WordPress Developer - Thomas Griffin

It’s Good to Become a Beginner Again

in Insights by THOMAS GRIFFIN • November 4, 2019 • Leave a Comment

I’ve become a beginner again.

You know, for the last 10 or so years of my life, I’ve been working in the WordPress space developing products. I’m still intimately involved in that process every day at Awesome Motive, but it is no longer in the same capacity as before. I used to build them myself; now I lead and inspire others to do the building instead.

When you do the same thing for 10 years, you develop certain skills. You transition from a beginner to knowledgeable practitioner to seasoned veteran to expert. It’s a natural pattern for anyone in … [continue reading]

The Coding Chapter is Closing

in Personal by THOMAS GRIFFIN • March 26, 2019 • Leave a Comment

Chapters can be difficult to end.

Have you ever read a book that had you hanging on the edge, wishing the riveting story would continue to unfold, but knowing the reality that it would come to an end? It’s bittersweet.

Sometimes, we want a particular chapter to keep going. We get engrossed in the story and forget that stories need breaks. We become so enthralled with what’s happening that we forget to actually consider where the story is going.

It happens in books all the time, and it happens in life too.

For the last 10 years of my life, … [continue reading]

My WordCamp Raleigh 2016 Talk: Building a WordPress Product Business

in Business by THOMAS GRIFFIN • September 28, 2016 • 1 Comment

I’ve just given a talk at WordCamp Raleigh this past weekend on building a sustainable WordPress product business.

I’ve learned a lot over my 7 years in the WordPress space, and I’ve shared much of it in this talk. You can view the slides below.

… [continue reading]

Using WordPress as a SaaS Platform with OptinMonster

in WordPress by THOMAS GRIFFIN • July 26, 2015 • 1 Comment

I’m super excited to be presenting here at WordCamp Asheville about using WordPress as a SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform with OptinMonster.

If you haven’t heard yet, OptinMonster is by far the most popular product I’ve built to date. It has accumulated a huge following, and as of recently, we moved OptinMonster to a hosted platform built on WordPress.

Here are slides for the talk. You can find the links I used within the slides below the embedded presentation. Enjoy!

Slide Links

http://www.slideshare.net/griffinjt/using-wordpress-as-a-saas-platform-with-optinmonster https://thomasgriffin.io/wordpress-performance-outside-box-handling-retrieving-data/ https://thomasgriffin.io/a-creative-approach-to-efficient-and-scalable-wordpress-api-endpoints/ https://gist.github.com/thomasgriffin/11b859f0531a812bb273 https://thomasgriffin.io/recommends/pagely/ http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/… [continue reading]

The Journey from WordPress to Everything Else with OptinMonster

in Business, WordPress by THOMAS GRIFFIN • May 8, 2015 • 9 Comments

If you haven’t heard the announcement yet, here you go: OptinMonster has now moved from a WordPress-only plugin to a hosted platform solution.

I’ve heard more than a few people surprised by this decision, but this decision should come as no surprise to most people. After all, OptinMonster was intended to be a SaaS application in the first place but it failed miserably.

So instead, we pivoted and turned OptinMonster into a WordPress plugin. OptinMonster grew to be incredibly popular over a relatively short period of time, even with it being just a WordPress-only product. We quickly gathered tens of … [continue reading]

A Creative Approach to Efficient and Scalable WordPress API Endpoints

in Web Development, WordPress by THOMAS GRIFFIN • March 3, 2015 • 28 Comments

For starters, it was super tough trying to figure out how to give this post a title. I’ve settled on “A Creative Approach to Efficient and Scalable WordPress API Endpoints” because it seemed to do the topic the most justice.

As WordPress continues to evolve into an application platform, it is being used more and more frequently as the backend to power APIs (REST and (un?)REST alike). You can clearly see this by all the initiative and excitement around the new JSON API that will make it into WordPress at some point in the future. I am excited about where … [continue reading]

Inside my WordPress Developer Toolbox