Developer Spotlight: Enrique Chavez

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Enrique Chavez!

Stefan: Hey Enrique, welcome to the first PageLines Developer Spotlight! As the first guest to honor our new series, please tell us a bit about yourself and the products you develop.

Enrique Chavez: Hi Stefan, it’s all my pleasure, and honor to be the first developer interviewed in the series.

I started work as a developer about 10 years ago with ActionScript applications (better known as RIAs) but when the Flash/Flex market collapsed, I migrated to web development.

I currently work for a development agency in Mexico called Uakami Studio and even though I also spend some time on freelance development projects, developing products exclusively for PageLines Store occupies most of my time now.

I’ve published five sections and one plugin up until now which enjoyed fine sales. I must say they’ve overcome all my expectations. :-)

With these products I try to satisfy common customer needs on an efficient, simple and innovative way.

Also, working as a freelancer gave me the opportunity to get away from the the big cities and settle down in a small and picturesque town called Valle de Bravo. I’ve been here for a couple years now.

Products from Enrique

S: What is the main reason you chose PageLines as a developing platform and how do you feel the PageLines Store is helping you achieve success?

E.C.: First at all, I love code and programming. I always try to make new, innovative things, and when I do a new section for the store, I really do what I want to do. Let’s just say that this is my playground, and in the process I create useful and cool sections for the store clients and of course make some extra money. :)

The main reason I chose PageLines is the easy way in which it can help me launch a full web site within hours, offering my customers an easy-to-use front-end. As a web developer, the assorted PageLines APIs allow you to create an endless number of add-ons and extensions.

This is where the PageLines Store makes total sense to me. Using the Store, you can instantly add great value to your site; dozens of resources built by PageLines community developers: sliders, menus, portfolios, testimonials and so on – are only a few clicks away!

S: What has been the most positive experience regarding your PageLines development?

E.C.: I’m a seasoned WordPress developer and building back-end interfaces was always a huge problem for me. This is what PageLines solved in a smart and elegant way. Now I don’t have to waste my time building administrative interfaces and I can focus on what really matters – functionality and product quality.

PageLines offers great support to create, store and manage all kinds of information. The learning curve is very short, and once you understand the basic concepts you can develop a theme, section or plugin much, much faster. It only gets easier. Today, I can create a complete section in a couple of hours, so in that way, I’m getting more funds from the store with less work.

Another thing I like is the PageLines DRY principles: you develop a new product once and then you can use it later again. So you gather your own “PageLines SDK” made from plugins and utilities – this way you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.

S: How about the most negative one?

E.C.: First of all, I must say you’re doing great with this platform, but from the perspective of a community developer, I think we will appreciate a little more documentation and manuals. The videos about sections are great, but I’d like to see a little more about templates and themes – the more advanced topics. So far, I’ve been able to sort out many troubles digging into source code, but more help about the framework will be a time saver for me.

S: What are your feelings about the PageLines Developer community and about the way PageLines helped you in the beginning?

E.C.: So far so good, it’s been a nice trip. You can always go and ask questions and most of the time you will get an immediate response, not only from the PageLines core group but from the entire community. There’s no doubt that the community has been a huge source of help for all of us.

And of course we have the PageLines Team: I’ve got nothing but help from you all.

S: Do you have some tips or bits of advice you would like to offer to new developers interested in the program?

E.C.: I can only say that if you’re interested in using a WordPress development platform, you are going to be very surprised once you learn how easy and fast it is to develop on PageLines. This is without mentioning that PageLines already has a large client base looking to purchase new sections, themes and plugins.

S.: Thank you very much Enrique! We really appreciate you taking the time to provide these answers and we wish you all the best with your development!