8 Questions with NiceThemes Founder Juan Aldasoro

Welcome to another edition of Pagely’s 8 Question series. This week, we have Juan F. Aldasoro in the hotseat.

Juan’s biggest contribution to the WordPress community is through his excellent theme shop, NiceThemes. Beyond this, he is heavily involved in the Argentinian WordPress community, helping to organize several important events. As always, be sure to follow him on Twitter, @juanfraa.

The interview will follow the usual format, with eight questions relating to Juan’s WordPress background, how his involvement in the community has changed, and the direction he thinks WordPress is heading.

A big thanks to Juan for answering our questions. This is what he had to say:

For readers less familiar with you, could you tell us a little about yourself and your WordPress background?

I was born in Argentina, three decades ago. In my teens I started experimenting with design and programming. In 2007 I started an intense romance with WordPress, and I have worked mostly with it ever since.

Today, I create WordPress premium products at NiceThemes. I also co-organized the recent WordCamp in Buenos Aires with my friends at WP Argentina, where we try to run different events and organize the local community.

You’ve been in the WordPress community for several years now, but could you tell us how you first became involved with WordPress?

I first became involved online, in the forums, learning.

Although Buenos Aires held 3 WordCamps prior to my first proper interaction with the community, by the time I wanted to attend a meetup or a WordCamp, the local community was nearly dead.

My first proper interaction with the WordPress community was back in 2012 during WordCamp UK in Edinburgh. At that time I was traveling around Europe and thought it would be a great idea to attend an event of this sort. And I was right. After that day, I started dreaming about having something similar in my city.

During your time in the community, what different areas have you been involved with?

I’ve helped with Spanish translations, helped people around the dot org forums, contributed code, educated my customers, and created a plugin to help Latin American WordCamps to process their payments. I’ve also done public speaking, co-organized local meetups, and the recent WordCamp in Buenos Aires.

What has been the best thing about working with WordPress for you?

The best thing behind any community is the people in it. WordPress is not the exception. There’s a lot of nice and talented people, and you can learn new things every single day. The doors are open, so you can be part of the tool that is used by a quarter of the internet, too.

How has the WordPress community changed since you started?

It’s larger. There are more resources, information, events. There are more debates about the future. The market share has grown, a lot. As a result, there are more options when it comes to creating things on top. There’s a commercial ecosystem.

I think the essence is still the same. I am of the idea that the main focus should be to maintain that essence.

What advice would you give to anyone getting started with WordPress? Which direction would you yourself go if you were starting over again?

It depends on the profile. I think a generic answer to this question would be: Try to get involved.

If I were starting over again I would try to get involved more in core and the community.

What do you think the biggest mistakes WordPress website owners are making?

I think we’re not doing a good job educating website owners and newcomers. They are always looking for the ultimate solution, and there’s no such thing. We should try to spend some time explaining why is that there’s no ultimate solution.

What do you think the future of WordPress holds? What would you like to see?

I would like to continue seeing balance and debate around the community. I would also like to see the rise of strong regional communities outside mainstream. Internationalization will play a key role in the future of WordPress and its quest on gaining market share. Speaking of technical aspects, it’s pretty obvious that JavaScript and a strong mobile support will be part of the future. I also see more enterprise development/support outside the US and Europe.

Final Thoughts

Another big thanks to Juan for answering our questions! As always, they made a great read.

It’s great to see the WordPress thriving all over the world. A quick look on the WordCamp website shows me that there are upcoming events in Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, South Korea, Czech Republic, Netherlands, and Peru. In other words, wherever you live, there’s a good chance there’s a WordCamp coming somewhere near you. This gives you the perfect opportunity to get out there, learn more about WordPress, and involve yourself in your local WordPress community. As Juan (and many of our other interviewees) have suggested, this is a great place to start.

Before we finish, here are the all-important links to Juan’s theme shop, NiceThemes, and his Twitter profile.

Thanks for reading everyone! We’ll be back with another interview next week!