Interview with WCSTL Speaker: Dane Morgan

Posted on by Nile Flores

This next speaker has a topic that almost sounds like a bed time story. Dane Morgan will be speaking on Goldilocks and the Three Themes, at WordCamp St. Louis. Here’s a little about Dane’s WordPress journey.

Interview with Dane Morgan

Dane says, “Last year my family and I spent a month traveling and geocaching in the North West. The destination for the trip was to get a geocache on the other end of the 2.5 mile long Snoqualmie Tunnel on the John Wayne Trail in the Iron Horse State Park in Washington state. It is utterly dark in the middle of this tunnel and the only light you have is the light you bring with you.

NILE FLORES: When did you start using WordPress?

DANE MORGAN: I started with version 1.2 back in 2004.

NILE FLORES: What are a few takeaways that attendees will get from your talk?

DANE MORGAN: My talk will walk attendees through the factors they need to consider when selecting a theme for their WordPress powered website.

NILE FLORES: WordPress is turning 15 years old. What would you like to see in the future for WordPress?

DANE MORGAN: I’m really looking forward to the changes I think will be possible with the Gutenberg editor. I think this is the biggest thing in WordPress since the introduction of themes. I think it will change the way we think about content development and presentation in ways we don’t even fully understand yet, and I think it will change more that just WordPress too.

NILE FLORES: “And just for funsies”, over the past few years, the WordPress community has seen the rise of the cute Wapuu character? Heard of it? And if so, what’s your favorite Wapuu? (Wapuu Reference: https://wapu.us/ )

DANE MORGAN: That’s hard, but I guess I’d have to go with either Moto Wapuu or Gutenpuu.

NILE FLORES: What is your favorite area of the WordPress admin?

DANE MORGAN: The Customizer. It’s really easy to do some really powerful things with it, and when I’m developing for clients I put it to a lot of use and train my clients that this is the place to go to customize their site.

NILE FLORES: What are the top three WordPress plugins that you believe every WordPress user should have installed?

DANE MORGAN: WP-Rocket for amazing performance tweaking, Yoast SEO to help inform search practices, and Updraft for backups and site migrations.

Want to hear Dane’s talk? You’ve still got time to buy a ticket to WordCamp St. Louis, which is May 12th and 13th, 2018.