Jean Batiste is one of those few people in the industry who do everything so well that they can’t help but be inspiring to the rest of us, he recently took time out his busy schedule to talk with us.
A little background to the Parisian born web virtuoso:
Jean Batiste Jung is the author of the very successful book WordPress Cookbook, a regular author of Smashing Magazine and own a dozen of websites, including WpRecipes.com, CatsWhoBlog and PsdVibe to name a few.
This guy is one of the real greats and we at Web Courses Bangkok think, if your not following his work… well…. you should be!
For those who don`t know CatsWhoCode, please can you tell us how and why you started the site.
I’ve started the site along with a friend in June 2008. We were, at the time blogging in French and wanted to experience worldwide interaction. My friend quickly stopped his involvement with CWC due to his work, so I stayed as the only owner of the site.
What has been some of the best feedback you have received?
Being invited to blog on the most popular tech blogs have been a good feedback. But to be honest the better is to see that many people are contacting me for jobs, even when I wasn’t looking for any freelance work!
Do you have a schedule for content and how do you find ideas for new content?
Finding great ideas is the hardest part of blogging, in my opinion. I try to fit to one post per week, but depending of my time and ideas, it can be less. Quality always matters more than quantity.
What do you have to recommend for People who want to get into WordPress?
It’s WordPress, with a capital P :p Learn it, it’s easy.
Do you think learning PHP before learning WordPress is useful?
If you want to be a web developer, then yes, sure, PHP is a must learn. Otherwise, it depends of what you want to do with wp.
What are your favorite plug ins for WordPress?
WP Database Backup! This one can save your life. And Akismet is great too.
How long have you been working with WordPress?
Since 2006.
How did you get on The Smashing Network?
I wrote some articles for them. They launched the network, and I asked if they could be interested in having my blog in it. I was lucky enought and they said yes.
What 5 web languages do recommend learning first?
XHTML/CSS, PHP and JavaScript.
What advice would you give to people starting out in web development?
If you’re passionated, you’ll be a success. Web Development is easy, but you have to love it.
Jean-Baptiste, Thank you for taking the time to talk to WCB and we hope to see more of your work soon.
Thanks for the interview. Good luck to you!
