Weekly discussion by freelancers and professionals about running a business, finding clients, marketing, and lifestyle related to being a freelancer.

Episode 63: The Freelancers’ Show 063 – WordPress with Curtis McHale

May 30, 2013 46:31 44.66 MB Downloads: 0

Panel

Curtis McHale (twitter github blog)
Eric Davis (twitter github blog)
Jeff Schoolcraft (twitter github blog)
Reuven Lerner (twitter github blog)
Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up)

Discussion
00:37 - Reuven Lerner Introduction
01:10 - Curtis McHale Introduction

WordPress
The Coderpath Podcast

01:57 - Consulting, Tools & Apps

fvrb (Curtis’ Ruby Brigade)
Billings Pro
Ronin
Trello
Evernote
Dropbox
Evernote Hello
Evernote Skitch
Napkin
Mailbox
IFTTT (If This Then That)

10:21 - Ronin

FreshBooks
Harvest
Harvest Online Invoicing & Time Tracking: Curtis McHale
Multiple Currencies
Marketcircle: Daylite
Complete Review of Daylite 4: Curtis McHale

13:16 - Customer Relationship Management

The Trello/Evernote Combo
Highrise
Salesforce
Curtis’ Trello Gist
Podio

15:50 - Trello
17:18 - Booking Out Work
18:38 - Consulting in WordPress
21:33 - Getting Leads & Establishing Connections
23:15 - Application Development with WordPress

Tom McFarlin

25:51 - Advantages of WordPress

Joomla/Mambo
Drupal

29:18 - Dealing w/ new WordPress Versions

Security Issues
Metasploit

34:39 - Resources

curtismchale.ca
WP Theme Tutorial
Become a WordPress Development Professional by Curtis McHale
sfndesign.ca

Picks

IRS Cracks Down on Independent Contractors - What it Means for Your Small Business (Eric)  WordPress Core is Secure - Stop Telling People Otherwise (Eric)
One Tab Chrome Extension (Jeff)
Arrested Development (Reuven)
ridiculous_fish (Reuven)
zsh-syntax-highlighting (Reuven)
Hanping Chinese Dictionary Pro (Reuven)
iOctocat (Chuck)
ioctocat on GitHub (Chuck)
Kinesis Freestyle Keyboard (Curtis)
Unfinished Business Podcast (Curtis)
The Trello/Evernote Combo (Curtis)

Next Week
Social Media
Transcript

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CHUCK: Hey everybody and welcome to the Freelancers Show Episode 63! This week on our panel we have, Eric Davis.

ERIC: Hello!

CHUCK: Jeff Schoolcraft.

JEFF: What's up!

CHUCK: I'm Charles Max Wood from DevChat.tv. We also have, Reuven Lerner.

REUVEN: Hi there!

CHUCK: We also have a special guest, and that's Curtis McHale.

CURTIS: Hey!

CHUCK: So I'm going to have Reuven introduce himself first, and then we'll have Curtis introduce himself.

REUVEN: Sure! So I'm a web developer mostly doing Ruby on Rails and Postgres stuff; I've been freelancing since 1995. I would say I divide my time between actual programming and consulting, and then I'm off a lot of training as well; I teach a lot of courses. And I live in Israel, which you might not figure out from my accent.

CHUCK: Yeah, we have 3 time zones, 4 time zones represented on the show right now.

[Reuven chuckles]

CHUCK: And Curtis, you want to introduce yourself?

CURTIS: Sure! I'm Curtis McHale. I actually started, I guess many years ago now, doing some frontend Rails and Ruby stuff. But now, I pretty much only do WordPress work. That's what I do; I've been building sites and stuff since 1996, I guess. That's when I started dabbling in it in amidst to have a psychology degree.

CHUCK: Yeah, I have to say I remember listening to you and Miles on the Coderpath Podcast.

CURTIS: Yeah, that's when I was doing my list of it, like I was saying earlier just before the show, I went to Mountain West and did a bunch of stuff, but I did not come in as frontend Rails so I needed to pay the bills and that's what I did.

CHUCK: That makes sense!

[Curtis chuckles]

CHUCK: So I'm a little curious, we got you on here to talk about WordPress, we also got you on here to talk about your consulting in general, so how do you wind up making that transition? Did you just take the work that was coming in, and that was WordPress? Or, was there more to it than that?

CURTIS: Well,