I’ve managed to chat with one of the three founders of WooThemes lately – Adii Pienaar. Adii was very busy during the last couple of weeks with the Woo2 Release, but he was still so kind to answer some questions I had, so here we go:
@kovshenin Okay Adii, how are things going at WooThemes right now? I mean after WordPress has released 2.8 and most of your clients have upgraded (I guess). Everything okay?
@adii Yep. Everything is fine again now. We only had some minor bugs to fix in some of our older themes, when WP 2.8 was released, but it seems that those are all squashed now and the ship is sailing once again.
@kovshenin I believe the toughest times were between the Release Candidate and the actual 2.8 Release, right? Did you manage to do everything in time?
@adii Well, we generally only fix bugs once an official version is released. So whilst we did some prelimanery testing on 2.8 beta’s, we only started fixing bugs when 2.8 was released. Obviously this is a bit difficult, since some of our users upgraded immediately, but we managed to do all the testing & fixing within about 2 days after 2.8 was released.
@kovshenin Wow, guess those were 24 hr workdays? ;)
@adii Hehe nah. We have a pretty dynamic team, so it was “all in a day’s work”. Plus we do bug fixing & improvements to our themes on a daily basis anyway.
@kovshenin Most WordPress plugin & theme developers were not pleased that 2.8 was released after only four days after the release candidate was. What do you think about it? Should the WordPress developers slow it down next time?
@adii I didn’t really perceive it that way and don’t really mind it to be honest. The beta was out for quite some time and I don’t think there were too many groundbreaking differences from the beta version to the RC and the RC to the actual release.
@kovshenin What about the 2.6 to 2.7 switch? That had some core changes, didn’t it?
@adii Oh yes definitely. There’s been quite a few changes from 2.6 to 2.7, which required a lot more changes within our older themes. 2.8 was minor compared to those.
Strange, but fair enough. Why bother working with the release candidate when you could just ask your clients to not rush with the update and work with the actual release, which may also be slightly different from the RC.
@kovshenin Which of the new 2.8 features did you like best?
@adii Most definitely the improved widget interface, which is absolutely amazing. And a MASSIVE improvement on previous versions.
@kovshenin I was sure you liked the syntax highlighter :D
@adii Well, I never use the theme editor in the admin panel (as I’m sure other serious WP developers do), so whilst it’s a great feature I’m honestly not that excited by it.
When I first saw the code editor built in WordPress I thought it’s no use at all. Why would I use a simple code editor that has no lines numbered, no syntax highlighting to edit php files that I could easily edit via FTP? Well if you need to edit a few lines in your header.php (like add a favico or whatever) it’s much easier to add that using the built in code editor than to search for the FTP account details, download the file, change it, upload back to server. What if you’re not at your usual workplace?
With the built in code editor you can even make those changes using your iPhone ;) And now that it’s got the syntax highlighter and the function browser, wow, that makes it even cooler!
@kovshenin Did you know about Chet Baker BEFORE the 2.8 announcement?
@adii Hell no.
Oh well, neither did I. Did you? Vote vote here ;)
@kovshenin I heard you run a little design agency called Radiiate. Are your clients okay with WordPress? I mean lots of people think that WordPress is for blogs, right? How do you convince your clients that WordPress can drive a corporate website, e-store and a social network? What example websites/products do you like to show?
@adii Mmm, well firstly Radiiate hasn’t been actively doing client work for a few months now, because we’re focussing on WooThemes. But… I think most of Radiiate’s client came to us looking for a WordPress solution, so we didn’t need to convince them about using WP in favour of other alternatives.
@kovshenin But you are gonna keep up the work at Radiiate aren’t you? whenever things settle down with Woo..
@adii Yes and no. Radiiate is on the backburner, so whilst there’s no immediate or set plan to revive it, I’m sure it’ll be something that I spend time on again in future. And to continue fueling WooThemes’ growth, we need to focus all our energy on it! :)
Well, too bad.. *sigh*
@kovshenin What do you think about WordPress “Theme Frameworks” such as Thesis, Thematic, etc. Do they have a future?
@adii Definitely. I think both Thesis and Thematic are great themes and many more developers are going to adopt them (or other similar frameworks). Theme Frameworks are however more developer tools (imo), so more out-of-box themes will still have a role to play within the theming community.
I totally disagree here. I think developers will be looking forward to create their own tools. Look at Ryan’s post about Creating Your Own WordPress Theme Framework.
@kovshenin Your thoughts on SquareSpace. If you were a WordPress.com blogger, would you switch to SquareSpace?
@adii I haven’t actually tried SquareSpace, but I’m hearing good things about it. So I can’t really give an opinion…
@kovshenin Where did the “Woo” come from? Is it from like “Woohoo! I got a brand new Theme!” ? :D
@adii Hehe no. Magnus actually came up with it and it’s a mix of w00t & WordPress.
