Table of Contents
Igor Benić
“Introduction
My name is Igor and I live in Croatia. I was always intrigued by computers and wanted to learn how they work. Started learning how websites are built while I was high school and after 4-5 years, I started working professionally in this field.
Q. How did you come into your current field? Share a bit of the background?
A. I started playing around with Photoshop to try and create some image manipulations. While learning that I saw others were doing web design with it. So I wanted to see how that was done as well.
I found a PS tool “Slice for Web” and I saw HTML being built with images. After that, I wanted to really know how this works so I learned HTML and CSS just enough to get me started. After that, I wanted to learn how a blog and other dynamic content is created.
Found PHP and MySQL tutorials so I started building custom solutions to manage content. Later on, through tutorials, I found out about WordPress. I installed it to see how it works and read the code to learn more. That’s how my journey in WordPress started somewhere around 11 years ago.
Q. What’s the most interesting project you have done to date in WordPress?
A. There are several of projects, but on of the interesting ones that were done by me and where I have learned so much was the Bookcoverpedia project where people could buy book covers for their new books.
Q. Have you ever been to any WordPress meetups or WordCamps? If yes did you learn anything useful?
A. I have attended WordPress Zagreb meetup, WordCamp Croatia and WordCamp EU 2018. I always find useful talking to other people in the same industry and also meet with new people. We all have our own views on WordPress and all around it so it’s always fun to discuss some topics involving WordPress.
Q. What does your workstation look like?
A. My workstation is pretty simple, I have a Macbook Pro mid-2015 retina and that’s all I have.
Q. What kind of tools/software do you currently use for your creations?
A. My tools are PHPStorm, VS Code, Local by Fylwheel for some WordPress sites and I also use Trello for my personal projects.
Q. What interesting feature do you think you would like to see in WordPress and is currently missing?
A. I think the Field API is still something that we miss even though there are several frameworks and help with that. But when I work with my plugins, I don’t want to include more frameworks and create tech debt.
Q. Out of the current plugins and themes which one do you like the most and why?
A. I like the most my own plugins of course since I believe in them providing a much easier to manage a part of the Business that a user is doing. Such are “Simple Cart”, “Simple Giveaways” and “Simple Sponsorships”.
Q. Which WordPress hosting do you use and would you recommend for your clients and others?
A. I use my own Digital Ocean setup. I have worked with clients on several hosting providers such as WP Engine and Fylwheel and I liked them both. I would like to try Kinsta as well.
Q. Do you like/love what you currently do in WordPress?
A. Yes, it provides me with the freedom to spend time with my loved ones when I want to.
Q. What would you like to do in the future in the current field or somewhere else?
A. I would like to have a plugin business and a SaaS one (authorsites.org) that provides enough income so I could employ a few more people and delegate some of the work I do.
Q. Can you give us some reference for whom we should conduct an interview next and why?
A. Mario Peshev: a person who knows what he is doing, built an agency that works really well and knows how to scale WordPress to millions of hits.
Zac Gordon: with his own teaching style, that I love, he helps a lot of people start with JavaScript and he also promotes WordPress through his courses.
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