Ryan Sullivan started out as a freelancer building websites for clients until his freelance business got so busy he no longer had time to go to work. So he quit his day job and founded WP Site Care, a WordPress maintenance business that takes the stress out of WordPress and turns technology into an asset instead of a barrier.
Ryan is giving away a Flagship WP T-shirt and a Flagship theme valued at $250. All you have to do is tell us the number one problem you have with themes in order to enter the competition below.
Congratulations Jürgen Strauss! Ryan Sullivan has chosen you as the lucky winner of the competition! Thanks for your contribution and keep elevating! (October 2014).
Some of the highlights of this episode include:
– How Ryan built a WP startup to replace his job
– Building a startup is hard work – no doubt
– Ryan’s motto: Bust your ass!
Elevation Round Answers
Here are the answers to the questions in our Elevation round. Watch the interview to get the full scoop.
1. Their ability
2. Provided great service
3. Raise your prices
4. Show specific solutions and play to your strengths
5. Highrise and HelpScout
6. Communicate frequently
7. Do great work
8. Branding
You can reach out and thank Ryan on @ryandonsullivan.
Ryan suggested I interview Rob Neu Director of Digital Strategy at WP SiteCare. Rob, keep your eyes on your inbox.
Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below and tell us the number one thing you’d like to fix with themes in general, if you could wave a magic wand.
9 Responses
Great interview – Thanks Ryan! One of the challenges I always seem to run into with themes, and the most popular ones on Themeforest seem to suffer from this most, is that major theme updates, associated with WP updates, are a huge hassle. Even though we use child themes, the updates still cause a number of things to “stop working” and require some additional work to get everything back in order. We always do the theme updates on staging sites, but it’s just extra work. Would also like to “float” an idea and I guess this is sort of the reverse of how some of the theme frameworks work – what about a theme, with custom functions that can actually be added and removed as needed, rather than just turned off. So essentially a theme specific set of “plugins”, that are actually part of the theme framework, not WP plugins – would work like a lego kit……..add the ones that you need. So, enable a great theme design, at the same time keep the site “lean” by not having the functions that are not required loading. A thought/question for the theme developers.
Number one problem with themes with my clients is having a difficult time figuring out the theme, what goes where. The majority of themes as told to me by one of my clients is like buying a jigsaw puzzle. The picture looks nice when you buy, but when you get it home, its next to impossible to figure out.
The key word for the day is “Simplicity”
Number one problem with themes with my clients is having a difficult time figuring out the theme, what goes where. The majority of themes as told to me by one of my clients is like buying a jigsaw puzzle. The picture looks nice when you buy, but when you get it home, its next to impossible to figure out.
The key word for the day is “Simplicity”
The number one problem with themes for me is the lack of thorough documentation. Sure, some themes come with a tutorial for how to recreate the demo site, or basic installation and minor configuration. Most themes don’t come with a usability walkthrough that is simple enough to pass on to clients.
Themes, as a general rule, should come as “out of the box” as possible. While we do make up for that in maintenance costs (Thank you Troy for that nugget of wisdom!), it would be a welcomed addition to any theme package and would aid the client in better managing the site on their own.
It has to be theme developers prioritizing convincing a customer to buy their theme and not on how well that theme will perform for the customer. At its worst this takes the form of low quality code and a lack of attention to detail. It’s to the point I’m sure there have been times I’ve spent more hours fixing a theme a client had on their site than a developer put into creating the theme in the first place.
I understand the need to sell as many themes as possible, but it results in businesses installing a theme and trusting it to be a helping hand in building their business while the theme sabotages their on-site SEO and the performance of their site.
Thankfully it looks like Flagship is taking the right approach with their themes and demanding a high level of quality of themselves. The initial theme investment is larger than usual, but if the themes are coded as well as I’ve heard they will be then the payoff from the investment should be much larger and give their customers a competitive advantage.
There’s nothing wrong with having a beautiful looking theme, but there’s been enough putting lipstick on a pig in the WordPress theme market.
Themes don’t leverage the Customizer well or at all! I think the Customizer is the future-proof, portable way to do theme customizations “the WP Way”. It also makes you make better decisions for “decisions not options” rather than bulk uploading 1,00,000 options that force your user to drown in radio buttons.
Keep the theme super simple, with very flexible and organized customizations options and infinitely child themeable and I’m happy.
As easy it seems for us, to edit, order and even style content, it’s not all that intuitive for a non-tech user. Simplicity is key. But as for now there are parts of the site that are edited in the posts and pages area in the backend but some themes have special widgets on the home page that need to be edited in the widgets area which is not all that intuitive. The customizer makes it way easier – if themes make use of it. Still there is no easy way to order content in blocks, which in my opinion is one of the most searched features. Of course there are visual composers which do sometimes a good job in offering an intuitive interface but – if you change the theme and have all the shortcodes left that don’t work anymore it’s awful.
I guess frontend editing is one possible solution, although none of the existing and even announced tools are perfect and I find instead of too many individual solutions, there should be a more “official” way to have more layout and design possibilities per post or page. The post editor is already getting better all the time (preview of galleries and embed content etc.)
So, I’d use the magic wand to create an easy layout and style editor that doesn’t interfere with WordPress best practices and is extremely dummy save to use.
As easy it seems for us, to edit, order and even style content, it’s not all that intuitive for a non-tech user. Simplicity is key. But as for now there are parts of the site that are edited in the posts and pages area in the backend but some themes have special widgets on the home page that need to be edited in the widgets area which is not all that intuitive. The customizer makes it way easier – if themes make use of it. Still there is no easy way to order content in blocks, which in my opinion is one of the most searched features. Of course there are visual composers which do sometimes a good job in offering an intuitive interface but – if you change the theme and have all the shortcodes left that don’t work anymore it’s awful.
I guess frontend editing is one possible solution, although none of the existing and even announced tools are perfect and I find instead of too many individual solutions, there should be a more “official” way to have more layout and design possibilities per post or page. The post editor is already getting better all the time (preview of galleries and embed content etc.)
So, I’d use the magic wand to create an easy layout and style editor that doesn’t interfere with WordPress best practices and is extremely dummy save to use.