A more in-depth look at designers’ portfolios

Just six seconds. This is what is considered the time it takes to recruiters to look at curriculum vitae. Luckily, our hiring team spends far more time evaluating the candidates we get, not just because designers also have a portfolio to present, but also because we want to be sure to hire the best. This …

Growing my Personal Blog

Full disclosure - I have never successfully or intentionally grown a blog. Most of my suggestions are speculation until proven. My personal blog has been more of a personal portfolio and a collection of thoughts rather than an audience focused area. But, going into 2018, perhaps it is time to change that and turn it …

Experiments in Driving Traffic

If you follow this blog you likely know that last month the designers at Automattic were given the following challenge: Pick a colleague’s post, and explain why you chose that one. Outline a plan for the post to get 1,000+ views. Imagine that you have a US $20 budget to work with. I chose Ashley …

“How can I get more views to my blog?”

At work, we were recently asked to examine a common problem among bloggers of all types: how to get more views. As someone who has been blogging since before it was called “blogging”, web traffic is still a bit of a black box to me. Any success I’ve had has been the result of persistence …

Intentando abrazar mis diferencias culturales

  Would you like to read this post in English? Google Translate does a pretty good job translating it! En los últimos meses he estado pensando mucho en cómo podría utilizar mejor mi trasfondo cultural a la hora de diseñar interfaces de usuario. Verás: al empezar a diseñar algo, una de las primeras cosas que suele …

Our Creed

Back in mid-July, John Maeda asked me to write about my first few weeks working at Automattic, but it took me until now to stop and reflect on how it’s been since I was hired in mid-June. Shortly before I applied to work at Automattic, I found the creed, and knew that this was the …

The Next Chapter for Themes

Every few months I read a post about how the WordPress theme business has shrunk. The authors always reach a similar conclusion. Sales have dwindled. Competition has increased. Putting food on the table, finding a niche and standing out is near impossible. It may not be so impossible though. With a new editing interface on …