Devrims #TechTalk 064: Birgit Pauli-Haack

Devrims: Hi Birgit, thanks for being here with us today. Please tell us about your background and how you got into web development and the WordPress ecosystem. 

Birgit: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a great honor. I started building websites as a hobby for the local citizen net, and curate information on How to build websites. After moving to the US, I learned programming and started my agency in 2002. I have been using WordPress since 2009. 

Devrims: You have experience in various technologies like HTML5, JavaScript, mobile dev, XML, SQL, and different frameworks/languages. What drew you specifically to WordPress?

Birgit: In our agency we were building our own custom content management system with integrated CRM, events management and newsletters. While I was volunteering for the NAples Free-Net we needed to replace our current CMS for nonprofits, which was highly outdated. After test a few dozens CMS among them WordPress. WordPress came out as the best CMS for the volunteer organization as it as open-source, well distributed with hosting companies, ample documentation online and a vibrant community. After rolling out the new CMS with about 40 nonprofits, I would also see that with such a system available, custom development in a small shop wasn’t feasible anymore and we switched to WordPress to be our platform also for our commercial customers. 

Devrims: You curate community voices on Gutenberg Times – can you explain what Gutenberg Times is and your goals with that project?

Birgit: Gutenberg Times is all about the block editor of WordPress. It started in 2017 as a Storify and became a full-blown website in 2018 with a newsletter. In 2019 I also started the podcast Gutenberg Changelog. The goal was and still is to amplify all the news about the most important innovation with WordPress raise it above the noise, especially in the beginning and be a cheer leader for the early developers and early adopters. It’s a very focus publication and a weekly newsletter. I just finished our 298th Weekend edition. 

Devrims: You also co-host the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. What are some of the most interesting updates or discussions you’ve had on the podcast recently?

Birgit: With the every podcast episode, I invite a co-host to go over the latest Gutenberg plugin release go a bit more in-depth as to what’s changed. We also talk about the upcoming major WordPress release and other tools and tutorials. We just recorded our 103rd episode that will come out Sunday  – The number 100 edition, I invited the team that worked with NASA on their new website from the Lone Rock Point  and we talk about the scale of the migration of thousands of sites and hundred of thousands of post to the new block-based site. The episode 102 with Jessica Lychik was also exciting to learn about the Speed Build challenge at WordCamp Europe and how she challenged Matt Mullenweg to do one as well. 

Devrims: Beyond curating content and the podcast, are there other ways you contribute to the WordPress project and community?

Birgit: Yes, I have been a speaker, organizer, and volunteer and various WordCamps, small, regional, or flagship events. Before the pandemic I was the co-organizer of monthly meetups in my town.  For about 18 months, I also was the documentation lead for end-user documentation, also before the pandemic. 

Since 2021, I am a full-time contributor to WordPress core, sponsored by Automatic’s Five for the Future program. I have been part of six major WordPress release squads 6.0. 6.1 and 6.2 as Documentation co-lead and in 6.3 and 6.4 a Editor Triage co-lead. I was release lead on five Gutenberg plugin releases. Until the meetings were rolled into the Dev Chat, I was a regular facilitator for Core Editor meetings. I wrote proposals for Developer Hours, and the Developer Blog, for which I manage the editorial process. I still speak and volunteer at WordCamps.

Devrims: We noticed you’ve contributed to open-source projects like the Mailchimp Wrapper and Mango Plugins. What motivates you to get involved in open source?

Birgit: Oh, wow that is a long time ago. Those two project are all ColdFusion based. I support open-source as a hat tip to all the giants on whose shoulders, I built my business on. 

Devrims: How frequently should backups be performed, and what should businesses look for in a hosting provider’s backup and recovery solutions?

Birgit: Backups should be done on an ongoing basis, automate it at least daily. Once in a while you need to test if the restore from backup process still works for your sites. A hosting partner should offer backups out of the box, and help with the restore from backup process. Ideally, this service is already included in the hosting fee, together with automatic security scanning and malware removal. 

Devrims: Why is it important to have access to specialized WordPress support from a hosting provider? What level of customer support should businesses expect from a top-tier WordPress hosting provider?

Birgit: WordPress managed hosting is the only viable option for business that don’t have their own IT department. I actually work with a few organization and business that didn’t trust their IT department with the maintenance of their web server or the website. They rather worked with a partner that knew WordPress inside out and are able to stay on top of all the new development in WordPress. If you are a small business, having a true hosting partner at your site is crucial. They will track down plugin conflicts after updates, and walk you through some lesser intuitive steps on keeping your site online, like renewal of your domain name or adding a new collaborator to the site. Or point you to the right article to learn more about a specific feature. They also keep you on the latest PHP and WordPress version, so you wouldn’t have to think about these things. 

Devrims:  Let’s do a quick rapid-fire round.

Devrims: You’ve worked as an application developer, DBA, and project manager spanning many industries. What skills have been most transferable across domains?

Birgit: Problems solving skills, application development is probably the most transferable from one language to the next. I learned early on how Websites work with servers, database, application server, and client-side development. The principles are still the same. It has just gotten way more complicated to get all the devices served, and transporting an exponential amount of data across the networks. 

Devrims: For someone early in their tech career, what advice would you give on building a diverse skill set like yours?

Birgit: Start building apps as soon as possible. Each project will teach you new skills. Everything and everyone needs to get some work done online. Help them automate the tedious stuff. Contribute to open-source. 

Devrims: We’d love to have a snapshot of your work desk.

Devrims: Who would you like to recommend us for our next interviews?

Birgit: Carolina Nymark