WPTavern Member Spotlight – Conorp And WPKickStart

You were one of the first people to help populate the WPTavern forum when it launched. Since that day, what has your experience been like?

My experience at the forum has been great. At the time of this interview I have had 490 posts, all of which have been warmly greeted and filled with enlightening answers. I also enjoy other peoples posts, and it is because of this that I use the search function quite frequently. You wouldn’t believe the amount of times I refer back to old threads.

If I understand correctly, you monitored the business section and even tossed around an idea to get feedback on. You now have your own consulting business in WPKickStart. Tell us how that came to be.

WPKickStart was actually born in the ChatBox of the forum. A number of members were throwing ideas at you saying that you should start your own consulting business. I took note of these and thought “I can do that stuff“. So I then went and created a thread to see what everyone else thought. You can see that thread here. (WordPress Services)

What does WPKickStart specialize in? Installations, maintenance, or custom builds?

WPKickStart specializes in installations and maintenance but most of my work these days involves custom builds. I am an ‘Affiliated Woo Worker‘ so I get a lot of work customizing WooThemes.

Are your clients primarily Australian based or all over the world?

A large amount of my clients are based overseas, but I have dealt with a few people based in Australia. That is the great thing about the web, location doesn’t matter.

Any tips you can give to other people thinking about starting a business similar to WPKickStart?

The best tip I can give is to just take a stab at it. Try to find an area that you can specialize in, and become the go to person for these services. Chip Bennett has done this very well with WP Turnkey, His Migration and Maintenance subscriptions are a great example of this.

Why do you enjoy working with WordPress?

I enjoy working with WordPress because of the community. I know that if I need a particular piece of functionality there will be a plugin for it.

Out of curiosity, what is it about Egyptian objects in Australia that fascinates you considering you maintain a website specifically for that subject? conorp.com

Ancient Egypt is obviously a hobby of mine and having a website on it is the perfect way to combine my two interests, the web and Ancient Egypt. My Egypt site was actually the first website I ever built. It began as a single html page with photos I had taken and has grown significantly since then. I actually started it out of frustration as there was no information on Egyptian objects in Australia out there. Even the museum and gallery websites failed to mention it. I created the site in the hope that other people interested in Ancient Egypt would see it and visit the various museums and galleries with Egyptian objects throughout Australia. I also wanted others from around the world to be able to experience the beauty of the objects located here.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to close out the interview?

Thanks for your contribution to the WordPress community! I love the Tavern, and if it didn’t exist I don’t think I would ever have started WPKickStart.