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This article was actually written back in 2021, 6 weeks after Glyn joined us but a failure in our communication (yes, even when we sit in the same office!) led to this not being published. Hopefully you enjoy it!
Hey! My name is Glyn, nice to meet you. I’ve been working with Dave for just over six weeks now and I’m just here to briefly introduce myself and let anyone interested know how it’s going.
Table of Contents
My Background
Let me start by coming clean about something first. I am completely new to WordPress and Woocommerce and I was only vaguely aware of Dave’s plugins, just from conversations he and I have had about them in the past. I worked in sales for a while when I was in my late teens and for the last decade or so I’ve been behind the bar. I knew I wanted to slowly take a step back from that business but I wasn’t entirely sure what was a good option for me.
I also live in Greece, which has had two full lockdowns and multiple rules about closing earlier so needless to say it was a great time to figure out something new. My job was recession-proof, but it clearly isn’t pandemic-proof. So, the choice to move into something that I could do from home was easy. After messing around a bit but not having much of a clue about anything except playing games and watching… doesn’t matter, I decided to pull the trigger and spend my last money on a laptop. A friend had sorted me out with a digital marketing course and about a month later I noticed Dave had posted on Facebook that he was looking for content writers. I leaped at the opportunity, and here we are. So this has been a bit of a crash course for me, and it’s definitely a learning curve. Luckily, it turns out I actually enjoy it.
My Early Experiences
We just jumped straight into working with WooCommerce and the Faster Woo Widgets (now named Super Speedy Filters), so my first WordPress experience was with both of these. Is that the right way to do things? I don’t know. But I have been learning so I’m not complaining. I started off with a laptop and constantly taking notes because there were, and still are definitely, a lot of terms I am not familiar with. Over the weeks, the notebook comes out less and less, so either something is going quite well or just horribly, horribly wrong.
There are definitely things I struggle with more than others. Things that I will have to keep trying to figure out better. Things like canonicalisation, There is no reason for that to be as confusing as it was and if someone asks me that behind the bar I can guarantee you I am pouring that person a shot and changing the subject, for now. I’ll get there. Hierarchical category lists, taxonomy, metadata, all subjects that I also had to take a closer look at.
Stuff Doer
I think you can imagine writing user guides for programs or products you aren’t familiar with can be a bit daunting, but Dave has been better at explaining things than I expected originally (Seriously, I’m a bit surprised), and there is no way I would be able to explain to other people if I don’t have a clue what’s going on myself.
Of course, for these articles, a lot of it is taking screenshots, and that’s just a time-consuming thing for him to do personally. But for me to get to the point where it’s the right screenshot, I like to and need to know what stuff it is I’m doing. And in the process of setting everything up, with different widget setting combinations and different themes, and so on, I stumble upon the occasional bug. Not only is that fun for me, it’s also practical for Dave so he can fix them and create a better experience for everyone. Plus I get to peek over his shoulder and also learn things I didn’t even know I wanted to learn, as he has a tendency to go off on tangents. This seems like a win/win to me in these cases though.
I wasn’t aware I was going to be writing this particular article until quite recently, so I didn’t really keep track of everything as well as I could have. Now that I know that this is apparently a possibility, I will keep it in mind so maybe next time I can go into a little more detail. Maybe take some screenshots. I’ve definitely become a big fan of ShareX, even using it in my day-to-day life so I can do more of that.
I hope you enjoyed this little introduction as it definitely doesn’t seem very helpful. Cheers, Glyn.
