Ah, Friday. If you’re slacking a bit, or just looking for some good stuff to listen to or watch this weekend, let me help. Here are some of the best things I’ve seen this week:
A look at WordPress performance
Well, this is actually from WCSF. A lightning talk by Zack Tollman. Yesterday, I shared his post that was a deep dive into performance. Well, this is a broad overview, and an enlightening 5 minute presentation. Short version: WordPress (due to many reasons) tends to make for slower websites today.
Zack used the HTTP Archive and ran tests on 290k sites. WordPress was worse than non-WordPress sites (on average) across the board.
His takeaway?
Performance is not a developer’s concern; it’s the whole entire community’s concern.
A different kind of performance: yours
Chris Lema brought down the house at PressNomics, with his talk about personal productivity and performance.
As with every presentation from Chris, you get a great story. Additionally, he has some excellent advice:
- “You are what you repeatedly do. So choose wisely. It’s an investment.”
- “There is power in constraints. Embrace life’s distractions; they may be more important.”
Also, he gives a great tip he uses to get things done: he writes down three things per day that he’s going to get done. He asks the same of his employees. If he gets them done, he considers the day a success.
That’s all I’m giving you, because it’s way better in context of his presentation. This is the best 35 minutes you’ll spend today, especially if you’re struggling with balancing priorities and managing your own productivity.
DradCast with 10up President Jake Goldman
Jake Goldman joined Dre and Brad on this week’s DradCast. If you own a service business, it’s always good to learn from all three of these guys. Jake also talks about his evolution of thought on balancing products and services within the same organization.
ApplyFilters with WooCommerce product manager Patrick Rauland
I listened to Pippin Williamson and Brad Touesnard interview Patrick Rauland while I was hiking up a mountain in Phoenix. It turned out Patrick was on the same mountain and then I hung out with all three later that day. So meta.
Patrick is the product manager for WooCommerce at WooThemes, and in this interview there are some really valuable tidbits about managing big plugins, releasing new features, and other things that product-makers will find value in.
Patrick was also just on WPCast.fm, but I haven’t listened to that one yet.
WP API conversations with Rachel Baker
Rachel is one of the leaders on the WordPress JSON REST API project. On Word-Break, Jon Bellah (from 10up) and Trevan Hetzal (from Flywheel) ask Rachel a variety of good questions that’ll be a nice intro to the WP API — including the project structure and roadmap — if you don’t know much about it yet.
WP Elevation with Justin Sternberg
On my list of stuff to listen to this weekend, Justin Sternberg talks to Troy Dean on WP Elevation. I know Justin’s story, and it’s pretty amazing. This guy has worked his way up from painting houses to working at WebDevStudios as a development team lead. He’s super smart and genuine. I expect good things from this episode.
