Nidhi Jain, a WordPress blogger, organizer and speaker is with us today for an exclusive interview so without further ado, let’s hear it from the woman herself.
WPJuicer: What is your background, & how did you first get involved with WordPress?
Nidhi: I came from a non-IT background. When I was in school I wanted to work in the IT field. That’s why I chose computer engineering. After completing B.Tech in Computer Science, I was looking for a career opportunity and after six months of struggle, I found WordPress. I found out that it’s an online, open-source, and powerful tool and has the largest community.
WordPress provides many opportunities to contribute in different areas, including code contribution in core and plugins to make it an excellent platform, as well as opportunities to learn from community wisdom and contribute towards the best of WordPress community. So I chose WordPress for my career and started theme development first.
I saw that WordPress is available in many languages, so I thought we should make WordPress better for Hindi so it would be easier for people to read WordPress. That’s why I started WordPress translations in Hindi. It was my first contribution to the WordPress community. After that, every year we organized WordPress Translation Day in Udaipur.
I love to help people and solve their problems, so I started resolving problems on WordPress support. Whenever I have free time, I spend it giving support to people and focusing on resolving bugs in Core & Meta.
WPJuicer: What should readers know about all the stuff you’re doing in WordPress these days?
Nidhi: Currently I am taking care of creating and pushing new modules and widgets for our products at IdeaBox Creations. On top of that, I am also handing a few clients of my own and enjoying solving issues and making clients happier.
Apart from that, I am involved in the WordPress Community as a Translator, Core Contributor also in the next WordPress major release squad. So, I am very excited to be a part of that.
WPJuicer: You currently work at IdeaBox Creations as a Senior WordPress Developer. What are your responsibilities there? Could you share any interesting stories?
Nidhi: Well to sum up what my job can quite be a challenge. Let me give it a try. To begin with, I am responsible for making sure all the products are regularly updated and any addressed bugs are fixed as soon as possible. Of Course, it is not possible to take care of all this on a daily basis by myself alone so I have to coordinate with my awesome teammates. We collectively tackle all the problems and keep making our products better.
Another part of my job is to make sure all the things we do here are top-notch and up to the standard, we follow here at IdeaBox Creations. Again, at this too, I always turn to my reliable teammates for help and workload management.
WPJuicer: Nidhi, you were at WordCamp Europe 2020 recently as a contributor. How are WordCamps beneficial for the community? How does contributing to WordCamps help you boost your career? Do you have any specific buddy or a group of buddies that you love to hang out with at WordCamps?
Nidhi: I attended virtual WordCamp Europe for the second time. I attended my first WordCamp Europe last year thanks to the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship. It was the first time I traveled such a distance. From contributing translations myself, I used the experience to try and help others become active contributors and celebrate the community. I just love the contributor day and I got a chance to help beginners to translate WordPress and learn from them too.
WordCamps provide a fun, affordable, and potentially profitable experience. And, no matter your experience or skill level, there is an opportunity for meeting new people and career growth as well. People can be a part of WordCamps in many ways like as an attendee, volunteer, or as a speaker so people can show off their expertise in a particular WordPress area.
It can be very worthwhile to attend sessions across a variety of tracks. Even if you don’t know a lot about a particular subject, you may be surprised by how much knowledge you can pick up. So for those who want to pursue a career in WordPress, I would like to suggest that they should attend WordCamp so that they have the opportunity to interact with many other people and learn something new.
I love hanging out with everyone I meet at Wordcamps and make those moments memorable.
WPJuicer: Could you please share your experience and tips for setting up a better WordPress Community?
Nidhi: My WordPress journey so far has been surprising. The WordPress community is like my family now. There are so many amazing people who are friendly, help each other, and motivate and inspire me every time. I’ve learned a lot from this community and I always motivate people to join the WordPress community and build their career with WordPress.
For a better WordPress community, it always matters that you are supportive to others. One thing I want to mention is that women are also doing fantastic work in this community. So, we should encourage more and more women to come out and show off their skills. In our local Meetups or WordCamps, we should encourage more women participation.
