David Peralty, Blogging Pro

A few days ago I posted about the WordPress Theme and Plugin Challenge set by David Peralty at Blogging Pro. In that post, I promised more information about David and his reasons for posing the challenge. Both are worth a closer look.

Since my post about the challenge, Blogging Pro has added news and articles that include lies that bloggers tell about blogging, how to lead a balanced life as a blogger, other WordPress themes and plugins, trackback bugs, and the great “bug in” on July 4th to rid WordPress of critters. Writing for Blogging Pro keeps a guy busy.

Yet, when we talked by email. David was unstressed, professional, quick and friendly. Here are three question that I asked him with the answers he sent me.

What prompted you to lay down the WordPress challenge?

As I have been working on Blogging Pro for the Bloggy Network, I have been noticing a shift in both the quality and quantity of themes and plugins for WordPress. With the community not inspired by many of the contests that were around, I really started feeling a little bummed at where the community was heading. Blogging Pro, being one of the bigger WordPress information sites, I thought it could be a great platform to entice others to step up and create something new.

Are you a theme designer yourself?

I have attempted to design my own theme called Phoenixtheme (http://www.phoenixrealm.com/2006/02/02/phoenixtheme-v02/). It was relatively simple, but it was picked up pretty well by many people,
who them customized it for their needs. I also did a quick conversion of an open source web design Andreas 07 (http://www.phoenixrealm.com/2006/02/02/wpandreas07-v02/) so that it
could be used for the WordPress platform.

Aren’t there already enough WordPress themes and plugins to go around?

Honestly, I still feel some very important areas have been ignored. How many grunge themes are there? Themes that are more girly in nature? What about good three and four column themes? I still feel that there are also so many ways WordPress themes could go that have not been explored.

Also as the community grows, I have been noticing that there are about a dozen themes that do really well, while all the rest are more or less ignored. I would like to see that upper level increase to a group of two dozen superb themes.

I also think the same of WordPress plugins. You might say “how many plugins do you need to integrate an image gallery into your site?” but honestly I have yet to come across one that does what I need it to do, how I want to do it. With plugins, the different workflow that people have has to be taken into consideration, which is why you can have a dozen plugins that do the same thing, but people will follow the one that works the best for them.

I think that there are still more plugins in the minds of creative people that if given the right incentive, and motivation, will be released and we will all go “Wow!”.

David Peralty thinks the community deserves a “Wow!” David doesn’t just write for Blogging Pro. He is one. Read his posts. You’ll see.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

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