functions, many of them doing the same thing; functions use different parameters specifications that can be confusing at times. More functionality needs to be within classes. Some things will not change to retain compatibility with old versions of plugins, themes and WordPress.

Nevertheless, once you get used to these things, they are not so bad. Every system has similar problems, and you cannot find the one that is perfect.

Thank you for doing this short interview, and thank you for sharing your thoughts. Do you have any final words you would like to leave us with?

Thank you for the opportunity Lars, it was a pleasure.

Hi Vladimir and thank you for doing this interview. Could you start by telling a little bit about yourself?

My name is Vladimir Prelovac and I am the author of ‘WordPress Plugin Development: Beginner’s Guide‘ book published by Packt. Beside developing plugins for WordPress I also do quite a bit of work with SEO for WordPress platforms.

As a WordPress developer you have been quite busy, you have developed a total of (currently) no less than 19 free public plugins. How did you get started developing for WordPress?

One rainy night soon after I installed my WordPress blog I faced a problem that many users do at the beginning and that is to find a suitable theme. I needed a plugin that will allow me to preview themes live on my site while visitors still see the original theme and that’s how Theme Test Drive plugin came to life.

Of the plugins you have currently published, which is your favorite, and why?

My favorite has to be Insights as it is such a tremendous time saver for any WordPress blogger.

What challenges do you face as a WordPress developer, and what could make development easier for WordPress plugins and themes?

Developing WordPress plugins is a pretty straightforward from writing the code to documenting and promoting the plugin, about which I talk a lot in my book. If I am to be a picky I would have been highlighting lack of complete documentation, frequent core changes and security challenges. Finally a premium plugin market (similar to premium themes) would probably help motivate a lot of new plugin developers.

Regarding WordPress themes, the situation is currently better as implementing design fro PSD to WP theme is very easy so the only challenge is one’s imagination.

Do you have any tips for developers than can make WordPress development easier?

Yes I have a couple. First of all study other people’s plugins, that will save you a lot of time when writing your own. I even hold a local copy of the entire WordPress.org plugin repository so I can search through thousands of plugins in few seconds.

Second, try to write good documentation for your plugins. This will help reduce the amount of support emails you receive, and you will want to answer all of them to build good reputation.

Next thing is to pay good attention to security in your plugins. Use nonces, $wpdb->prepare and other mechanisms to improve your chances against hackers. You do not want to see your plugin in the WordPress news feed – but mentioned as a serious security problem.

You are also the only developer for WordPress that has actually written and published a book about Developing for WordPress. What experiences did you gain from that, and how did the market respond to this book?

Book writing experience was both one of the best experiences and also one of the hardest ones. It took me a year to write the book in a time where WordPress was constantly changing and evolving – you can imagine how hard that was. I tried to catch the essence of WordPress plugin development, and all plugins I wrote for the book still work in the latest version of WordPress. Most valuable feedback came from book reviews which there are about ten that I know of at this moment, some of these were written by other seasoned WordPress developers.

You could definitely live of writing books, and even a book in niche narrow as mine is, will find it’s readers. I suggest everyone to give it a try. It’s a wonderful thing to do.

How do you see the current market for commercial WordPress solutions? Is the market expanding, or stagnating?

I think the market is definitely in the expansion. There are more and more companies offering WordPress services, and if you look at the job boards there is more and more search for these kind of services.

In my opinion the creators of WordPress will still have the biggest impact on the future of WordPress. Security and speed is what I would be relentlessly focusing on if I were in their shoes.

You also work with SEO, how is WordPress out-of-the-box in terms of SEO?

By now I think everyone knows that WordPress is pretty good out of the box in regards to SEO. For most users the only thing left is to just write good content.

What could be improved in WordPress to allow for better SEO?

Not much I would say. Perhaps few useful plugins like sitemap generator should become part of core.

What would you like to be seen included in WordPress (not necessarily SEO-related) to make it better for the general audience?

That’s a hard question as everyone has different needs. I am more inclined to say that I would like to see some things removed so that WordPress becomes more faster and secure, and the users should customize it according to their needs.

What is your future as a WordPress developer?

I will continue to build WordPress plugins and contribute to the community I owe so much to.

You run a few projects non-related to WordPress, would you care to explain a little bit about them?

I am currently developing real time web analytics service with special attention to SEO. The project is called Cleveritics and is currently in alpha stage. The goal is to provide the webmaster with concrete information and call to action instead of countless rows of data. I expect the official launch sometime before this Christmas.

Thank you Vladimir for taking the time to do this interview.

Thank you, it was my pleasure.

Hi Simon, first of all thank you for doing this interview. Would you be so kind to tell us a little about yourself?

I studied law at University and at the same time started an interest in web development, building basic websites and learning PHP as I went along. After University I realized I didn’t much like the idea of being a lawyer, and instead ended up working in the UK charity sector as a web developer. I also run a couple of web projects in my spare time and am studying for an MA in Management.

You are well known as the author of OIOpublisher, a WordPress advertising plugin. How long have you been developing on it? Do you have any guess to the amount of man-hours invested in the solution as it is now?

I remember browsing digitalpoint.com one day, back in the Summer of 2007 and seeing a discussion about a new WordPress plugin called wpbankroll, which let you sell paid reviews directly via a WordPress blog. I thought at the time that it was a good idea, but wondered if I couldn’t do a better job. A couple of days later I created the first version of OIO.

