Matt Johnson is is co-founder and managing partner of Alley Interactive, a full-service web agency that works with large media companies and nonprofit organization. Matt is speaking on Content Migration: Beyond WXR at WordCamp Minneapolis.

What got you into working with WordPress?

I co-founded a firm called Alley Interactive that works on web projects for large media companies and other content producers. When we started Alley, Drupal was one of the only games in town for this kind of work. As WordPress began increasing in popularity with individual journalists for their own personal sites, we began to see increased demand to use it for actual newsroom operations, and eventually began building major client sites with it. It’s been a major positive feedback loop since then.

What do you like best about WordPress?

I think it has a very well thought-out extensibility layer for developers, and a very smart roadmap to move that layer forward as new technologies become important in the industry. There a bunch of CMSes with good developer tools, though; what sets WP apart from the pack is how intuitive and easy it is for the end-users who need to work with the dashboard, even if they aren’t technical.

What WordPress project has been your favorite?

Oh, come on…it’s like picking a favorite child.

What’s your WordPress design preference?
○ Starter Theme   ○ Free Theme   ○ Premium Theme   ○ Framework   ○ Other

Framework

What would we not guess about you outside of WordCamp?

I’ve never really built a small WordPress site. In fact, the only one I’ve ever really done was my own wedding website. The first time I touched a WP site, it was to build one for a client that had 500,000 posts and millions of pageviews per month.

What do you like about WordCamps?

I like talking about ideas and best practices. It’s easy to feel lost in the weeds in day to day client work.