• Tweet

• Tweet

Today we have a special guest for an short interview – John Saddington, an entrepreneur, blogger, developer and guy behind some of the awesome products including 8Bit, StandardTheme, Team Science and WP Daily (most recent).

His most recent WordPress project – WPDaily, shows how much experience he has with building community around a product. FYI, WPDaily is just 2 months old .

I contacted john for an interview and he kindly accepted, so here it is.

1. Can you tell readers a little about yourself & your WordPress blog?

Currently I’m editor in chief at WP Daily and I’m having an incredible amount of fun creating content as well as editing the great contributions that the community has to offer.

Our goal is to provide consistent coverage on all things WordPress, Automattic, and associated business, including great tips, editorial, and opinion pieces.

2. How Long Have You Been Working with WordPress? When Was Your First Experience?

I’ve been working with WordPress for a while, since late 2004 and really starting in 2005 with WordPress’ release of Strayhorn (1.5).

My first experience was entirely random as I was looking for other blogging platforms other than Xanga, which I used for many years after uploading .html files as my “blog”. I remember what really hooked me was the ability to quickly customize themes in 1.5 for my clients and that changed my life!

3. Where do you see WordPress going in the next 2-3 years?

I see some major changes to the actual drafting experience as more and more designers converge into the user experience of publishing. Things like Ghost, Tumblr, and even Feathe.rs are pushing the boundaries of the publishing.

4. Why Did you Start WPDaily? How Do you plan to monetize it?

We started WP Daily because we saw a large gap that existed in quality news and op-ed pieces surrounding WordPress.

Most of the blogs that we loved had either slowed down or completely disappeared and we were tired of seeing them all go by the wayside. So, after hoping and wishing for someone to step up to the plate we decided that we should take a shot at it and give it a go. We’ve had a lot of attention and a lot of community support so far so that’s been very surprising and very encouraging.

In terms of monetizing we’re not sure yet but we know that it has to make sense for both our business (and time) as well as our users. We’re actively listening to our users about what they’d like to see as we grow up. In other words, we’re not sure yet!

5. What future plans do you have for 8bit, WPDaily & Eve.io?

8BIT is a growing business and we’re having a lot of fun building great product and creating amazing community around WP Daily.

In terms of Eve it’s still very much under wraps but I can tell you that it’s going to be very different than most other offerings – we have a very clear picture of our customers and who we want to serve so we can’t wait to share it with them!

6. Do you have any advice for people who are getting started with WordPress?

Just go. Just try. You have nothing to lose by starting and experimenting with it.

You may learn a thing or two and even about yourself. Who knows? Have fun with it!