WCDFW Speaker Spotlight: Pratik Ghela

Topic: Our 6 months journey around AMP, WordPress & AMP Stories

Pratik Ghela has been working on WordPress since 2011 and has worked on 500+ WordPress projects for clients across the world. His core interest has now focused to Customer Satisfaction. Apart from just working as a bridge between his Dev Team and Clients, he regularly keeps an eye over upcoming technologies. Currently, he is working exclusively on Google AMP based projects and developing a product MakeStories for building web based stories

How did you get involved in WordPress?

I got involved with WordPress way back in 2011. Prior to using WordPress, I was doing a lot of Joomla sites. It was in 2011 when I was introduced to WordPress by a student of mine. I always thought of WordPress as a blogging tool before using it and never thought that it can be used as a CMS. But, when I started using WordPress and building themes, I fount out that it is really cool . I left Joomla in 2011 and then was completely dedicated to WordPress. The learning curve is pretty easy when you compare WordPress with any other Open Source CMS. It’s been 7 yrs and there is no looking back.

What do you do with WordPress?

I run a PSD To WordPress company called PSD To Manythings where we convert PSD / Sketch files to custom WordPress Themes. This is our primary WordPress service. But lately, we have been doing a lot WordPress Development stuff like integrating 3rd party APIs , building plugins and much more. Last year, I launched a WordPress Maintenance service called “PressMate”. Also, my obsession for speed has pushed me into using almost every other hosting company on the globe. I seldom take up challenging jobs where I bring down the page load speed to 2s. We are moving slowly and gradually. But, we are now a full service WordPress Dev Shop. This year, I am also launching 2SHosting where we sell custom WordPress Hosting plans that guarantees a load time of 2 seconds.

What has your experience with the WordPress community been like?

I am an organizer of New York WooCommerce meet up group and I have been to couple of WordPress Meet Up groups in the States. One thing that I love about WordPress community is that it’s inclusive. You can find people of all age groups with the same spirit who want to make sure that everyone gets the best out of WordPress. Even though WordPress is an open source project, with community support, you can build an amazing career. I think the WordPress community is a major reason behind WordPress’s success.

Why did you want to speak at WordCamp DFW?

I have been dealing exclusively with Americans since past 6 Yrs and it is my dream to visit every WordCamp in the USA. I have heard a lot about Texas and always wanted to visit Austin & Dallas as these cities are the Technology Centers. So, while I was looking out for WordCamps happening in USA while I visit and I saw Texas, I said there we go and applied.

Why did you decide to speak on your topic?

I am talking about “Our 6 months journey around AMP, WordPress & AMP Stories”. Well, I must change it to 9 months now . I did knew about AMP in early 2016 while talking to one of my clients. Initially , i didn’t pay much attention to it. But, in 2017, I saw that AMP is being adopted by big media houses and has a potential of being a web standard. However, building native AMP is not that easy and has a steep learning curve. Due to this, there are lots of misconceptions about AMP. I wish to clear this misconceptions from people’s mind and story tell our journey from not knowing anything about AMP to developing our own software for building AMP Stories.

What do you hope the audience gets from your talk?

I hope that people make more informed decisions and not stay biased about AMP. We, as developers have a habit of using a lot of JS libraries and make things super simple for us to build. But, all of this adds up to the page load time. This is exactly what AMP doesn’t want us to. And a lot of restrictions being placed while developing AMP pages has divided the hole developer community into With AMP Vs Against AMP. AMP uses lots of techniques like asynchronous loading, caching to make your site load faster. I want people to understand that AMP is not equal to page speed , neither it is a ranking factor for SEO. I believe that after this talk, people will have a more clear understanding of when to use AMP and if they want to, then how to?

Tickets are now on sale for this year’s WordCamp DFW held on Nov. 10-11. There are also plenty of opportunities to sponsor the event or help run it. We hope to see you there!

WordCamp Dallas / Fort Worth is over. Check out the next edition!