My Journey to WordPress Really Begins About Two Years Ago

Imran Sayed

Today we are going to list the interview of Imran Sayed from India. He is a full-stack engineer at rtCamp. Also, he is a WordCamp speaker, WordPress meetup organizer, organizer, and contributor in the WordPress community. He has a high level of experience in React, Node, and Laravel. Also, he loves teaching and sharing knowledge. He mentioned that his passion is for photography.

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Imran is a Full Stack Engineer at rtCamp. Imran is also a WordCamp Speaker, Organizer, WordPress Meetup Organizer, and a regular contributor to the WordPress community. He is also a core contributor in WordPress and has a rich experience in Node, React and Laravel.

Apart from this, Imran has a passion for teaching and sharing knowledge which led him to start his YouTube channel in 2013, where he teaches Programming on WordPress, React and Laravel.
Imran organizes Meetups in :
Pune WordPress Knowledge Exchange
PuneJSCamp

Imran is also the founder of Codeytek Academy

He loves to write blogs on Medium Imran also has passion for photography.

Q. How did you come into your current field? Share a bit of the background?

A. The story of my journey to WordPress really begins about two years ago.

At the time, I was working a comfortable, well-paying job as a Team Lead at Tech Mahindra, one of the largest tech consultancy MNC’s in India. Through the 10 years that I worked at Tech M, I wore different hats — client representative, mentor, certified trainer — and collected several performance awards including mobile phones, televisions, a digital camera, microwave oven, a PlayStation and best of all, all-expense paid trip to London ??

I thought that programming will give me an ability to express my creative skills through code. The idea of how my work and my knowledge can benefit others is thrilling and something that I love.

And the hero of my story is my very own brother, Sayed Taqui. Sayed is an experienced WordPress Developer and a core contributor, who gave me insights into this different world I had no idea about.

This did not happen overnight. This was a big risk to change track and move from my job to this new world of WordPress and it actually took me two years to make up my mind.

I started with saving money so I could quit my job and learn new skills. I started with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and then moved on to WordPress. I also learned to use the tools like Webpack, Babel & Grunt.

My brother Sayed was always around to help me and guided me with some great inputs:

learn the basics instead of specific frameworks (vanilla JS before jQuery)
build games to get good at JS. I built my first game in JavaScript, and in 2 weeks it was on PlayStore.
Hack away at the WordPress Core as a way to understand it deeply. He also suggested building a CMS in PHP to mimic WordPress, with CRUD functions, posts, pages and taxonomies, inspired by the WP Core.
It all pays off!

After 7 months of rigorous self-training, I applied for a job in a startup called Myrl Tech. Myrl Tech was like a hardcore wrestling ground for me (???? ??????), where I learnt to build and deploy applications from scratch.

After years’ worth of experience writing code, learning & applying new technology, giving & receiving training and even being involved with hiring, I got the opportunity to apply to rtCamp, where I currently work.

Q. What’s the most interesting project you have done to date in WordPress?

A I have worked on a decoupled project at rtCamp with WordPress in the backend and React in the frontend using Gatsby framework. You can see the website in production https://www.openweb.com/

Q. Have you ever been to any WordPress meetups or WordCamps? If yes did you learn anything useful?

A I am proud to have been a speaker at over 6 WordCamps across India. I am also a co-organizer of the local WP meetup group, and have organized 8 meetups last year.

I have also spoken at several international events — Matt’s Popup Livestream on Gutenberg, Wordsesh on PWA, JavaScript for WP Conference on Gatsby, WordPress VIP Webinar and many more.
Openness and inclusiveness is something that I dearly loves about the WordPress community.

I feel that there are many developers who have amazing knowledge but need a little push since they have never spoken in public. So while all of the above have been high points of my past couple of years, I also enjoy motivating new speakers to share what they know.

Q. What kind of tools/software do you currently use for your creations?

ABeing into creating content for YouTube, conducting meet-ups here what my setup looks like:
Development related:
1.PHP storm
2. Linting Tools – PHPCS, ESLINT, STYLELINT
3.Testing – Php unit testing, Enzyme with Jest, Cypress
4. Chrome Extensions –
5. Octotree for Github,
6. Go FullPage for screen capture
7. Page ruler
8. Window Resizer
9. JSON Formatter
10. React developer Tools.

Recording related:
1. Apple Macbook Pro
2. Video recording – Canon 80D DSLR.
3. Voice Recording – Sennheiser USB headset
4. Recording Editor – Final Cut Pro and Screenflow.
5. Video light – Godox sl-60w
6. Green screen and black screen curtains with stand
Light Reflectors
O7. ther tools – Canon EOS Utility for Mac, Camtwist, Camera Live

Q. What interesting feature do you think you would like to see in WordPress and is currently missing?

AI would like to see more improvement in the customiser and I am confident that it’s already in the pipeline.

Q. What does your workstation look like?

AI like my workstation to be organised as that’s where I spend most of the time. It’s my belief that a clean and well organised workstation can be a birthplace of lots of creative and interesting ideas.

Q. Out of the current plugins and themes which one do you like the most and why?

AI like the WooCommerce plugin, because it can help you turn your WordPress site into an ecommerce store with very little effort and allows to efficiently manage your store from WordPress dashboard.

Q. Which WordPress hosting do you use and would you recommend for your clients and others?

AI use hostgator for my personal website. However, wp-engine is quite good as well.

Q. Do you like/love what you currently do in WordPress?

AAbsolultely! I really enjoy the development and being part of the awesome community that is constantly growing.

Q. What would you like to do in the future in the current field or somewhere else?

ADuring my learning journey, I realised a lot of topics can only be understood by digging into the WP Core. And while many learning resources are available online and on WordPress.org, there are not enough tutorials or blogs available for beginners.

So I made a promise to myself that no matter how busy I get in future I will never forget my origin as a beginner and do what I can to help others. Knowledge is power and I feel it’s my responsibility to share what I know.

So I’ve started a YouTube channel, written tons of blog posts and put together several tutorials through my own open source learning platform. In future I see myself continuing to contribute through code and sharing knowledge.

Q. Can you give us some reference for whom we should conduct an interview next and why?

AI would like to recommend Muhammad Muhsin to be interviewed. He is an awesome developer, speaker and blogger. I find him really knowledgeable and the community can benefit a lot from his perspectives.