Certified WordPres Expert Developer since Nov 2013
I am a coder who has fallen in love with WordPress. When I am not spending time with my kids I am coding, my favourite task is extending excellent plugins like WooCommerce.
I don't really like the use the word expert, because everything is moving so fast, for example I once read a book learning Ruby on Rails and by the time I finished the book I just about had to start all over again because they brought out a new major version of Rails and so many conventions had changed.
But when it comes to PHP and WordPress I have to consider myself an expert. I have been developing in PHP for 11 years and am well versed in all the latest advanced methods, I have built many successful API connections, both clients and servers, know all about namesspaces and use PDO for my database connections, all of course using OOP PHP :-).
But of course WordPress takes away the need for a lot of those things, by providing classes and functions we can use to make our lives easier, but none of it is possible without a good grounding in PHP, in fact with a good grounding and knowledge of OOP PHP anything can be made possible in the world of WordPress.
Over the last 7 years I have specialised in WordPress. In the last 6 years I have built around 800 WordPress plugins. Dozens of them being standalone plugins to perform vital functionality for WordPress sites, enhancements to the comments feature, sending data to an API from contact forms etc. However most of my work has been creating extensions for other plugins such as WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, Learndash, Events Manager, SportsPress, Buddypress, payment gateways for the likes of Clearent, Pesapal, and Chase, and much much more.
My Plugins
During the last several years several of the plugins I have written have been general enough to be useful for release. I have chosen to release most of these in the WordPress plugin repository free and open source.