Pinoy WordPress

Right after I posted the winners of the Wordpress Theme Competition by ArenaWP on the PinoyWordpress.com blog, I decided to contact both Derek and Gail to get a interview. I emailed them almost at the same time with a very similar email sent. Almost like a template where I just changed a few lines. And Derek was the first one to reply. (Maybe Gail gets too much emails a day from her fans, maybe my email got buried but we hope to hear from her soon.)

P_WP: Hi and welcome to PinoyWordpress.com, let’s start out first with how you got started in the web industry. Are you more of a technical person that can present websites pretty well into some art form? Or are you more of an artist that learned some technical knowledge on how to make websites? What is your background?

Derek: I feel like I’ll hurt my head if I really sit down to think about this one. I think it would be better if I dropped a general background on how I came to find myself in this “aspiring” designer mode.

About two years ago I stumbled across a weblog by the name of UNEASYsilence. The site was a one man personal blog sharing strange and offbeat news. I soon found myself working alongside the site owner turned friend as a contributing editor. Soon enough, the site was due for a redesign. I guess that redesign is what started this whole hobby turned semi-serious web design phase that I’m living. I didn’t get too serious about learning of valid source code and accessibility until about 6 months ago. A classical newbie.

My main goal as far as web design is concerned are clean, consistent, bloat free pages.

P_WP: Very cool, so when did you start using Wordpress?

Derek: Exactly two years back in May of 2004 while contributing at UNEASYsilence. On the side I experimented (with semi-successful results) using a Blogger.com page for personal rants. I soon grew tiresome of the site and ultimately deleted any traces of it from existence. I managed to go a few month sans personal blogging before the WordPress.com beta invites started rolling out. I jumped on that bandwagon for a bit and built quite a following. Not surprisingly, I dropped that as well opting instead for my own hosted site at 5ThirtyOne.

P_WP: Do you mind sharing about 5ThirtyOne, how did you thought about that name? Is this like a date on May 31? Anniversary? Birthday? Or something about time, like 5:31.

Derek: Doesn’t anyone read the About pages on blogs anymore?! Kidding. It depends on what angle you’re coming from. 5-3-1 because it’s easier than 5-4-3-2-1. Or, 5.31 representing a date of significant value. I’ll leave it at that. I promised a few people I would come up with something a little more animated and far fetched. I’m still working on it.

P_WP: Why Wordpress? Have you tried other stuff like b2evolution, Drupal, Geeklog, e107, phpNuke, PostNuke, Mambo, Joomla etc?

Derek: I would have to say that the community and active development of WordPress is what convinced me to continue using the software on my personal site. I did have a chance to experiment with Mambo and Joomla but walked away soon after. There is something about the large WordPress community that reminds of many large families.

P_WP: Which reminds me of TextPattern. They are also like some kind of large family. And their unity is kind of different considering that some TextPattern users even joined together to come up with TextDrive which is a hosting company that they call “Community Owned.” Have you ever played around of heard about them?

Derek: I can’t say I’ve spent too much time with TextPattern so no comment I cant cheat on WordPress now can I?

P_WP: I noticed you comply to the W3C standards pretty well, how important is this to you?

Derek: Aside from assuring – to some degree – consistent results in multiple browsers across the board, validating source code helps to eliminate erroneous source code. To be honest, I get a tingly feeling when the W3C validator displays a “Passed validation” in green lettering.

P_WP: I hear ‘ya, yes the green lettering does give some level of satisfaction and is irritating to see those red letters, Haha. Now changing the topic, do you play around with Flash?

Derek: I don’t play around with Flash for a number of reasons. I hate the idea that a special plugin is required to view specific content. Rehash – I prefer websites with as little bloat as necessary. I drop Flash in the bloat boat. With the advances of CSS combined with AJAX, I can relax knowing that what little eye candy bits I do use on a page will degrade gracefully for readers visiting the site on an older computer or mobile browser.

Here’s a question for Flash designers, why the tiny pixel fonts? I know the average grandma can navigate basic XHTML / CSS pages. I’m not so sure how one might manage on a Flash page with tiny pixelated fonts.

P_WP: Very true, me too, I do not know what’s up with the pixel fonts. What about PHP, are you well versed in PHP/MySQL?

Derek: I’m going to say I have an intermediate understanding of PHP. WordPress is PHP driven so I guess I need to know a little something about the backend.

