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WordCamp Europe is about a lot of great people meeting in Paris this summer. In our new WordPress People interview series we will introduce you to people who are active in the community and use WordPress every day.<\/p>\n
Our first interview is with Bernhard Kau. Bernhard is a PHP developer living in Berlin, Germany. He is a passionate WordPress user, plugin developer and community member. He also organizes WordPress events, like the WordPress Meetup and WordCamp in Berlin.<\/p>\n
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Germany<\/strong> \/\u00a0@2ndkauboy<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0kau-boys.de<\/a><\/p>\n Phillip: <\/strong>Hello Bernhard – welcome to the little interview for the WCEU website where we want to introduce people working with WordPress who are active in the community. We want to start this easy. So just tell us \u2014 where are you from and where do you live?<\/p>\n Bernhard:<\/strong> Okay – I\u2019m originally from Mannheim, Germany, but I\u2019ve lived in Berlin since 2008. I\u2019m a web developer and I work in Potsdam.<\/span><\/p>\n …<\/p>\n Cool – so you live in Berlin? Which part of Berlin?<\/strong> And your work is in Potsdam. What are you working on?<\/strong> So your primary job is programming WordPress websites or is it more plugins?<\/strong> Nice – so what are you working on at the moment, like right now?<\/strong> And you also code that intranet completely in WordPress?<\/strong> Alright cool – and what would you say are the benefits of working with WordPress for you?<\/strong> So next to working you also contribute to WordPress and the community. What do you do there?<\/strong> That\u2019s a lot! How do you think contributing helped you personally in your profession?<\/strong>
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\nIt\u2019s called Steglitz, it\u2019s the south-west of Berlin.<\/p>\n
\nI work for \u2014 I would say a small agency, and we build websites with different CMSs. So not only WordPress, but I\u2019m like the WordPress expert in the company. And I also work with other PHP-based frameworks.<\/p>\n
\nWe only do the programming; we don\u2019t have any designers in the agency. So we usually either get a theme a customer wants to use or the design from a design agency or we hire someone to design a website. Then we code the theme and the plugins. I usually do the plugins because many of my colleagues can code themes quite well, but they\u2019re not so experienced in larger plugins.<\/p>\nWordPress is a good choice for content driven projects<\/h2>\n
\nMany different projects. One is a multisite platform where we have job markets for different car dealers in Germany. So there\u2019s a company that has clients which are car brands, and they have different car dealers throughout Germany. The company provides a job market and the application process as a service for those. We built some custom post types for that. We also work for a governmental institution, and we implement a huge intranet application for them including LDAP authentication and some custom databases and stuff. So that\u2019s a very big project as well.<\/p>\n
\nYes – because they also want to share lots of information like press articles and things like that. We just added the additional functionality they need to the WordPress-based website.<\/p>\n
\nWhen you have an idea of how to solve something, it\u2019s quite easy to get started. In some of the projects, I work with frameworks like Symfony. They\u2019re much more flexible in like the tiniest details, but there\u2019s a very big step you have to take until you have something that runs. With WordPress, you have a running system, and you just implement some plugins to add the functionality you need. So when it\u2019s like a content driven project, a CMS like WordPress is better than having a pure PHP framework where you code everything like a login, user registration, database tables, things like that. So for some projects, that\u2019s better, but for most projects, a CMS like WordPress is faster.<\/p>\n
\nOh – lots of small things. I think the main part is writing some cool plugins and making them available through the WordPress repository, organising the WordPress Meetup in Berlin, organising the next WordCamp Europe and WordCamp Berlin (which has no date yet, but hopefully very soon). Then I also help in many Facebook groups, answering questions. I contribute a little bit to WordPress core, usually on a contributor day, translating things \u2014 many different things.<\/p>\n
\nThe first thing I did with WordPress was actually writing a plugin, which might not be the usual first thing you do with WordPress. Then I started blogging about that, and I also put that plugin in the WordPress plugin repository. I learned a lot from using other plugins and writing patches for the core. And also having my plugin in the repo helped a lot because users would tell me which part of the plugin does not work with their installation. They gave me tips for new features I could add. I even get feedback from core developers sometimes who check my diffs when I commit a new version, and they tell me there\u2019s something I can improve, there\u2019s a better way to do that. So having your plugin in the repository and having everyone checking it and using it helped me a lot as a developer because you learn a lot more. And you\u2019re also forced to look into new things you didn\u2019t have in mind when you write the plugin for yourself. That\u2019s usually what I do \u2014 I either have a problem, and I solve it somehow, and if I think it\u2019s good for more people then I put it on GitHub and or in the repository. Then when people see the code, they give me tips.<\/p>\nFuture of WordPress for the end user<\/h2>\n