Interview with WCSTL Speaker: Nick Mantia

Posted on by Nile Flores

Have you been enjoying our speaker interview series? Here’s another. Nick Mantia is teaming up with Matt Decrevel to talk about Development Workflow with Multiple Developers at WordCamp St. Louis. Here’s a little about Nick’s journey with WordPress.

Interview with Nick Mantia

Nick says, “This is me presenting my Senior Thesis Project in the spring of 2016, just before embarking on my full-time web development journey. My project was named “Stash” (before the app), and it was a campaign dedicated to teaching millennial the importance of saving for retirement early.”

NILE FLORES: When did you start using WordPress?

NICK MANTIA: I started using WordPress about 4 years ago in a web development course in college.

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

NICK MANTIA: We will break down the structure of a WordPress site and its database, and how the intersection between the front-end, back-end, database, and files of a WordPress site can be managed. We will discuss the multiple environments we work in (production, staging, local) and their functions. As well as how we leverage our hosting, softwares, applications, Git and various plugins to help push, pull, merge, import/export, and version control our numerous code and database changes that happen simultaneously, without loss of data.

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

NICK MANTIA: I’d like to see standard use of a decoupled front-end and and back-end. As well as the implementation of JS frameworks as standard prattle for development of WP sites.

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/ )

NICK MANTIA: Yes, I’m familiar. I’d have to say my favorite is GutenPuu in honor of the new gutenberg deployment.

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

NICK MANTIA: Adding new custom fields with ACF pro. It’s my favorite because we use it to essentially build the architecture of the site.

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

NICK MANTIA: Advanced Custom Fields, Gravity Forms, and Akismet.

Want to see Nick and Matt’s talk? Buy and ticket and come out to Washington University May 12th and 13th, 2018.