Get To Know Sallie Goetsch
Sallie Goetsch has been online since 1985, hand-coded her first website in 1995, and discovered WordPress in 2005. She is the organizer of the East Bay WordPress Meetup in Oakland, California. She runs her WP Fangirl consulting and development business from her home in Oakley, which she shares with her husband and two cats. She has presented at academic and business events large and small and even at Assembly hearings, but this will be her first time speaking at a WordCamp.
We’re thrilled Sallie will be speaking at WordCamp Sacramento 2015 on the topic Not Everyone Is a WordPress Expert.
Speaker Q&A
Why do you think educating users about WordPress is important?
My original talk title was The Hardest Thing about WordPress (and How to Make It Easier). I have clients who complain that WordPress is so much harder than fill-in-the-blank. Non-technical people tend to expect all software to work like Microsoft Word, and WordPress doesn’t. We need to prepare our clients for using a content management system and help them understand what’s great about the way WordPress does things.
What is your history or experience with educating users about WordPress?
In September 2014 I wrote an article called Have we been misleading people about WordPress? My main concern was the way that marketers imply, and consumers seem to believe, that Without knowing code is equivalent to Without knowing anything.
A lot of WordPress themes and plugins actually have a very steep learning curve and are overwhelming for new users. There is no such thing as an intuitive interface, only a familiar interface. We need to be honest about the learning curve, simplify the admin, and provide support and training.
How did you get started with WordPress? Why WordPress?
I discovered b2 in January 2005 after a teleseminar about blogging. I decided to see what my hosting company had to offer and that was it. A few months later I actually got into WordPress, mainly because it was a good platform for podcasting. One of the things that initially drew me to WordPress was the relief of having menus updated sitewide when you added a new page. HTML websites were such a pain to keep updated.
What is your favorite thing about WordPress?
That’s a hard one. There are a lot of things I love about WordPress, though I think that many content management systems would offer a lot of them. But the community and the way people share knowledge is just amazing.
Can you share a couple WordPress plugins that you love or recommend?
Two plugins I use on almost every site are Display Posts Shortcode and Rich Text Excerpts.
I build mainly in Genesis, and manual excerpts are important. I still rely on Genesis Sandbox Featured Content Widget a lot, though I’m definitely a fan of Chinmoy Paul’s Genesis Featured Posts Combo plugin.
Resources or recommendations?
If you are completely new to WordPress, take a class or read a book to get an overview of the platform. I served as Technical Reviewer for O’Reilly’s WordPress: The Missing Manual, which covers both the .com and .org flavors pretty thoroughly from a user standpoint.
Then, definitely, join a WordPress meetup if you have one near you. Better yet, start a meetup — I have learned a ton from presenting to my meetup.
If you’re going to be building WordPress sites, my belated recommendation is to suck it up and learn PHP. I put that off for years and got away with it, but it made my work a lot harder.
Check Out The Speakers
WordCamp Sacramento 2015 is bringing you an awesome line up of speakers from not only our greater Sacramento region, but throughout California and beyond. Check out our speakers page to see the 2015 WordCamp Sacramento Speakers, and be sure to follow them on Twitter.