Get To Know Matt Vanderpol
Matt is a full stack developer with a primary focus on developing custom WordPress themes based on Photoshop comps. With almost 20 years as a developer in the industry, he has a strong focus on performance and process — always seeking new and better ways to accomplish a task both for the benefit of the developer and of web page visitors.
Matt lives in Nevada City, CA in a home that he and his wife designed and built. He works remotely from that home while enjoying a thriving family life with his wife and their 5 kids.
We’re thrilled Matt will be speaking at WordCamp Sacramento 2016 on Building Custom WordPress Themes With Sass!
Speaker Q&A With Matt
To help you learn even more about Matt, we asked him to answer a few questions for us, some WordPress-related, and some others we think you’ll appreciate 🙂 Be sure to give him a shout out on Twitter and don’t forget to use our hashtag #wcsac.
What inspired you to give this talk at WordCamp?
I’ve had tremendous success using Sass to generate CSS in custom WordPress themes and I wanted to share what I’ve learned about the process with others and encourage other developers/designers to learn more about how Sass can make their development process smoother and easier.
How did you discover WordPress?
I was introduced to WordPress about 4 years ago through an agency contract. We leveraged it as a CMS for standardized, repeating content (such as press releases, news articles, and events) that we displayed on a site built with a PHP framework.
How has WordPress Or WordCamp impacted you?
Approximately 70% of my consulting revenue for the last 4 years has come from projects where I created a custom theme to build a web site on top of WordPress.
How do you primarily work with WordPress?
Primarily I create custom themes that build on top of plugins like ACF and WPML to create web sites for Silicon Valley technology companies. Occasionally I will create a custom plugin to wrap some behavior outside of the theme.
What does the WordCamp theme Discovery mean to you?
I am always seeking new and better ways to build websites — both for my own benefit to reduce the time and friction of building a theme and for the benefit of site visitors so that they have a speedier site visit experience. I am excited to be speaking and share what I know as well as learn from others.
What is the latest book you read?
Fiction: Rich Man’s War by Elliott Kay. Non Fiction: Jolt.
What is your favorite restaurant? Favorite menu item?
I’m mostly non-dairy and gluten-free. I eat largely Paleo. Locally my favorite restaurant is Cirino’s at Main Street and my favorite menu item is the Sicilian Port Rostini with Orange Thyme Sauce.
What TV series are you current binging on/into?
I don’t watch TV.
What do you do for fun?
I enjoy working on projects at home (I recently built a Coracle with my eldest son) and camping/hiking/backpacking with my family.