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Mark Zahra of RebelCode and Donnacha MacGloinn of RedPen take a break from battling the forces of darkness and discuss the best steps to take if you want to make a living as a coder in the WordPress world.

The hidden benefits of managing a plugin project, including the level of seniority at which it is acceptable to shout and call the developers “code monkeys”.

The advantages and disadvantages of selling plugins through a marketplace.

Tectonic shifts in the world of WordPress marketplaces.

How a platform owner can play nice when deciding to close down their third-party marketplace.

Why acquisition feels a bit like pimping your own mother.

Reactions to the massive WordPress switch from React.

The best alternative Javascript frameworks, from the point of vue of Mark’s developers.

Why it might be a good idea to have Mark Zuckerberg on your side when you’re mugged by patent trolls.

Donnacha coerces Mark into making a big money bet with complicated terms.

ThemeForest and CodeCanyon are crack cocaine for WordPress beginners.

Trying to teach Web Design to a millennial.

What Envato teaches us about the importance of making your products shiny, rather than functional.

Why Mark, unlike the owners of Envato, is an idealist and will, as a result, die penniless.

Jean Galea’s advice to Donnacha to avoid creating a product that requires support, and why RebelCode are completely ignoring that insight with their upcoming blockbuster bookings plugin.

How, instead of making your own plugin, you could make more money by charging exorbitant amounts for customizations of someone else’s plugin.

How to approach an existing plugin owner and ask them to refer customization clients to you, and how that might actually land you a full-time lead developer job.

A sneak peak at an upcoming episode in which an actual owner will reveal THE INSIDE DIRT on running a marketplace, while flopping about as naked as the day he was born. Bring whiskey.

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Jean Galea and Donnacha MacGloinn, standing in for James Laws this week, go deep into the fascinating story of Akshat Choudhary, founder and CEO of blogvault.net, a WordPress backup service and the most successful WordPress-related business in Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India.

Among the topics covered in this free-wheeling, wide-ranging discussion:

• How Akshat started off in WordPress, what he did before and his future plans.
• How, as a lone founder with no previous experience of WordPress, he grew BlogVault to a company of 13.
• How he managed to juggle a demanding day job with working on his WordPress startup every evening.
• What he doesn’t like about the name of his company.
• How it felt when a massive competitor launched a very similarly-named product just a week after his, but how it turned out to be a good thing.
• How to deal with the pressure of being a small fish in a rapidly-changing business environment.
• Why it is worth doubling down on the WordPress market.
• The quality of Internet service in India.
• Is India a scary place to visit? Will a taxi driver punch you in the face and take your Macbook?
• What are the best Indian destinations for digital nomads?
• How Akshat’s new malware protection service, Malcare, grew naturally from BlogVault.
• What is the difference between Blogvault’s malware removal feature and Malcare, his new service.
• Why he should have released Malcare six months ago.
• Donnacha’s suggestions to improve the marketing of Malcare.
• How Jean met Akshat, and what most impressed him.
• The importance of traveling to meet your customers in person.
• Bringing the atmosphere of WordCamps back home to India.
• Gaining big customers such as WPEngine, Godaddy, LiquidWeb, Pantheon, FlyWheel, Cloudways, WPServeur and Savvii.nl.
• Advantages of running backup and malware-detection tasks through a service, rather than with WordPress plugins on your own hosting.
• Why continual, incremental backups are vital for eCommerce websites.
• Is it better to be good at tech or good at marketing?
• Finding good programmers in Bangalore, and how to retain them.
• Why, despite oversaturation in the WordPress market, there is always room for another good product.
• Why Akshat is pretty sure that one of your WordPress sites has malware that you are unaware of.

https://blogvault.net/

BlogVault

Malcare

Migrate Guru – Free WordPress plugin

blogVault (@blogVault) | Twitter

Akshat Choudhary (@akshatc) | Twitter

https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshatchoudhary/

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In this episode we have Nirav Mehta on board as a guest. We talk about his experience in Indian startups as well as business analytics and how he runs things over at Putler.com.

Furthermore we find out what are the 4 most important metrics for a WordPress plugin/theme development business, how to apply a data-driven approach to life and how to deal with cultural differences in practice.

Shownotes

• Putler.com

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In the first part of our discussion with Andrew Farrugia, we discussed nutrition and emphasised the fact that being healthy and fit depends very much on what you eat. However, that’s only part of the equation. You also need to be active and train. Training is divided into cardiovascular training (for example running or swimming) and resistance training (bodyweight exercies, weights). In this episode we tackle many typical questions that tend to arise when one starts training. Here are a few topics we get into:

• What are the typical body fat percentage ranges for a healthy man/woman.
• Should you eat more on training days? How much more?
• How to take body measurements and fat percentages.
• Training in a holistic manner across the three planes of motion.
• The importance of rest and sleep.
• Can you target fat loss in specific parts of the body?
• Macronutrients and the typical ways people under or overeat these macros.
• Good and bad carbs, good and bad fats.

A man competing in fitness competitions will typically have a body fat percentage of 6% or under, while a woman would have 15% or under. Under normal conditions though, the ranges for men are 7-15% and those of women are 18-25%.

Shownotes and Links

Nick Littlehales book on Sleep

Basics about macronutrients:
https://www.mirrorfriendly.com/nutrition/the-only-first-nutrition-lesson/

Basics about the importance of fats and different types of fats:
https://www.mirrorfriendly.com/nutrition/eat-your-fats/

Beginner workouts in three different planes of motion (sagittal, frontal and transverse planes):

Sagittal plane (forwards/backwards):

Frontal plane (right/left):

Tranverse (rotate right/rotate left):