An Ending; A Better Beginning
For the past four-and-a-half years, I’ve been running WPShout by myself. There are ~180 posts published, of which all but one have been written by me. Over the years this has led to ups and downs with the the regularity of content, as I’ve fitted running the site around schoolwork, collegework and — more recently — work.
It’s been an amazing experience; having the opportunity to settle in to such a fantastic community and publish content which has helped thousands upon thousands of people. There have been highs and lows; things I’ll learn from and things that were utterly ridiculous of me to do. The learning curve has been huge, though, and I’ve learned a ton.
If this sounds like “goodbye”, that’s because I’m sad to announce it is.
As regular readers will know, the regularity of posts here has dropped off a cliff over the course of the last eighteen months or so. First A-levels, then my gap-year job, and now University; the kinds of things “young people” do have been getting in the way of making WPShout awesome.
It’s thus with a strong tinge of sadness today I’m announcing WPShout has moved to new ownership. However, whilst this is the end for me, it’s the start of a very exciting new beginning for the site; David and Fred will introduce themselves and take you through some of their plans for the site just below.
So — thank you to everyone who has read, supported and enjoyed the site under my stewardship. If you’d like to keep in touch (and, duh, who wouldn’t?), then I’d strongly recommend you follow me on Twitter and grab a subscription to my “personal” blog, sevenironcows.
Fred, David — over to you!
Hi from Fred and David
Thanks, Alex! We’re Fred and David, partners in Press Up, a web consultancy specializing in WordPress. We love the platform for its open source philosophy, mind-boggling flexibility, and remarkable compatibility.
When we saw that Alex was looking to move on from WPShout, we saw a great opportunity to maintain the great work he’s done here—his exhaustive hosting review from last week is a case in point—and to build on and expand that work. We can’t wait to dive into WordPress with you!
In the meantime, if you need any help with your WordPress, from a simple “this isn’t working” to a complex re-architecting of the whole thing, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
About David: I’ve been a WordPress user and enthusiast for nearly a decade and I love to talk, read, and write about issues around WordPress and publishing great content online. While I love programming and complexities of architecture and business, I love teaching people new things and making complex things understandable. It’s that, more than anything else, that I’ve been working to do in writing about WordPress on the Press Up blog, and which I’m eager to be able to bring to WPShout’s audience and the larger community.
I love teaching people new things and making complex things understandable.
I’m passionate about solving problems at many different scales. This can be as simple as making sure that I never forget to floss or as complex as making sure that our clients’ businesses are in a strong market position and will be able to count on their technical infrastructure for the long term. When I’m not doing that, I love to exercise — I’ve gotten really into cycling, taken up running, and walk up to ten miles a day — and learn through every medium I can — I love PBS, podcasts, and Instapaper for that. I also have a somewhat irrational affection for Twitter, where you can find me as @davidbhayes.
About Fred: With David, I’m cofounder of Medivate, a startup to help people meditate regularly. So I tend to spend a lot of my day in WordPress, and then peek outside it to write jQuery apps or see what David’s doing with Symfony.
I focus on tips for front-end development, marketing, content creation, and interacting with customers.
Like David, I love to write about WordPress. I tend to focus on tips and tricks for front-end development, as well as on questions about marketing, content creation, and interacting with customers—meaning both developers’ customers (website owners), and developers’ customers’ customers (other humans).
Outside of programming, I love meditation, jazz piano, standup comedy, and my girlfriend. You’ll probably never hear about those interests again in my WPShout career (unless my girlfriend makes a cameo in a post about people who tell me I’m dumb for owning a PC), but thought it would be a nice hello for all of you. Please drop me a line anytime at [email protected].
We’re really excited to be taking over WPShout, and glad that we were able to talk Alex into sticking around in an advising role for the transitional period. He’s built a great resource here, and we’re eager to keep his vision alive and make it even better.