The time I’ve had to spend on the project has often varied quite a lot, but taking into account research, coding and support, it probably averages out to at least an hour’s work every day since OIO’s inception. Let’s say about 1000 hours so far.

How did OIOpublisher come about, and what are your future plans for it?

As I mentioned, it was initially inspired by the wpbankroll WordPress plugin. It was also around the time reviewme.com was gaining popularity. Taking a 50% cut for every review seemed ludicrous to me, even with their advertiser pulling power, so creating a viable alternative seemed like a good thing to do.

Future plans, where to start! The one thing I’ve found is that the more features and flexibility added to a web application, the more ideas users come up with as a result. There’s a never ending flow of ideas and possibilities. At the moment I’m preparing for a complete overhaul of the script. It will be developed in PHP5 and will focus heavily on community feedback from the outset. It will also make use of a light-weight PHP framework that I’m currently working on, to speed up development time and enable others to extend the application with much greater ease.

I’d also like to add customization services (which I’ll bring in other developers to handle) and a module repository where others can contribute (and sell) their own extensions to OIO.

OIOpublisher.com

OIOpublisher is much more than just a plugin, you have implemented several other features such as the marketplace etc. Visiting your oiopublisher.com, you get the feeling of a VERY tight and well integrated system. How is developing plugins of this size for a platform such as WordPress. Does it make it easier or harder to develop?

When I first started, OIO was very much a WordPress plugin (back then it was free too!), making use of internal WordPress code almost everywhere. There came a point where I realized that OIO could be a platform in itself and so I converted it into a standalone application, which then linked into WordPress. Whilst the end user noticed no difference, it enabled me to reach a larger audience and integrate OIO with other platforms in the future.

WordPress has always been very easy to develop with, both when I was developing OIO purely as a plugin and when integrating my own code with it. The fact that it has such a large and diverse plugin / theme developer community speaks volumes.

Have you considered developing for other platforms, and why did you settle on WordPress as your primary platform?

Blogs were the most popular type of website at the time I started with OIO (and probably still are) and WordPress was widely used. The target market for paid reviews / text links that I was originally aiming for was also very blog (WordPress) orientated, so it made sense to go down that route.

I don’t think I would develop exclusively for one platform in the future, as I’d rather create apps and services that can be easily integrated with multiple platforms than focus too much on one platform.

WordPress is certainly one of the best platforms for creating any content driven website though, and would be my choice if I needed to quickly create a website that I could extend later.

OIOpublisher is a success in terms of deployment on the internet, I see many blogs using it, but is it also a commercial success, can you make a decent living from developing WordPress solutions?

I think that WordPress provides an effective way for non-technically minded people to put their content on the web, whilst at the same time allowing for a great deal of customization and extension.

There will always be a demand for customization services, since no pre-made application or CMS will ever cover the needs of every individual. Therefore as long as the WordPress platform continues to thrive, I see no reason why you couldn’t make a good living out of it.

Are you working on other projects you would like to talk about?

I’m developing a PHP framework that will form the basis of the next major version of OIO, which will be released as an open-source project in its own right. I hope to make its focus the development of paid apps (like OIO), where the code specific to an author’s application is licensed separately from the core.

My day job focuses on the UK charity sector. theBigGive.org.uk is essentially a database of UK charitable projects, added and maintained by the charities themselves. We provide fund-raising tools, as well as “matched funding” opportunities to encourage donations during a difficult economic period.

Recently the Software Freedom Law Center clarified the status of themes as derivative works of WordPress, what is your reaction to this?

Whilst initially it might seem a difficult hurdle to overcome (for those selling premium themes), I think it actually makes little difference. The PHP code that is used to generate a theme usually contains a reasonable amount of WordPress code (the post loop for example), so saying that those php files are derivatives of WordPress is fair enough.

But what makes a theme unique (and worth paying for) is the styling – which come from images and CSS files. As those files don’t contain any WordPress code, they can be licensed separately and sold if the author wants. The same is true of WordPress plugins.

You can also see that sites selling WordPress themes haven’t had too much difficulty in adjusting. Themeforest.net for example, announced a small change in licensing and then things carried on as normal.

How does the reliance of GPL from WordPress affect Theme and Plugin developers who want to commercialize their products?

As I say, I don’t think it makes that much difference. If a file in your plugin or theme contains a WordPress function, assume that file is covered by the GPL license. Any file that doesn’t contain WordPress code is yours to license as you please.

If anything, the recent clarification will ensure that developers separate out their own code from WordPress more cleanly, which is no bad thing from a code portability / re-usability point of view!

Control your ad space

Any good advice/suggestions for people who want to develop plugins and/or themes for WordPress in a commercial capacity?

Keep your own code separate from any WordPress code. Put anything that relies on a WordPress function (such as a plugin action or filter) into separate files and use an include statement to add those files to your code where required.

WordPress was in 2008 one of the fastest growing requested skill sets, as recorded by among others oDesk. How do you see this growth for 2009 and beyond?

WordPress is constantly improving, which should make it an increasingly viable option for all sorts of websites (not just blogs). Whilst I’m no expert, I’d imagine growth will remain strong.

How do you see the future of WordPress itself?

The recent trend seems to have been more about refining existing features and technologies than adding too many completely new ones – making it faster, easier to use and more intuitive.

I think that approach may well be continued, now that the core contains so many features and the developer community is very well established. Functionality can easily be extended by plugins, so making sure the basic things are as intuitive as possible is important.

Thank you Simon for doing this interview.