Table of Contents
Aleksandar Savkovic
Introduction:
Before WordPress I was construction site supervisor and I owned the small company for interior design and hard wood floors. My whole family is and was in architecture from my grand grand father the minister of architecture and civil engineering, over my father, mother and uncle who were all architects.
Guess why I picked that profession 😀 However, the World economic crisis struck and there was no new projects and investments so I had to shut down the company and work for the salary but by the time even the big companies started to reduce the number of employees due to crisis. So I had to change my profession at the age of 32.
Q. How did you get to know about WordPress? Share if there is an interesting story.
Ans: Ermmmm well yes, it’s kinda interesting story.
I’ve decided to sign up for the web development course on my father’s initiative because he was like, why not, you were always a kid from the neighbourhood fixing computers to neighbours, and I was like, yes dad but installing anti virus, c cleaner or Windows is far from development but he was persistent.
SO I looked online for good courses and I found that WordPress is powering the highest percentage of websites, and the learning curve is not that steep, so I signed up for a 1 year HTML, CSS, JS, PHP and WordPress course.
Q. What’s the most interesting project you have done to date in WordPress? What were your responsibilities?
Ans: There were many projects and some were really interesting.
The first one I worked on “ManageWP” acquired by GoDaddy was quite challenging since we grew from 15 employees to 65 in less than 2 years.
Then thecore.io the very first managed hosting for WooCommerce websites hosted on AWS using some really cool new technology, like scaling up and down automatically, staging>live deploy in one clicketc., to some cool project we are working on at Cloudways at the moment and I hope it will be live very soon 🙂
Q. Have you ever been to any WordPress meetups or WordCamps? Share your thoughts on WordPress Community.
Ans: Many many times, I’m WordPress Meetup Belgrade co-organizer, WooCommerce meetup Belgrade organizer, WordCamp Belgrade, and WordCamp Europe organizer as well as WordCamp mentor.
Well, WordPress community is definitely one of the most welcoming communities where diversity is one of the basic and most important pillars, without contributors across the planet it wouldn’t grow that fast and we wouldn’t produce such a cool CMS for years.
From joining WordPress Slack and one of the teams everyone can contribute, from translations, over themes review, plugins, training team, marketing, documentation, core, there are so many teams and everyone can find the right for themselves.
Q. How does your workstation look like? Can you send us a picture?
Ans: Yup sending with the mountain view through my window.
Q. What interesting feature do you think you would like to see in WordPress and is currently missing?
Ans: Easier multi-language definitely and better structured database especially for WooCommerce where Woo would be completely separated from other WP tables.
I wouldn’t ask too much from WordPress, there is a huge ecosystem around it and you can easily find the plugin to extend functionalities you are missing in WordPress core.
Q. Out of the current plugins and themes which one do you like the most and why?
Ans: Well I would say there are a lot of cool plugins and themes out there these days. Maybe Blocksy would be my first choice when it comes to themes and Brizy as a page builder.
For some additional functionalities, WPAmelia for booking is really cool for example.
For performance I would say Breeze on Cloudways, Cloudflare, Autoptimize, Asset Clean Up and yes Yoast for SEO is must have.
Q. Any awesome technology you want to share other than WordPress?
Ans: Well let’s say that React is quite awesome and it’s the part of WordPress as well, Cloudways is offering hosting with the great technology stack from which some parts I still don’t understand 😀
Q. Do you like/love what you currently do in WordPress?
Ans: Of course, at the moment I’m WordPress community manager at Cloudways but the part of my job is also the new product I’ve mentioned earlier.
Everything related to community and product is my thing, and yes I love customer support/happiness since I was training people for that role and I do have some part of my DNA dedicated to awesome customer support.
Q. Where do you find yourself after 5 years
Ans: WOW I don’t have an answer to this one really. However, I’m 42 now and chasing some different career is out of question, I like it here at Cloudways and hopefully some promotion to a higher position sometime in the future.
Q. Share something about your life other than work
Ans: One part of my life on the completely opposite side of my work is my passion for cars and music.
I’m an electronic music (Tech House, Deep House, Techno) DJ and producer with some releases climbing up the charts up to #8 and a lot of them reached top 100 on Beatport and important platforms.
I’m not doing it actively anymore but when I have time and chance to spend some time I do.
Q. To whom you give credit for your success?
Ans: Well this would be easy to answer, It’s me, myself and I. While others were out on Fridays and Saturdays I was sitting and learning new stuff, improving myself, visiting conferences, meetups, meeting new people and making new connections in the community.
Q. Can you give us some reference for whom we should conduct an interview next and why?
Ans: Robert Jacobi, Sjoerd Bloom, Noel Tock all great people from WP community oh yes Bridget Willard as well.
Q. How do you reward yourself?
Ans: By buying myself a nice fast and entertaining car 😀
Q. Any suggestion for WordPress beginners?
Ans: Just be persistent and learn new things, don’t get stuck on one framework you feel comfortable with. Join the community either by attending meetups or joining FB groups.
Do what you can to get noticed, help people and they will help you, whatever your knowledge is not on the expert level, there are people less experts than you and you can help them. At the same time someone will help you who knows more than you do.
Sonl Sinha is a passionate writer as well as WordPress and WooCommerce rockstar who loves to share insights on various topics through his engaging blog posts. He runs a successful website design and digital marketing company. With 15+ years of experience in WordPress theme development, he strives to inform and inspire readers with his thought-provoking content. He helps thousands of small and medium businesses and startups create a unique online presence. Follow Sonl Sinha for your regular dose of knowledge and inspiration.
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