Finely Tuned Consultant – Devesh Sharma

Today, were chatting with Devesh Sharma of WPKube.com. Devesh is a young entrepreneur out of India who manages WP Kube in addition to doing his own WordPress consulting to help folks with builds and successful internet marketing.

WP Kube is a content resource for folks looking for news on the latest plugins and themes, as well as how to tie their whole content and marketing strategy together with WordPress. With all the noise floating around, Devesh makes it a point to dig in and write articles recommending one plugin over the next, and providing a steady stream of the latest themes.

In Dev’s Own Words:

I’m the founder of the WordPress blog – WPKube. I love what I do, because it helps me to make new relationships with other bloggers and allows me to experiment with plugins, themes and other WordPress-related tools. I have been working online since 2009.

When was the first time that you really got excited about WordPress and at what point did you decide to make it your career?

In 2008 I was searching for an automatic site builder or something. I didn’t have any previous experience, so I ended up trying numerous content management systems including Joomla, Magneto and Pligg. I was unsatisfied with most of them. Then I got connected with a developer on orkut (it was used to be a big thing at that time) and he recommended me to give WordPress a try.

I started playing with it and was impressed by the simple setup, the community support and online tutorials. At that time, there were not as many blogs dedicated to WordPress as we have now, but the community support was fantastic. Since then, I have been using it every day and never looked back.

After that, I spent next 2-3 years learning ins and outs of WordPress and in 2012; I started my own WordPress Blog.

Where do you go first to get your WP news, insights, and updates?

After seeing how fast the WordPress news centric sites come and go, I have decided to stick with Twitter. It’s a great resource for consuming the daily news and upates, but you have to make sure you are following the right people.

Aside from twitter, I am also subscribed to wpmail.me, as well as some WP related blogs – WP Tavern, Post Status, Torque Mag, and ManageWP Blog.

What WP consultants deserve more love than they get? Who should we be paying attention to?

You guys have already done a fantastic job in listing the best folks in the industry through the Interview series and WordPress consultants, but there are two guys that I respect in the industry – Chris Lema and Brian Krogsgard.

What performance tips would you give to other pros (as related to speed, scalability, security, plugins, backup, etc.)?

A fast loading website will generate more leads & revenue, in the long run. So it is necessary to optimize your site for better performance.

• Either hire a WordPress expert
• Or, do it yourself.

1. Hire a WordPress Expert
   
   Hiring a WordPress expert, either as a developer or designer, will save you a ton of time that you otherwise would have wasted in dealing with the technical side of your site. Based on your budget, you can start looking on sites such as elance, WP Hired, Smashing Job page, and WPEngine Pros.
   
   
2. Do it yourself

• The first step is to get a Managed Hosting solution such as WPEngine. It may cost you more than your shared hosting provider, but then again it makes your site load faster and more secure.
• Next, create Image spirits using SpriteMe.org.
• Minify the CSS and Javascript.
• Don’t use crappy plugins.
• Always take a backup, It doesn’t matter how awesome or good your hosting provider is, you should always take your own backups.

Confess to us your biggest moment of WP fail?

Not having backup option, when I first started in 2008, I did not use a backup service and after a few months I ended up losing 15 days of work. The hosting which I was at the time got hacked and their whole data was wiped out. Luckily, it was a warez website but I did end up losing a few hundred dollars.

Two things I learned:

• Always use a reputed hosting company.
• Take weekly backups or better use a service like VaultPress.

If you were going to spend this weekend creating a plugin that doesn’t exist, what would it be?

I was going to say a floating bar plugin but WPBeginner has already created that, a few weeks ago.

Do you use Themes & Child Themes, Roll your own, or both?

Well, 99% of the times, I use Genesis theme framework by StudioPress. The framework makes it super easy for developers / designers, to build a child theme. I am seeing a lot of people are moving to Genesis Framework, lately. The only downside of using a framework is, you have to learn about functions & hooks.

What’s your favorite theme or theme framework? Why?

My favorite framework is Genesis from StudioPress. The framework is simply fantastic and works well with plugins such as WordPress SEO.

Favorite plugin?

WordPress SEO by Yoast. It’s an amazing plugin. It takes care of all the on-page SEO and works well with Custom Post Types.

Least favorite plugin?

Yet Another Related Posts (also known as YARP) gets my vote.

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done with Custom Post Types?

I am not doing much development work these days, but I did created a cool WordPress Coupons section for my blog using Custom Post Types.

If you could change one thing today about WordPress, what would it be?

I know, it’s been said before, but I would definitely love to see an improved version of admin area. The current version isn’t understandable to novice users. So it would make sense to have a better admin interface.

A second thing would be improving the search functionality. Although, the search function can be improved with a plugin such as Relevanssi or Swiftype, but it would be better to have the improved functionality included in core.

Where do you see WordPress going in the next 2-3 years?

As more and more people involving in WordPress, I see it becoming more of an application platform. I think in the coming years, we will be seeing more developers & designers, using WordPress for building web based applications.

What’s the biggest misconception you encounter about WordPress, and how do you clear it up for your clients?

That WordPress is only for blogs.

Thanks Dev!

Check out WPKube.com for some of the latest WordPress resources, and more plugins and themes than you can shake a stick at!