Zoe Rooney is a front end developer from Philadelphia who has defined her niche and turned her skills and passion for WordPress into a successful business allowing her to work from home and spend time with her kids. Let’s learn how she’s done this.
Leave a comment under the video and tell Zoe where you think the future of WordPress themes is headed and you could win 3 months access to her NeatlyPolished WP Theme Development course valued at $79.
Congratulations Chelsea! Zoe has chosen you as the lucky winner of the competition! Thanks for your contribution and keep elevating! (February 2015).
Some of the highlights of this episode include:
• Why Shopify is better for eCommerce than WooCommerce (controversial)
• How specialising in a niche helps you get more clients
• Speaking at conferences is good for business
[vum-tweet tweet=”I’ve got really clear with myself about what I want to do and not do.”]
Elevation Round Answers
Here are the answers to the questions in our Elevation round. Watch the interview to get the full scoop.
1. Building community – NOT networking
2. Finding a niche
3. Just don’t
4. Be detailed and clear
5. I don’t have one
6. Regular communication
7. Only share work that represents the work you want
8. Be an extra nice, extra friendly and extra professional version of yourself
[vum-tweet tweet=”Your work is beautiful and I want to work with you..”]
You can reach out and thank Zoe on her twitter @zoe_rooney.
Zoe suggested I interview Naomi Bush from Stripe. Naomi, keep your eyes on your inbox.
Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below and tell Zoe where you think WordPress themes are headed in the future.
17 Responses
Great interview with one of the truly inspiring women in WordPress in the Philadelphia area! Where do I think WordPress themes are going in the future? Responsive–every site will need to work on smart phones, because this is where people more and more access the internet, and go for information on what and where to buy, get information, etc.
Love this podcast! I agree with Jeanne that WP themes will be going entirely responsive in future, no doubt. I also think a lot more themes are going to be created e-commerce friendly, rather than just focused on functioning as only a blog or only a website- I think they’ll definitely more and more be created to be used for several purposes!
Thank you Zoe for sharing your insights about web development, your advice was really useful information. I completely agree with you about Shopify relating to the ecommerce world. I think what will happen with WordPress themes in the future is that it be completely responsive, more themes will relate to more business type companies that want to be able to update regularly, blogs will still be a part of it, but less prominent. I hope that we get away from drag and drop/visual builder themes as a developer it makes it really frustrating as a user its fantastic. I think themes should be more specialized to certain fields and/or industries. Thanks again for your wonderful insights!!
I agree about “traditional” blog formats getting de-emphasized as other ways of providing updates get more popular!
I think a big hole in the market is really well-designed themes that exist for both WordPress and Shopify, such that you could install one version on your WordPress site and another on your Shopify site and have a seamless look and feel. I’ve done that on custom builds before but it seems like there should be more off the shelf options!
Thanks so much, Jeanne! Definitely agree on responsive becoming a standard rather than a “bonus” feature.
Absolutely agree! I can relate in that my design site and blog have always had the same names (well, one has design on the end to differentiate, haha), but I’ve never sold directly through my site so thus far it hasn’t been an issue- but I can definitely see where other business owner/bloggers would love the idea of a seamless shop to blog look and transition.
Thanks for the wonderful episode! I loved hearing your story and your tips for working with agencies and freelancers. The future of WordPress seems to be front end post editing. I think that will have a major impact on theme design and use. Definately the other trend is mobile speed. It will be interesting to see what we can do with the mobile web in 5-10 years! 🙂
This was a great and inspirational podcast! Thank you! I think the future of WordPress is going to be advanced customization using the REST API. I have been reading about this but don’t quite understand all that it will be able to do!
I thoroughly enjoyed this episode. Thanks Troy, and Zoe.
I’ve listened to Zoe’s interview on another WordPress podcast, and have enjoyed that episode as well.
Personally, I think WordPress themes have an interesting future ahead of them. In my opinion, the 2 main things to watch are “Accessibility”, and “API Integrations”.
Accessibility, because legislation is gradually moving towards making this a requirement for companies and corporate websites. The demand for Accessible websites will grow over the next 2 years. Currently, less than 2% of themes in the WordPress repository are accessible. this is likely to change quite soon as the demand grows. WordPress.org now has an Accessibility team, even.
API Integration, because WordPress is also gradually moving towards becoming an application platform. Themes will be more likely to integrate API interop features by default, especially as their benefits become more popular.
Fantastic episode
Thanks for commenting, CJ! I’ve been thinking a lot about API integrations – that’s been something I’ve gotten to play around with in custom themes recently, especially integrating Shopify and WordPress sites using the Shopify API and building custom Instagram widgets with the Instagram API. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Shopify API integration is one that is really sticking in my brain as something that more people should be exploring (not that I’m the only one, just that I haven’t seen much out there about it).
I guess one example would be the reverse of the Shopify API stuff I’ve done recently, which displays Shopify products on a WordPress site. Right now the only way I’ve been able to do the reverse (feature blog posts from WordPress on a Shopify site) is using RSS and jQuery, so that’s one thing the API will likely help with. Honestly, I don’t have many other use cases for the REST API stuff in mind, but I’m excited to see where it goes.
Certainly interesting to think what user contexts will be in a decade! Will it even be “mobile” the way we think about mobile now? 🙂
Thanks for your reply. Your time is much appreciated. 🙂
I agree: eCommerce and social (instagram, etc), will probably offer the best opportunity for API integration and WordPress.
Naomi C. Bush, whom I believe you mentioned in this podcast, created that very useful Gravity Forms integration with Stripe (which uses an API, I think).
I’ve also heard you extol Shopify on two separate shows. You even mentioned it as being the future, as part of eCommerce.
I’ve just taken a look at the Shopify API, and its new Embedded App SDK, looks awesomely interesting.
As far as I know, you’re the only one yet speaking out about blending Shopify and WordPress.
Wow. You rock!
Random question: but what mic are you using Zoe — your sound quality is great
Great Podcast again Troy…Thanks Zoey for sharing your insights as a Frontend Developer. I definitely sit on the fence of design & Frontend development, so good to get some inside knowledge and tips. My tip for WordPress themes is that it will be easier to construct well coded themes with a bit of drag and drop, but with also good code and ux design principle. A sort of WordPress design/dev kit but based on solid web standards and sound design principles. Like Webflow is forcing designers to think in a CSS way – this could be done in WordPress then it would be awesome.
But it can be for the advanced coder to help with the workflow of a demanding production cycle of websites. I also think there will be collaborative elements to the WordPress build – with integrated handover notes, movement from prototyping to theme development and content refining and the iterative design process would then focus work on WordPress. There’s going to be more refined api integrations as WordPress can do it all – but it needs to work with the best range to suit the variety of budget and needs of a growing market. Hey if this is not the future it should be IMHO. Hope someone/some people can make it so!