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26 Jan Koch – WordPress and The WP Summit
Jan Koch – The Man, WordPress and The WP Summit
Jan Koch knows WordPress. It was great talking with Jan, (pronounced “Yawn” and this interview is anything but boring so you definitely won’t be yawning at any point, lol) all the way from a little town in northern Germany. As Jan says, “a global connection”. This interview was a lot of fun and Jan talked about so many cool things having to do with WordPress, the WP Summit and he offers a lot of great advice for entrepreneurs. We kick off the interview laughing after Jan hears about a story of mine and my lack of speaking German.
Jan is a 25 year old guy from Germany who grew an online side business that ended up generating enough income to replace his day job. He now works as a web designer and WordPress developer full time and enjoys blogging about it. As web designer, he works for creative entrepreneurs and bloggers, helping them to take their website to the next level and increase the profitability of their businesses.
The conversation jumps into learning about Jan’s background and his story covering his transition from working for a company to becoming a successful entrepreneur. He talks about his journey from starting his blog, to now having many clients all around the world building WordPress websites. Jan has been working with the WordPress CMS since 2012. When he saw how successful some of the people were that he was following, he thought he could do the same thing.
After finding what worked and more importantly, what didn’t work, Jan found a formula that worked for him in the world of blogging. While he quickly grew his traffic to 400 visitors a day in four months. While this was good, it was hard for Jan to sustain the amount of work it was taking. The more he worked with WordPress, the more he became comfortable with the WordPress API and the next logical step for Jan was to proceed as a WordPress consultant.
I am the type of guy who likes to fail fast and fail forward. -Jan Koch
Jan Koch on WordPress Security
Hacks don’t work like they did before. There is not a hacker sitting in front of a computer and targeting one site in particular. Hackers use automated scripts and tools these days. If they find a site that is vulnerable, then users have a problem. Hackers can make tens of thousands of dollars for one spend campaign. Given that WordPress powers approximately 23% of all websites on the net, this is a huge target for hackers.
The WordPress core itself is rock solid. The themes and plugins are where the problems are usually found. There are so many people creating themes and plugins without a consistent filtering system in place prior to developers publishing their software. Users install these plugins and/or themes on their site without knowing how well the code was written and so this can be detrimental to the users site.
In order to minimize your vulnerability with regard to hackers, make sure that you install themes or plugins from the WordPress repository only if possible. Make sure that the software comes from a reliable source. Make sure that there is an active development in place. This means that you should be able to easily get in touch with the development team to answer any quesitons. Also, make sure that the software is upated on a regular basis.
That’s why I love WordPress, because it gives you tons of opportunities when you put the work in. – Jan Koch
Jan Koch – The WP Summit
If you are a online entrepreneur that is using WordPress you don’t want to miss the WP Summit. Jan created this 10-day WP summit by interviewing 28 world-leading WordPress experts a...
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By Jaime JayJan Koch – The Man, WordPress and The WP Summit
Jan Koch knows WordPress. It was great talking with Jan, (pronounced “Yawn” and this interview is anything but boring so you definitely won’t be yawning at any point, lol) all the way from a little town in northern Germany. As Jan says, “a global connection”. This interview was a lot of fun and Jan talked about so many cool things having to do with WordPress, the WP Summit and he offers a lot of great advice for entrepreneurs. We kick off the interview laughing after Jan hears about a story of mine and my lack of speaking German.
Jan is a 25 year old guy from Germany who grew an online side business that ended up generating enough income to replace his day job. He now works as a web designer and WordPress developer full time and enjoys blogging about it. As web designer, he works for creative entrepreneurs and bloggers, helping them to take their website to the next level and increase the profitability of their businesses.
The conversation jumps into learning about Jan’s background and his story covering his transition from working for a company to becoming a successful entrepreneur. He talks about his journey from starting his blog, to now having many clients all around the world building WordPress websites. Jan has been working with the WordPress CMS since 2012. When he saw how successful some of the people were that he was following, he thought he could do the same thing.
After finding what worked and more importantly, what didn’t work, Jan found a formula that worked for him in the world of blogging. While he quickly grew his traffic to 400 visitors a day in four months. While this was good, it was hard for Jan to sustain the amount of work it was taking. The more he worked with WordPress, the more he became comfortable with the WordPress API and the next logical step for Jan was to proceed as a WordPress consultant.
I am the type of guy who likes to fail fast and fail forward. -Jan Koch
Jan Koch on WordPress Security
Hacks don’t work like they did before. There is not a hacker sitting in front of a computer and targeting one site in particular. Hackers use automated scripts and tools these days. If they find a site that is vulnerable, then users have a problem. Hackers can make tens of thousands of dollars for one spend campaign. Given that WordPress powers approximately 23% of all websites on the net, this is a huge target for hackers.
The WordPress core itself is rock solid. The themes and plugins are where the problems are usually found. There are so many people creating themes and plugins without a consistent filtering system in place prior to developers publishing their software. Users install these plugins and/or themes on their site without knowing how well the code was written and so this can be detrimental to the users site.
In order to minimize your vulnerability with regard to hackers, make sure that you install themes or plugins from the WordPress repository only if possible. Make sure that the software comes from a reliable source. Make sure that there is an active development in place. This means that you should be able to easily get in touch with the development team to answer any quesitons. Also, make sure that the software is upated on a regular basis.
That’s why I love WordPress, because it gives you tons of opportunities when you put the work in. – Jan Koch
Jan Koch – The WP Summit
If you are a online entrepreneur that is using WordPress you don’t want to miss the WP Summit. Jan created this 10-day WP summit by interviewing 28 world-leading WordPress experts a...