Important Things For A Beginners Is To Learn The Theme Structure WordPress Uses

Mitko Kochkovski

Today we are going to list the interview of Mitko Kochkovski from North Macedonia. He is a PHP developer at Webpigment. In this interview, Mitko explained that how he got diverted from hard-core video gamer to WordPress-related work.

Also, he mentioned that he is one of the founders of the WordPress Community and hosted many WordCamps as a lead organizer.

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Introduction

I was a hard core video gamer. My gaming career started with playing CS 1.6 then moved onto Dota on Warcraft and as I started going to university I started playing World Of Warcraft. Just a young teenager playing video games basically.

As my university days were over I started focusing on my career as developer. That was early in 2010 where I had my start as a freelancer.

I wasn’t that much of a WordPress junkie as I was trying to get experience with anything that comes my way. Then WordPress happened.

Q. How did you get to know about WordPress? Share if there is an interesting story.

Ans: As I stated above, I started my development career at the moment when WordPress started owning the internet. At that time every 2nd project was WordPress related work.

I was familiar with PHP but not with WordPress. My first project with WordPress was extending the search functionality. There was an ecommerce plugin called WordPress eCommerce that was used for selling products.

At that time my knowledge of the core of WordPress was low. So as every good newbie I created a custom functionality searching into the posts table to find the products that were matching the search term. Instead I could have used the pre_get_posts filter and finish the job within an hour 🙂

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

Ans: We as Webpigment have a list of enormous projects. I can highlight few of them. But the one that’s in my heart is the project for a la mode shoppe. They have unique childish design to match their style.

The most interesting thing of the project is the product bundle functionality where you prepare your order in the same way you’ll receive the package in front of your front door. So basically the functionality is adding ice cream into box that you’ll be receiving once the box is shipped.

Another interesting part of the project is that we created custom UPS integration to make sure the shipment will be received within 48h or you’ll receive soup instead of ice cream 🙂

Q. Have you ever been to any WordPress meetups or WordCamps? Share your thoughts on WordPress Community.

Ans: Have I?!?! Of course I have. I love WordCamping. Im one of the ‘founders’ of our local community. We even hosted two WordCamps with myself as a lead organizer.

The first WordCamp was in 2018 where we had around 130 attendees. The second was in 2019 where we had around 250 attendees and two tracks of speakers.

Webpigment is very active in the WordPress community and we sponsor, organize, speak and attend almost every camp in the Balkans and WordCamp Europe.

Q. How does your workstation look like? Can you send us a picture?

Ans: Of course. Its in the attachment 🙂

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

Ans: Id like to see headless WordPress Admin area. It’s something that I personally think twill help speed up the admin area.

Unfortunately this is a huge step for the WordPress world and I don’t see it happening in the next few years. Even if we start working on it tomorrow. But who knows it might happen eventually 🙂

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

Ans: Of course WooCommerce and Underscores. I’ll start with underscores. The reason for that is because its a popular starter theme, and most of the WordPress agencies around the world are familiar with it.

So the process of taking over a project is easy. WooCommerce because that’s something I think makes a website interesting to work on.

Q. Any awesome technology you want to share other than WordPress?

Ans: React and Redux. For those who haven’t tried it out yet PLEASE DO! 🙂

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

Ans: Of course I love working with WordPress. I do that for almost 10 years now.

Q. Where do you find yourself after 5 years

Ans: Hopefully still in the WordPress world, maybe convert the WordPress development agency into a product based WordPress agency

Q. Share something about your life other than work

Ans: I have a lovely family. You can see it on the picture. Lots of people say that I’m a rich person. And I am! Having three kids, one 4 years old and twins of 6 months. Beside that I also have 3 dogs.

Miniature Pinscher 17 years old, German Shepherd 6 years old and 1 year old rottweiler. So when everyone is home we are literary full house 🙂

Q. To whom you give credit for your success?

Ans: To my father who unfortunately isn’t around to see my progress. Through the life he always told me, you will always work hard and one day it will pay out.

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

Ans: I’d say Milan Ivanovic – because he gave so many years of his life within the WordPress community

Q. How do you reward yourself?

Ans: I usually reward myself with not working and spending time with my family. Doesn’t matter if that’s a vacation or movie night/day. Spending time with family is the most important thing a person needs to do.

Q. Any suggestion for WordPress beginners?

Ans: As agency owner I can say that few of the most important things for a beginners is to learn the theme structure WordPress uses.

Knowing that will give you flexibility and understanding of how to extend a theme. Learn some functional programming, it will come in handy especially with filters and hooks.