WPJuicer: What are your perspectives on the future of WordPress? Do you think that the WordPress market will keep on growing? What is that one feature that you would love to see in WordPress?
Nidhi: WordPress powers more than 35% of all the websites on the Internet and day by day it becomes more powerful. If we compare WordPress to other platforms, the WordPress market is consistently growing. On that basis, we can say without any doubt that WordPress is the most popular way to create a website using a CMS.
After the Gutenberg block editor, it became easy to create pages according to the user’s needs as compared to before. Block editor is growing and improving day by day and is the future of WordPress and web design. Also, the full site editing will be coming in the upcoming WP release. The full site editor offers greater control for non-technical users over front-end design and display. I believe it is a more solid technical solution for the future of web development. I’m very excited about trying it out.
I have no doubt that WordPress will have more users as compared to now in the coming years.
WPJuicer: Could you please describe your typical workday? Are there any other projects that you are proud of? Can you share some of the most complicated or most interesting projects that you have worked on recently?
Nidhi: When I started learning about WordPress, I was a newcomer and didn’t have much knowledge about development with WordPress, and after a month of hard work and dedication I created my first standalone theme for WordPress. To this day, that is my most proud moment with WordPress. I accept every project as a challenge because, with every project, I get to learn small as well as big things.
Some projects are memorable for us because we put so much effort on that. I still remember when we were about to launch our first product PowerPack for Beaver Builder, we were working very hard day and night almost 12 hours a day. Finally, the day came and we launched that. When we got positive reviews on that, that too was our proud moment.
WPJuicer: Within the WordPress Community, who do you consider among your best friends?
Nidhi: Within the WordPress community, I consider everyone my good friend.
WPJuicer: What do you look for in a managed WordPress host?
Nidhi: I always look for these benefits in managed WordPress hosting:
- Support team
- Flexible, Suitable and Scalable plans
- Vast security
- Site speed
- Automatic backups
- Developer friendly
WPJuicer: Who should we interview next, and why?
Nidhi: There are so many amazing people I know in the WordPress community who are doing excellent work in the community and here I am going to mention a few people with whom you can connect: Naoko Takano, Puneet Sahalot, Michelle Frechette, Abdullah Ramzan, Shital Marakana, Usman Khalid, Meher Bala, Sergey Biryukov & Bridget Willard.
WPJuicer: We have talked too much about your professional life. Let’s tell our readers about your hobbies and interests. What does Nidhi do other than work? (Can we have a pics)
Nidhi: I love traveling a lot because every time I travel, I get a new experience especially when I travel alone. I have traveled to places like Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Kerala, Ahmedabad, Surat, Berlin, Pattaya, Bangkok & Phuket. Most of my travel experiences are aligned with WordCamps so I get to contribute and travel too!
And I can say I am a foodie and I love to try new dishes and just for that reason, I started an Instagram account called NJ Foodie where I share my food experiences.
I like to make some hand made craft items for my loved ones. I love to write thoughts whatever in my mind and also I love photography and to live a life full of joy and happiness.
Here are some moments when the WordCamp Asia team met in Bangkok and spent some time together. I feel proud that I am a part of the team.
Here are some memorable moments of WordCamp Europe 2019 in Berlin. It was my first experience of international WordCamp and it will be memorable for me forever.
I am a big Bollywood fan. I love watching movies, listening to songs. When I’m not developing and coding away on my Mac, I most love hanging out with my friends and relatives, especially playing with my niece.
WPJuicer: Any other thoughts or things you wish to mention?
Nidhi: Yes! I would like to thank you for giving me this chance to connect with you and your audience. Readers, if you want to chat or want to connect with me, you can find me on twitter or iamnidhi.in. As I said, I enjoy connecting with new people so do not hesitate to reach out. I would be happy to know you as well.
Regarding WordPress, I do hope that gradually there are more women involved in WordPress. I personally believe that gender diversity in the tech industry is missing and we need to work on the gender gap by motivating more women to join the community and make it better.
And with that note, I wish more and more women contribute to the WordPress community in the future as well.
