Gerhard Potgieter – WordPress Developer

This week’s WordPress developer, is Gerhard Potgieter (@diekloon) who listens to what people want, taking the frustrations that they’re experiencing and then developing solutions for them. Gerhard codes in a laid back environment, sipping on a cup of strong coffee with music from some Bellville rock bands blaring through his earphones.

The passion for web development started when he was about 14 years old, where he experimented on HTML. In his later years, at high school he learned ASP and at varisty level he learned .NET. Thereafter he focused on PHP/Javascript and in the last three years, WordPress specific development.

As his day job as a financial software developer, he mainly uses Delphi; he freelances at night. His WordPress related work he has completed includes a few websites for clients, modifying themes set out by the client and therefore feels that he “can’t claim this as his own”.

Recently he developed an SMS plugin for WordPress, an idea spawned by Rafiq himself. Its called International SMS Subscription Manager, a WordPress SMS plugin, and it is about two weeks old with just over 620 downloads to date.

His portfolio of work completed to date (both on WordPress and not) can be viewed here.

A few more personal and advice type questions:

Q: What is your most satisfying and rewarding experience while working as a WordPress developer?
A:The ease of working with the framework and seeing how your product simplifies task for WordPress site owners.

Q: What are your interests besides coding?
A:I love the outdoors, so when I get the chance I love to go camping or attending festivals. Online its just about everything web, I also like to blog.

Q: What advice would you give (if any) to someone looking to enter the world of WordPress development?
A:Just give it a bash, its honestly easier than you think. Start by unraveling some themes and plugins and or doing modifications to them to get to learn the platform and from there start building your own.