If there is something in particular I might find myself stumbling on, the plethora of documentation and the general knowledge of the community are all I need for support.

P_WP: I totally agree with you. Manual on PHP.net+Google to search for the solution is all you need. Maybe I will plug for two other communities like PHPUGPh.com and PHPHilippines.com. (sharing the link love) As for designing, any design influences? What website designs are those that inspire you or that you admire?

Derek: The following are a couple websites that I admire: http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk, http://www.binarybonsai.com and http://shauninman.com/plete

As far as individuals I admire, I’ve been doing a great deal of research on work done by Maya Lin. More recently, her Systematic Landscapes exhibition. Inspiration was drawn from her physical surroundings.

While not at all web design related, I find work inspired by natural settings intriguing.

P_WP: Very nice website choices. They are influences of many modern web designers today. I haven’t heard of Maya Lin though and I checked her out for a few seconds and she indeed has some impressive work too. Going back to Wordpress stuff, what Wordpress Plugins you cannot live without?

Derek: Ultimate Tag Warrior by Christine Davis.

P_WP: Christine Davis is also an excellent theme maker too. I like her work. How much time do you spend in front of the computer? And when not in front of the computer, what are your other hobbies, sports or special interest?

Derek: The time I spend in front of the computer depends on whether or not I have project deadlines to meet. I guess it would be safe to say that I am online for about 10 hours of the day. This includes casual browsing, catching up on blogs, searching for offbeat news to post on UNEASYsilence, and any random browsing I do from my mobile phone.

I have discovered that spending too much time on a computer actually hampers productivity. For that reason, if I am not online, I find myself doodling ideas out on a Moleskine notebook, eating, sleeping, and spending time with someone special.

P_WP: Just a geeky question about your mobile phone, is your phone running, Windows Mobile? PalmOS? or SymbianOS?

Derek: None of the above. Sadly, I am limited to a Samsung A-920. The upside is that I get unlimited everything, including Ev-DO access.

P_WP: Can you give us a brief story on your Filipino background. Where your parents from, what province, did you grow up in the US? Spent any long periods of time in the Philippines? Do you still speak Tagalog?

Derek: I must admit that I am a little rough around the edges regarding my Filipino background. I actually had to call my family members to recheck my answers. Both my parents are from the Philippines. Much of the family moved stateside back in the 70’s. Once side originating from Pampanga, the other from Manila. It’s true. However cliche the answer of “oh I’m from the Philippines, Manila to be exact” is, it’s very much true. My moms side of the family, the Almeda’s, used to manufacture food processing equipment.

As far as spending time in the Philippines… Apparently I flew back when I was 8 months old. Not surprisingly, I don’t remember a thing. One of these days I hope to fly back to spend a month or two with family. While I do understand Tagalog, i think traveling back would be a great opportunity to learn how to speak fluently.

P_WP: Which is Better? American chicks or hot pinays?

Derek: Treading in shark infested waters with this question. In an attempt to keep my head above the water, I’ll just say that I’ve never had an “opportunity” present itself involving what you call an “American chick”. However, I will say that I have dipped my toes into the non-Pinay waters.

Pinay or not, lumpia will always put a grin on my face. Now that I’m thinking about it, Chinese have eggrolls, Koreans have bulgogi, and Japanese have sushi. I think your question should have been based on food.

P_WP: Good suggestion… Do you love Adobo? Or any other Pinoy dish like Kare-kare?

Derek: Kare-kare. I know I’m missing something else…

P_WP: Any last few words for the PinoyWordpress.com community?

Derek: Well first off, I’d like to thank Benj for the recognition. I try my best to give back to the WordPress community whenever I can so don’t be strangers I look forward to exploring the rest of the Filipino community who just so happen to be powered by WordPress. Blogs are usually my window to the rest of the world and as you are all now aware, I have some cultural catching up to do.

P_WP: Thanks also for the interview. We look forward to see you part of the mailing list and if you have the time, maybe you can contribute some Wordpress stories on the blog.

Derek: Sounds good

Derek Punsalan recently won for the Most Creative Design in the Wordpress Theme Competition by ArenaWP. More about Derek and his work can be found on his website 5ThirtyOne.

Interviewed by Benj Arriola of ActionOnline.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 22nd, 2006 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.